um yum

The food in Uganda may just be the best food that I have ever had in my entire life. Ever.

Pretty much all of the food is grown in the garden or purchased at the market. You hardly catch a local eating something processed. The only time I ever saw that was when we were the ones to give them the food!

Where we stayed in Kabale, Irish potatoes were probably the biggest staple there. They also grew sorghum, squash, avocado, bananas, mango, papaya, watermelon, pineapple, beans, peppers, cabbage, and many other delicious foods. They make chapati and rolex and mandazi and matooke and posho and g-nut sauce, and it's fantastic.

Chapati is their grain, and it's made similarly to a tortilla, except it's thicker and tastes much better. A rolex is eggs (or anything really) rolled up in a chapati.

Mandazi is their fried dough, and it's heavenly. It's like a pretty dense scone, and we would eat it for breakfast and stay full all day.

Matooke is basically fried/steamed plantains that they mash. It's pretty bland, but if you add some g-nut sauce or some veggies on it, it's quite tasty.

Posho is interesting. When they brought it out, they said it was like cornbread, but it's actually nothing like cornbread. It's hard to describe, but it's white and flavorless, but not bad.

G-nut sauce comes from these nuts that are similar to peanuts, but a little chewier. They grind the nuts to make this sauce that kind of tastes like runny peanut butter. The description isn't so appetizing, but the g-nut sauce for sure is. You can put it on rice, chicken, chapati, veggies, matooke, posho, and almost anything really.

We often had rolex or chapati or omelets for breakfast each morning with some bananas. Lunch and dinner had some combination of rice, chicken, beans, chapati, squash, potatoes, matooke, veggies, noodles, goat, beef, curry, avocado, cabbage salad, and fruit. It was heaven.

Agriculture is the life here. It's definitely the focus of the economy. Pretty much everyone farms their own food and maybe even sells some of it. One of the PAs said that he makes more money with his farming business than with his job as a PA! The food is all organic too.

When you walk the streets you see lots of little pop-up food stands, and you also see plenty of people cooking their dinner outside. The food stands are mostly chapati, rolex, and often there are boys walking around selling samosas or mandazi or grasshoppers.

The one thing I didn't enjoy too much was the grasshoppers. The people in Uganda catch them at night, and then sell them at market. You buy them and then fry them in some spices and then eat them. I did not quite love the experience because it's like weirdly crunchy meat. But I did try them!

I'm excited to go home and make some of this food so that I can still have Uganda with me.