In the filling station/market in the tiny town of Gruneau there is an interesting choice of meat pies – it is 11am, time for second breakfast, and we cannot resist the Gruneau special. It’s delicious; mince meat wrapped in a fresh pastry, not too sweet or greasy. I’d go back there for another one of those. Sometimes it’s ok to eat food at the gas station.

Food at grocery stores is pretty much all the same. No specialty breads available, only a plain white or plain brown – a bit of wheat flour added to the white. Most everything is heavily sugared, salted or fried. Rice is white. Pasta is semolina. We are obviously not in Cape Town anymore.

Vegetables and fruit are the real treat if you can find them. The citrus is particularly beautiful and delicious. And grapes, of course. Bananas taste like bananas should. The pears are so good we spring for a big bag. I don’t know if the potatoes are the Yukon Golds we have at home but they look the same and are delicious. Salad greens are limited. To store all this, we had add a soft-sided cooler to the mix of freezer and fridge. We aren’t going hungry. Yet.

Having a beer at the bar adjacent to our camp (nice place, really), the proprietor explains that he raises and processes game meat – would we like to take some? Oh yeah. Meat is on the table these days and we buy oryx borewores (game meat sausages), lamb steaks, and venison patties. The proprietor was funny – he says chicken is just for emergencies in Namibia.

One-pot meals are the goal. We have a “slow cooker”; it’s a fabric bag carefully filled with insulation and you put your pot of beans or rice or whatever in it and the bag will keep the food cooking as long as needed, just like a crock pot at home only you don’t need electricity. I leave food in it to cook overnight and so far that has been successful. A 10-inch flat bottom dutch oven and a smaller lidded saucepan (good quality) are essential utensils. And the coffee press. There is instant coffee for lunch stops; to make it more drinkable there is cold sweetened condensed milk to add. We can detox when we get home.