Category Archives: Farm to Table

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Dinner at the Emerson Spice Teahouse Rooftop Restaurant

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Well this is it. Our final activity. The Emerson Spice Hotel has a tasting menu on the rooftop, one seating per night, 5 set courses, and cocktails for sundown. The way it works is the fisherman go out each morning and bring back various seafoods, and on the way to the hotel they pick up produce from the market. The chef selects from these and designs the menu accordingly. The hotel has 10 breeding pairs of Norwegian goats, and there is also a farm at a nearby Catholic convent. At 99% Muslim Zanzibar is not exactly ripe for missionary work, so the nuns have devoted their time to farming. All the food was organic. Each plate had 3 or 4 individual items. My favorites were the crispy goat and all of the deserts. The kingfish was also yummy.

Sigh, it’s over. This is the end. I type this as we wait for our flight to Nairobi, then on to Amsterdam, and then on to New York. It’s been an incredible few years on these trips. Thanks to Alex, Layla, Sarah, and Gilda for a wild ride. Great friends, great trips.

Lady Boy Time, signing off. Continue reading →

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Organic Farm Lunch

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Leading up to the trip we were super excited about hiking the world’s second largest volcano. Early on the trip we were warned by other travelers that if people in your group don’t want to go to the volcano, you might not be able to. Well as we got closer to that day, we heard more and more dire warnings. “It’s muddy and uphill for hours.” “We’re not really supposed to dissuade the guests, but…none of the guides thinks this is a worthwhile activity.” “If there are any clouds, which there usually are, you can’t see anything.” So on and so forth. Instead, we slummed it on the beach (see previous post) and enjoyed ourselves this totally random [and free] lunch on an organic farm. We were dropped off by a pickup truck and collected again by it. The hotel staff wouldn’t let us ride in the back of the truck, but on the way back the driver smiled and gestured for LB and AO to jump in the back. Truck selfie! Oh, and that’s a chicken feeding a mouse to her children. I was like, “I just ate your grandfather!” Like the farm owner, the chickens  didn’t speak English.

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