My meals here are pretty simple. Usually they’re very good - the chefs are excellent - but there’s not much for variety. Every meal has rice and beans, a rotating starch (potatoes, sweet potatoes, cassava, or cooking bananas), a mash of vegetables, and a sauce. There is also meat, but I stay away from it (usually chewy goat - inedible I’d say - hanging out in the sauce). I’m like a vegan. Finally, I’ve one upped by mother.

Anyways, today, at lunch, there was no rice and while at first I was thinking it was a nice change - finally, maybe a little variety - I soon found myself missing it. It was like my beans had been stood up, it didn’t make any sense. And the usual mash that all the ingredients soon become seemed runny without the rice to soak it up and give it form. Lunch just wasn’t the same.

It turns out what I originally thought was an inspired decision to switch things up - before I turned sour to the new state of things - was in fact just because somebody had forgot to buy rice.

What a relief. And sure enough, come dinner, the rice was back, mixing it up like salt to pepper with my trusty beans.