Discovering delights in Nakuru with Judy

I first met Judy a week ago. She is our neighbour. She appeared on the veranda one afternoon with her husband Roy, holding bags of avocados and cupcakes for us. I immediately liked her and was happy to conclude that she isn't judgemental as it was two o'clock in the afternoon and I was still wrapped in a towel and dressing gown, in my defence I hadn't quite fathomed the hot water system at that time!

Judy is South African and has lived in various places in Kenya for the past five years, so she's very familiar with the lifestyle here and certainly knows her way around. This week she kindly offered to take me to our local town, Nakuru, which is about 20 minutes drive.

I had previously mentioned to her that I was disappointed to see that the supermarkets only seem to offer ground spices rather than whole spices - Chris and I both adore curries so our staple cupboard ingredients always include indian and thai spices!

Our first stop turned out to be a little indian run Duka (shop) mainly selling indian products.

Well, obviously I was like the child in the sweet shop. But to describe this duka, it was very different to the kind of sweet shop I knew as a child. The shop itself was relatively small, maybe 15m x 8m wide and this was barricaded off to customers with steel bars. The area for customers was approximately 2m/sq reduced even further by ropes to comply with COVID rules.

Fortunately, I had made a list of the spices I wanted which I simply handed over through the bars. The process however, took a long time as my writing isn't so legible and the shop owner wrote out every item on my list again, getting samples of each spice to show me as he wrote them down to check he had the right one. We then had to go through the list a third time as he asked how much of each I wanted. Then each spice was weighed, bagged up (all in eco-friendly paper bags) and labelled. All in all I think I was in the duka for about an hour during which time Judy had been fending off traffic wardens!

Our next stop was Naivas at the Westside Mall. Well, what a lovely surprise, they had pretty much everything else remaining on my list, right down to SuperGlue and baby aubergine.

Our final stop was the butchers. With Chris being vegetarian and me preferring fish we don't usually buy too much meat but I do tend to get a little hankering every so often. So I treated myself to some fresh lamb chops and frozen German sausages which both came recommended. On heading to the cashier I also spotted some frozen whole baby squid - well how could I resist?

All in all an amazing and fun morning. I learnt lots, pinned the essential shops on our map for future visits and cooked Chris our first proper indian curry here for supper - Baby Aubergine & Cashew Nut Curry.