FOOD

The best things in life are free eaten.

A lot of people's first question when I got home was how was the food? What did they eat? Do they really eat (insert crazy thing) there? So here is a short blog some of the food we ate while we were there!

I'm the pickiest eater known to mankind... I literally took one suitcase of medical supplies, one suitcase of food, and carried all my clothes on my back lol. But I really didn't end up eating much of the food I packed because the food in Uganda was excellent! Even for a picky girl like me. 

Alice is the FIRMC Guesthouse manager and an angel of a person. She would make breakfast and dinner for the volunteers. Because she's the sweetest ever, she would try to tailor her menu to "white people food" while we were at home. So that meant every morning we started with an egg and a slice of bread for breakfast.

Dinners would be some type of starch, and then fruits and vegetables. I will go on record to say that Alice made, hands-down, the best rice I've ever had. Which is lovely because I loveeeeee rice. She would make eggplant, cabbage, or other veggies and then always had mango, watermelon, or avocado as well. 

True, we did not eat meat! But the people of Uganda do. 

"Irish Soup" our lovely Alice made regularly for the homesick Mzungos. It was delightful. It was a potato soup with carrots and peppers and magic mixed in. 

The FIMRC clinic provides lunch for it's staff and volunteers. We were able to eat the local food on many occasions. Here is some of the classic Ugandan food staples:

Chapati: a flatbread

If there was a baby between tortillas and pita bread, this would be it. 

Eaten durng tea time (aka breakfast) and with most meals, this is a pretty popular food item in Uganda. And it honestly tastes fantastic.

Posho and beans: maize flour cooked with water to a dough-like consistency. ( And you clearly know what beans are...)

Kind of looks like mashed potatoes, but WARNING DOES NOT TASTE LIKE THEM.

Starchy, filling. Served for lunch/dinner very, very often

Matoke: plantain cooked with other veggies like carrots and peppers to make a flavorful meal

Also extremely common lunch/dinner meal. 

Everyone knows how to cook these meals, and eats them interchangeably every day throughout the week.

There isn't great variety, but there is great flavour. And no one in Uganda complains about anything so... 

One of the fruits they eat here but we don't really eat is jackfruit. It is MASSIVE. Like way larger than a baby. It can feed a lot. The other girls described it something like banana mixed with grapefruit. They enjoyed it a lot!

Where's the meat?

Well like I said, the people in Uganda do eat meat! However, they will kill a goat/cow/chicken/etc, and then hang it by large butcher hooks in the street. People will come and purchase pieces and it will be cut off for them. It is cooked for a while! But there is no refrigeration in the villages. Sometimes the meat will sit out for days. So while the villagers are use to this diet, the white people can get really sick from eating meat there. So we just steer clear. More for them!