Food

The food there was incredible. I certainly gained weight this past week. The rice was delicious, all the curries were great. Everything was loaded with sugar, so everything tasted good. And I ate a ton of mangos. I know that didn’t help my diet at all.

I tried many new foods here.

Buffalo milk and buffalo curd. So they didn’t have cows, but rather buffalos. These buffalos give off milk, so naturally we drank it in tea and coffee. The milk was also boiled then removed from heat to cool, stored in a bowl with a lid so the bugs wouldn’t get into it. We ate it about 12 hrs later, warm, not cooled, as there are no means of refrigeration. I added rice, salt, sugar and eventually mango to make a rice pudding. Yum

Palm fruit. These were about an inch and a half cubes that were fleshy. Inside was a translucent whiteish fluid. You but it in your mouth and sucked the juice out and ate the jelly skin. Kinda a weird texture, like nothing I’ve had before. There really wasn’t much of a taste either. Supposedly it was medicinal and helped cool you down.

Coconut water. This was kinda gross. It was a murky white fluid that did not taste good in the least. It was brought to us on a tray and we were told this too was medicinal. We really weren’t asked if we wanted any, I think it was just assumed. I nearly gagged, but managed a smile, mmmm this is good. No, no thank you, I really do not want a refill, promise. I forced myself to finish the fluid and I knew my stomach just told my brain “what the hell was that, that was really dumb. I don’t want this. I am going to punish you for this.” Stomach 1, brain 0

Water. Most of the water we drank came from a Purina water purifier. We even refused politely the water offered to us by the villagers. We stopped at another church on the way home for lunch before we got on our train. The father here assured us the water was safe to drink, I believed him. Fr. Paul drank the water, so I did too. It didn’t taste funny so maybe it was ok. Mary Ellen stuck to her water bottle. I didn’t see a purifier, but I was dehydrated. Also not a highly recommended solution. It did solve my dehydration, but also forced me to become best friends with the porcelain for the next 48 hours. Starting immediately after getting on the train to go home. Stomach 2, brain 0

Chicken stomach. It’s a delicacy. And I accidentally put it on my plate, mistaking it for another piece of chicken, like the neck or heart or large intestine. Silly me. Being that it was a delicacy, for some, I forced myself not to waste it. Stomach 3, brain 0

Mangos see previous post. Stomach 4, brain 1 it’s a tie.

Also ate wild mango, right off a tree. Pretty cool. Looked the same, tasted like a lemon mango or a grapefruit mango. Also put me into fits of childish laughter. I think these may have been laced. They were kinda addicting. I had 3.

Pomegranate, wild palm berries, guava, banjaua juice/fruit were some of the others we had. All grown on the property, without pesticides.

Curry continued for breakfast lunch and dinner. We had a ton of okra and onions and this other really seedy pepper.

There was also a hardboiled egg curry. Very strange textures.

We did not eat the snake, well, that I know of. All in all, the food rocked. Even if I got a lil sick. Worth it? I’d say yes