Street Food: Bissap Deliciousness

Greetings and Salutations! So for the first post of February I would like to talk a little about one of my favorite things to snack on here: Bissap walla follere (in pulaar).  It's basically the juice of the hibiscus flower slightly chilled (and sometimes frozen---which is also amazing! Kinda like a delicious slushy...) with lots of sugar.  I drink one literally every day if not multiple :) They are soooo delicious! Oftentimes, the juice comes in a small plastic bag or tiny soda bottle that has been washed (hopefully) and reused.  One time in Dabo I bought some bissap and it came in an old bottle that was originally used for motor oil....yes, i still drank it.  Usually the juice comes in two different sizes: Bujwoy e Sappo (25CFA or 50CFA).  The 25cfa size is smaller; usually about half the size of the 50CFA (that makes sense).  The one pictured below is the 50CFA size.

Bissap!



You can find bissap all over Senegal.  At my site there are currently two women who sell it at the morning marche.  I stop by their stand every morning, and sometimes in the afternoon to buy their delicious juice :) It's a little treat for me in Kolda. :) Bissap is very nutricious too! High in vitamin C and apparently really good for kidneys and lowering blood pressure.  Here in Senegal, people don't just use the flower, they also use the leaves!  Almost every Sengalese women knows how to make follere.  Basically they use steam from the boiling water to soften the leaves, then they put them in a big wooden pounding tool and beat them into a sticky, green paste.  Follere is usually added to Thieb (traditional Senegales dish...I'll post more about that later) and it's one of my favorite things to choose from in the lunch bowl.  For more info check out the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roselle_(plant)

 Last wednesday I bought a kilo of the dried hibiscus flowers so I can start making the juice myself at site.  I got an entire kilo (and an additional half kilo that the nice man selling it gave me for free because I was a white girl speaking pulaar) for 300cfa, or less than 1USD.  The only problem is that I don't have a refridgerator and neither does my family, so we will have to make a huge batch then drink it all :) Yum!   


Dried Hibiscus flowers



I love me some Bissap! :)