On Food

 As I was preparing to come here, doing presentations and talking to people about what my life here would look like, I said I would be eating a lot of rice and sauce. This hasn’t really been the case. I eat it sometimes, but no more than once a week, and often not even that. The bulk of the diet of our neighbors consists of rice, oil, Maggi cubes (MSG in there), and onions- there are some other foods too but these are the staples. As my body doesn’t need the oil or MSG, I don’t often go seeking  food from nieghbors. From a western perspective, this seems like a huge social loss; but sharing meals here doesn’t seem to carry the same “breaking bread together” significance.

 While we don’t have access to a lot of Western foods, we do manage to maintain a fairly Western diet. We do this by stockpiling when we are in the capital at the stores that pretty much cater to the expat community.So we head home with a three month supply of olive oil, juice, cheese, frozen broccoli or strawberries if we are feeling splurgy. And we come home to put into our cave while we hibernate. Really that is what I feel like, our kitchen is a major storage area. 

As far as diet changes, I eat less meat here, and all my produce is organic by default. We make our own yugurt and granola for breakfast, though we are also big muffin fans. No fast food, obviously.  Cooking has become a creative outlet for me. Both Brittany and I enjoy browsing our cookbooks for new things to make that that ingredients we could get or substitute for. Some of our favorite finds and now regulars in our meal rotations: sweet potato pancakes (cans from the states), pumpkin soup (technically squash), ginger colesla.

This term we bought food from the food shipment that comes from the states; but next term I am considering trying just eating stuff I can get in country. Really, globalization is happening before our eyes, we can get many products that veteran missionaries  never would have dreamed of buying here.