You Gonna Eat That? Part 2

               So now that you’ve had a chance to become acquainted with some of our shopping adventures in Belize, I wanted to touch on cooking and eating in Belize—the good, the bad, and the ugly.

                I knew cooking would be its own challenge when we moved to Belize, and though I welcomed the challenge at first, I soon found that I was a bit of a “slow learner” when it came time to getting a handle on cooking and eating in Belize. 

For the first few months, it would take me anywhere between 2-5 hours to put together a meal.   So, the first thing I wanted to do was find out how other Americans had been doing it in my area, to see what their typical meal looked like and how it was prepared.  Soon after we moved to PG, I’d arranged a visit with an American missionary “supermom” who managed to grocery shop once a week and put together some amazing meals.  Unfortunately, her family was operating on a budget that was quite a bit higher than ours and many of her meal ideas had to be altered for us or wouldn’t work altogether but I did learn a lot of tips on meal planning and cutting down my time in the kitchen.  Later I met, and became good friends with, a missionary mom whose family is similar to ours: tight budget (though a bit tighter than ours), 5 young kids, and two hungry adults.  They had recently adjusted their budget due to a drop in support and the mom quickly realized that food is one area where they could control what they were spending.    This amazing mom gave me the confidence to reorganize myself and my mindset that would help change the way I “thought” my family needed to eat.   But like I said, I was a bit of a slow learner.

The real catalyst for quick change happened about 2 or 3 months after we moved to Belize, and of course it hit me in the head like a 2x4.  I had been in the kitchen cooking up some Chicken Curry (a common Belize dish).  As I stirred my skillet full of simmering chicken, the 11 year old neighbor looked on.  As she peered over the stove top, she looked at my pan and then looked up at me and said “you gonna eat that?”  I replied, “yes, we’re having this for dinner.”  And then she said, “no, you gonna eat all of that?”  That’s when I realized, panged with guilt, that I was cooking a skillet full of chicken for my family but it was an unreasonably huge amount of meat—an amount that I thought we needed.  At this point my family definitely wasn’t stuffing ourselves at meals but I also now realized that meat did not have to be such a huge part of the meal.  No one around us is eating anywhere near this much meat, not even middle to upper class Belizeans, nor is the missionary family (whose family is the same size as ours), and they also are not wasting away to nothing.  And so began my most important cooking lesson in Belize. 

Now, what had previously been enough meat to feed our family one meal (plus a lunch or two for a few people the next day) could be stretched to cover two meals by simply adding more starch (namely rice), homemade breads, and veggies.  It took some getting used to—we still felt hungry after meals, craving more meat, for a short while—but so soon enough, I got a handle on it.  Meal prep began to decrease (even more so if you include the fact that I was regularly making a meal to last two days), tummies were satisfied, and the weight we had dropped the first few months began to get put back on.  Meat was no longer the star of the show, just an important sidekick, and our plates really did appear to be a lot more balanced and healthy.  More importantly, I was cutting back on our spending and feeling a lot more in solidarity with those whom we were in community with.  Though admittedly, my family still cannot eat as much rice as a typical Belizean does at meal time—usually at least a pound per family I would guess. 

Best of all, I now was getting a better opportunity to cook real “Belizean style” and open up my family to a world a great food and tastes—some of which are still favorite dishes in our house.   (And which will be the discussion for the 3^rd and final part of this blog topic.)

Charlie helping knead the dough:  a new common activity at our house

Getting ready to cook up the string of Red Snapper that we'd bought at the market

You Gonna Eat That? Part 1

          While we may be living in the US now (2 weeks and counting), our blog posts do not have to end right?  We have a lot of reflections and observations that have been made and are still in the making and would love to continue to write about them as time permits.

           Since we’ve been back, one of the more basic questions that has been asked of us is “what did you eat in Belize?”  So, I thought some might find it interesting if we wrote about some of our food adventures—shopping, cooking, and eating the foods of Belize.  In an effort to keep from droning on in one post, I will write about each separately and break them up into a couple of different posts. 

When we first moved to Belize we felt like we’d faced a lot of food challenges.  It took some major adjustments learning to cook for a family of 7 with limited ingredients, virtually no prepared foods, no snack items, and limitations on when ingredients can be purchased.  At first, it felt like we were never getting enough to eat—chicken is the most affordable and widely available meat for purchase and the chickens here are significantly smaller than their American counterparts.  It would take me at least two hours to prepare even the simplest of meals and everyone seemed to be asking for more at meal’s end.  But, as time wore on so did my ability to adjust and improvise and my family began to reap its rewards.  One of their favorite things about Belize became my cooking.  

