Life in PNG – What’s for Dinner!

I’ll start off by putting your mind at ease. We haven’t had to eat any plump, juicy grubs – yet!!  That time may come and we’ll be sure to tell you about it!!

We really eat pretty normal stuff here.  The main difference is that it usually just takes longer to make.  Here are a few examples:

Suppose we want to have pizza.  Now back in the States we most often made our own pizza at home, but there was always the option of getting a Digorno one from Wal-mart or going to Little Caesar’s if we were in a hurry.  Here, homemade is the only option!  So, I have to make the crust, shred the cheese (usually we can’t find mozzerella so we just use whatever kind we can find), slice the pepperoni…  Then comes the fun part – heating up the oven to 425 to make the already hot house even hotter!!  That’s okay though.  Pizza’s worth it!

What about if we want tacos.  Tortillas – have to make them.  Lettuce – sometimes available, more often can’t find it (but there’s lots of cabbage so we could substitute that).  Cheese – no shredded cheese here so we have to shred whatever kind of cheese we can find.  Refried beans – there are two options for that.  We have seen them in the store, but since we are not willing to pay $4 for one can, I’d just have to make those too.  Sour cream – have to make that by mixing vinegar in with a little box of thickened cream (as long as the store has the cream).  Salsa – we have found that at the store and we are using it sparingly  so it lasts.  Anything else? – oh, the meat.  We can get pretty good ground beef  here and we have seen taco seasoning a few times at one store.  Otherwise we’d just have plain meat.  Now we’re ready to eat the tacos!   Are you hungry yet?

Yogurt – have to make it.  Brownies – make them from scratch.  I could go on but you probably get the picture.
(Speaking of pictures – you can click on any of the photos below to see a larger image.)

All that is if we are eating at home.  But, you might be wondering what we eat if we are out visiting in the village.   Here goes!!

A few weeks ago we visited the village area of several of the men who work here on the center.  Despite our request that they not make a big deal of us coming for dinner, their wives were getting a feast ready!!  The  “table” was covered with several types of bananas, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, several kinds of greens (pumpkin leaves, ferns and other leaves), corn, potatoes and some other things.

There were three main dishes they were cooking for us (all over an open fire).

The first was a soup made mostly from greens and  pitpit (a type of wild sugar cane) cooked in coconut “grease”.  They break open a coconut and then scrape out the inside.  Then they soak the shaved coconut in water, squeeze it and then strain it.  It is the strained coconut water (“grease”) that they use to cook most all of their food in.  This time they also added a ramen noodle soup packet to the soup mixture (we don’t know if they did that just for us or if that is something they would normally do).

The second dish started off looking like a bunch of flour or meal in a bowl.  It is called saksak flour and it comes from the sago palm.  It’s quite a process to make (and we’re learning more about that right now).  They then poured some water into the bowl and mixed it by hand til it was like mush.  After that they poured boiling water over the mush and stirred it.

We were each given a bowl with a clump of the rubbery, slimy orange stuff you see above.  Over that they poured some of the soup.  It was a little weird eating pumpkin leaves and ferns but the soup did taste good.  It was the saksak snot that we had a hard time getting to go down!!  It’s hard to believe that this is a favorite dish for some people around here!

The final dish consisted of the remaining vegetables cooked in more coconut “grease” over the fire.

Now this is not a typical, everyday meal for most villagers.  They just prepared so much food because we were coming to visit.  Most people here eat only twice a day with the main meal in the evening.  For breakfast or lunch they might just have bananas roasted over the fire.  Rice, which is a common food in many Asian countries, is a luxury here.

We know this is getting long but we did want to show you another picture of a meal we had with a different family.  Once again, they put out quite a spread – sweet potatoes, taro, rice, several kinds of bananas and more.  But the highlight of that meal was fish, squid and lobster that one of the guys caught the night before using his speargun.  It was quite an experience for the boys to see whole fish, eyes and all, sitting on the plate!  They ate it without complaining and thought it tasted great – especially the squid!

Is your mouth watering yet?    Thanks for reading!