Food

There are many things about the foods we eat that are different than in the United States.

• Milk. Our milk is delivered to our house by bicycle twice a week from a Dutch dairy farmer. The milk is raw, so it has to be boiled to pasteurize it. It tastes a lot different than US milk (Chad and I call it "the gross milk") so we don't drink milk anymore. We make Graham chocolate milk everyday to get him to drink it. Luckily, Molly has never had any other milk so she doesn't know the difference.

• Water. We don't like diarrhea, so we filter our water. The silver container is our water filter, and we store filtered water in the blue cooler so that we always have plenty.

• Meat. I praise the Lord that we can usually get boneless, skinless chicken breast in Mbale! We can also get ground beef and various cuts of beef. Goat is available, but we pass on that. So is pork, but it's really not safe to eat, so we don't. Some meats I miss: bacon, hot dogs, and lunchmeat. 
• Soda. Soda is very very popular here. We can get coke, sprite, fanta, pepsi, and mountain dew. There are many other flavors I had never heard of before like stoney and mirinda. Soda comes in a crate full of glass bottles. The bottles are washed and reused, so when we finish a crate, we have our guard take it (full of empty bottles) to town and for $4 pick up a new crate full of whatever flavors we want. 

• Fruits and Vegetables. All fruits and veggies are smaller and generally better tasting here. That's because they generally come from the garden in someone's backyard and are not chemically treated at all. What I miss most is the variety. The fruits we can get are pineapple, jackfruit (nasty!), mango, banana, watermelon, sometimes apples (expensive), and rarely strawberries. Veggies: tomatoes, potatoes (called "Irish" here), onions, garlic, cabbage, carrots, cucumber, green beans, and rarely broccoli. 

• Snacks. American snacks are the thing we miss the most. There are very few varieties here and they are "local" and therefore not that great. Some things we miss: raisins, craisins, nuts, crackers, chips, and cookies. But on the other hand all the cookies we eat are homemade, and therefore much tastier. 
• Dairy. You can get good yogurt here, but I generally miss the variety of good dairy products we were used to! Sour cream, cream cheese, and *good* ice cream are nonexistent. Not to mention cheese, which you cannot get in Mbale (except for locally made mozzarella which we don't care for). You can buy it at a premium price in Kampala, and I do every chance I get! We appreciate cheese much more now.

I hope you enjoyed a peek into our eating habits in Uganda...the good and the bad!