Food! (no pics)

First: about pictures. Maybe this weekend I'll be able to get something to work from an internet cafe, but for the moment, no one I know has had any luck with pictures, regardless of their size, in days. So sorry about that! Otherwise, I thought I might do a more subject related post.

I've mentioned a little bit about food, but since it's what I smell right now, I thought I'd add in a little more detail. Senegalese meals are always eaten out of a communal dish (for lunch or dinner, unless it's soup). The typical meal is rice (or cous-cous or sometimes pasta) with either fried fish or beef in a spiced sauce over it. Sometimes these sauces have vegetables - which almost always means carrots and potatoes and onions. While we're talking about vegetables (or the lack thereof), we are fortunately in green bean season, which means that we'll get some very oily beans as the basis for a meal sometimes. Every once in a long time there will be a salad - though often with french fries on top. We eat on low stools around a low table, though some families sit on the floor, and occasionally some eat only with their hands (we use forks in mine).
Breakfast is always the same: it's set out and everybody eats when they get up. We have cocoa mix and nescafe crystals (all coffee here is nescafe), bread and their version of nutella. Senegal is a peanut producing country - peanuts are sold by women on the street all over, they have a peanut sauce they eat frequently, and so what they spread on bread is basically nutella but a little more liquid and with peanuts instead of hazelnuts - really pretty good. Interestingly enough, despite being huge on peanuts, there is NO peanut butter here - even in the western supermarket, it cannot be found.
Since the dinners are so heavy and intense and oily/fatty, most of us have taken to pretty modest lunches from the street food that's nearby. There are fruit vendors and little stands that sell all types of bread and candy all over the place. I usually get fruit or a piece of baguette with cheese or peanuts, because the idea of getting an actual sandwich (usually composed of schwarma and often with french fries in it) is just too much, and more rice doesn't seem like a possibility.
Overall, the food is really good - and I'm definitely going to be much more tolerant of spicy food when I get back. However, it can be so overwhelming, particularly since there is always a lot of pressure to eat a lot. We don't ever really do dessert, but sometimes we get juice - either Bisab (made from hibiscus flowers) or a combination of pineapple and the baobab fruit, which is more like a smoothie and really good.
I'm off to do some of my actual homework, though there are very few of us here. There's a HUGE muslim festival happening in the religious city (Touba) this weekend, and many of the group have left. This weekend will feature a pretty empty Dakar, though I already know of one Catholic block party - seems they like to party during religious festivals :)