Shopping for food began the first challenge.  Meals have to be planned in advance because if it involves the use of any vegetables or fruits, then they must be purchased at the market which is only open during the mornings.  Back up meals must also be planned should a few necessary ingredients not be available for purchase that day.   Cabbage, carrots, and onion are staples there but beyond that, there is no guarantee that what I wanted to purchase would be available at the market.  Saturdays, Fridays, and Wednesdays are the busiest days at the market as those are the days in which buses run from the villages and the Mayan women come in to sell some of their produce.  The Mennonite farmers also come in most often on those days, especially on Saturdays.  Mennonite produce is often, though not always, superior in flavor and quality as they practice more developed farming strategies here in Belize.  They are also the only ones at the market that have any dairy products:  usually cream or a salty non-melting cheese.

 In addition to purchasing produce, fresh fish and pork (and sometimes beef) can also be purchased at the market.  There is a building at the end of market row in which you can select and purchase fish or seafood from one person and take it to another to have it cleaned.  The building is adjacent to the sea and has a dock that heads straight to the fish market’s back door.  The fishermen head straight from their boat to the market and it is not uncommon to find fish still flopping about as I am making my selection.  The best bargain to be had is what is referred to as a string of fish.  For about $5 you can purchase about 10 small red snapper that have already been cleaned and are strung together on a palm leaf.  We’ve done this several times but in all honesty, the fish are so small that there are quite a few bones in them and my kids found that to be really bothersome. 

Opposite the fish market is the meat market.  It is a small tiled room with about 6 stalls.  Here you can purchase pork at $2.50/lb for any piece of the pig.  There are 3 basic parts to the pig to order:  shoulder, butt, and rib.  I order what I want of the 3 and let the butcher know whether or not I wish them to be cut into “chops” and approximately how much meat I want in pounds.  The butcher then proceeds to bring the meat over to his chopping log and hack off the desired amount with a machete.  Since pork is double the price of chicken, I did not purchase it often but over the months I did learn that when I did buy pork, I could have the skin removed and get more meat for my money.  Many people here cut the skin off themselves and fry it up for a snack of chicharron (essentially pork rinds). 

There is one store, Balona’s, which we referred to as the “Chicken Store.”  It is the only air conditioned store in town and they have freezers full of chicken and turkey, though they do have other typical American style meat cuts, most of which we felt were over our budget to purchase.  They also sell ground beef here in 3 forms:  ground steak, ground beef, and ground meat.  The cows in Belize are bred differently to withstand the heat and consequently the beef here is very tough.   Ground meat, whatever that may be, was $1.45/lb and fit most in our budget so that is what we most often ate of the 3.  Surprisingly, it was also consistently the most reliable in flavor and texture.  I found that on the occasion that I would purchase ground beef instead, it would sometimes have a gritty texture and a strange flavor.  Even a simple meal of spaghetti with meat sauce would be almost unpalatable.

Basic grocery items can be purchased at any of the dozen or so Chinese owned grocery stores, known locally as “the Chiney.”  While a dozen shops sound like a good amount of grocery choices for a town of only 5000, they all sell virtually the same things and each is about the size of a 7-11.  Though it never fails, when I have a specific item I need, I usually have to hit at least 5 or 6 stores before I can find it in stock.  Most Chinese stores are open from 9 to 9 and even over the past year, more and more are staying open on Sundays and during lunch hours.  Much of the food here is close to or past its expiration date and it is my understanding that many items have arrived via the black market.  It’s not uncommon to see items from Sam’s that have been broken down into smaller sizes to be resold here.  You can find US brands here in everything from shampoo, to cereal, to cake mix, to spaghetti sauce but expect to pay at least double what it costs in the US.    Sliced bread is also available but without any preservatives, it is usually dry and crumbly by the time we use it.  Eggs can be bought here individually or by the tray and are never refrigerated.  You can also purchase raw pigs feet by the pound which is stored inside the shops in vinegar inside 5 gallon buckets and served up with tongs into plastic bags.  All stores sold dry beans, flour, rice, and sugar which come in 100lb sacks but are rebagged into 1 to 10lb bags for individual sale.  These items are some of the only food items which sell for less than in the US.  Though, the stores would often run out of sugar because of the occasional sugar plantation strike and the smuggling of sugar across the border (which can be then resold for a higher amount in both Mexico and Guatemala).  Famous advice from every expat I met living in PG, “if you see something at the store that you’ve never seen before, or that you really need, then buy it because you might not ever see it again or not for some months at least.”  So true.  Welch’s grape jelly was often for sale and we went through a lot, as pb& j sandwiches were a lunch staple in our house however , at one point, it was about a month and a half before I could find it on the shelves again. 

It’s been quite a change since moving back to the US and finding myself once again inside mega grocery chains with all their snacks, choices, and availability (and freezing cold a/c).  While I do enjoy the selection, I’m also trying to remind myself that fresh foods over canned goods, homemade items over processed foods, and simple fruits over snack foods really has been rewarding over the past year.  It’s maintaining the balance of the good of both which I hope to continue with in my grocery shopping “adventures” here.