VL part 3 {Food}

I will be the first to admit that my experience of cooking in the great outdoors is, well, how do you say it...limited? My idea of ‘fun’ was cooking hot dogs and smore's out at the lake house. I had never planned, prepped and cooked full, semi-healthy meals until orientation. Thankfully, during our haus kuk weekends we learned how to do this very thing plus adapt to having no refrigeration (i.e. no leftovers) in preparation for 5 weeks of village living. We survived and ate fairly well although probably not exactly under the guidelines of the US food pyramid.  

We also learned how food is gathered, prepped and eaten in a village. On the coast, coconuts and bananas, hundreds of different varieties, are grown and easily accessible. Most families have gardens that are located quite far from their homes. These gardens aren’t what you and I think of as gardens. They are huge, usually several acres of land, sometimes located on the sides of mountains, full of banana trees, starches, greens and sometimes even sugar cane-our girls favorite!

I went to the garden one day with one of Jimmy’s sisters, Regina, and Vincent’s wife, Rose. We walked about an hour to this huge segment of land that mostly sloped down a mountain. We gathered weeds into a burn pile. I was able to plant starches like taro and yam (not like American yams). They asked me to cut down a banana tree that was ready for harvesting. We gathered fire wood from other trees that were dead. The whole process took several hours and then...the rain came! We took shelter in a small house that Jimmy’s brother in law, Joe, had built further up the road, just for occasions like this. Regina quickly made a fire and threw some cook bananas on top and we waited til the peel was charred and we ate using huge, green banana leaves for mats. 

What happens after you work your garden? You have to get all this food home! The traditional way women carry things here is on their heads with a bilum or string bag. I was loaded up with starches, bananas and fire wood and the bag placed gingerly on top of my head.

I’m not gonna lie...it was HEAVY. 

(And no, I was not that brave to carry bananas on my head like this!) 

Once you get your kai kai (food!) home...it’s time to eat! I had a whole lesson one morning on how to cook the PNG way! 

The copious amounts of coconut are used every day in so many ways. The young coconuts are full of coconut water. The “dry” are scraped with special benches (see below) Then you take the fresh flaked coconut, add water and s-q-u-e-e-z-e the coconut til you basically have fresh coconut milk. This milk is boiled with all the various food you’ve picked from the garden. PLUS...and this was our favorite...add the milk to rice and you get delicious coconut rice!

(Coconut shells are GREAT for fires as well!)

Jason went hunting for kindam-fresh water fish-late one night (the only time they come out!) and they are delish boiled or fried.

I used the many, many bananas we had to make banana cake which was a huge favorite with all the kids. We also found that we really like the cook bananas over the fire. Jason actually had that as his “last meal” the last morning of our stay, he liked them that much! We also loved them fried as they taste almost like a french fry.

Protein is a real treat as it is expensive and hard to come by, but since we were special guests, we had chicken. And when I mean chicken, I mean...the whole chicken. 

And guess who had the honor of ushering the bird into our bowls??

Yep. The chicken came under the fateful hands of Mr. Brewer...a man who’s never killed anything bigger than a roach. I was torn between feeling bad for the chicken and laughing at the whole scene going down in front of me! Poor Mo couldn’t bare the scene and ran upstairs, but of course her siblings were right in on the action. 

After watching the entire chicken "process" happen, you should know I will never ever take a bag of frozen chicken breasts for granted again.