Namibia (I bless the potjies down in Africa)

Namibia joined April 23rd, 1990.

I have never been to Namibia, but I can say that I've seen it from the shores of Botswana.

I wanted potjies.  I just didn't want to make them.  Because if I made one, I would want meat.  I would have zero motivation to make one without meat.  But by making one with meat it means I would have to make another with veggies anyway for the vegetarian in our group.  And I really didn't want to make one, much less two.  But here I am.  Making two potjies.

Fun fact, potjie is not pronounce pot-gee like and good American would think.  Instead it's pronounced poi-kee.  Where's the K?  I don't know.

Also fun fact, potjies are traditionally not stirred.  The goal is to have distinct flavors from bite to bite, instead of mixing and making all the flavors meld so each bite tastes the same.  The pot is strategically layered, typically with the meat at the bottom, then covered with veggies in order of what takes longest to least longest to cook, topped with broth, water, or even a coke if you're feeling it.  Then it's cooked for hours without stirring.

I chose lamb neck for my meat potjie, but after calling several butchers I realized there is no lamb neck in Seattle.  So I decide to go with whatever is at the store, and ended up with some chicken drumsticks.  If there's anything I learned about potjies in my research it's that Namibians use whatever is on hand or in season.  So I didn't feel bad about adjusting the ingredients as needed.

I start cooking around noon and get my two potjies going.  The veggie one cooks easily, but my meat one is just not going anywhere.  When I got to Jenny's it was clear that this was a problem, so I pulled the pot out of the crockpot and put it in the oven.  Worked like a charm!

Jenny and amber finish their dishes, as some of our guest make us some "Namibian" martinis.  Jenny got real, real excited when she added the peanut butter to her soup.

Everyone was getting antsy, so to waste the last minute we did some planks, followed by some down dog.

I was nervous about my dish since I hadn't stirred it and had no idea how the bottom layers were doing.  When we finally served it was awesome.  The chicken was fall off the bone tender, and it all tasted a-okay.  We even started talking about cooking a potjie in an actual potjie cast iron pot at our next camping trip.

The evening ended with Cards Against Humanity, which lead to shenanigans and somersaults.  Yes, I said somersaults.

(Celebrated April 21st, 2018)