Food For Thought... Literally

For the last few weeks I’ve been doing a lot of shopping at the market.  Here you have the choice of two markets (one is more so a morning market and the other an afternoon/evening market) and the grocery store.  The markets have all the fresh produce and the fish while the shops have all the packaged and processed goods along with the meat.  So you’re only option for produce is the outdoor market.  Since I’ve been shopping more we’ve been cooking more and it has been wonderful!

Shopping in the markets is lovely.  In Vegas I always said I wanted to go to a farmers market and sometimes even planned to, but it never happened.  I was either working or too tired from working to make my way down the street (literally like ¼ mile) to the market on Saturday mornings.  In my defense I worked a lot of Saturday mornings at 5:30 or 6:30 in the morning.  But the point is I never made it there regardless of the excuse.

I took a course in Nutritional Anthropology a few years ago and it was hands down my favorite college class (and that’s saying something considering I did 8 years of college full time and had enough credits for two BA degrees).  One thing I noted during our discussions, lectures, and readings is the disconnect we now have with what we eat.  Our food is grown, which we don’t see… harvested, which we don’t see… transported, which we don’t see… and then set up in a grocery store to be displayed in a fashion that makes it look attractive enticing us to buy it.  All the tomatoes that aren’t perfectly round don’t make it to the store shelves.  The lemons that aren’t that perfect lemon shape are never seen.  Apples that aren’t approximately the same size as all the other apples next to it never make it on the truck.  It’s amazing that we live in this fantasy land when it comes to what we consume that everything must look exactly the same and if not then it doesn't make the cut.

I had no idea that all lemons didn’t develop into a perfect lemon shape until my early 20’s when I helped pick lemons from a tree belonging to my friend’s mother (thank you Erin and Linda for that lesson).  The different shapes and sizes amazed me.  Why is it that stores only carry one lemon that’s been cloned hundreds of times?  Where’s the variety? 

And meat is a whole other issue.  I was a vegetarian for almost a decade for a number of reasons the main one being that my mom is a colon cancer survivor and meat builds up inside you colon, which can contribute to colon cancer.  Individuals who are vegetarians have lower rates of colon cancer.  A second reason was supposedly for health benefits, though, I was 14 when I started and considered fish sticks and Taco Bell bean burritos to be a sufficient sources of protein.  A third reason was animal treatment.  I don’t think eating meat is a bad thing (and now regularly consume meat), but we need to seriously revamp our meat industry.  It’s disgusting.  But that’s another tangent for another time.

Animals and their treatment and their lives are so far off our radar when we walk into the super market and purchase the packaged part of whatever animal we intend to consume.  We’re all guilty of it myself included.  I check to make sure it says preservatives and hormone free and then throw it in the cart.  The first time I ever considered the slaughtering of animals was in the 8^th grade.  My dad went hunting and made jerky with the meat. (My dad’s jerky is pretty amazing and I’m not even gonna lie, I cheated on my vegetarian diet a couple times to snack on his jerky… yes, it’s that good.)  I brought some of this jerky to school and shared it with a friend.  She thought it was delicious and asked where I got it.  When I responded that my dad had recently gone hunting and made it she spit it out and told me how disgusting that was.  This shocked me.  Where did she think her store bought jerky came from?  Or the chicken or steak or pork she ate every night for dinner?  The thought of where meat came from had never crossed her mind, or mine on a conscious level before that moment.  The irony of this situations is that that jerky from my dad didn’t have any hormones or preservatives or artificial flavoring or any of the other crap that packaged jerky has making it far healthier, but for her the idea of someone slaughtering an animal was appalling making it undesirable. We’re so far disconnected from our food that we don’t consider the animals’ treatment or the process it endures to go from birth to your dinner table.

Being in Papua New Guinea has helped me connect with food in a way I never have before.  I get to meet the women and men who grow my vegetables and fruits.  I’ve watched pigs get slaughtered for my dinner and though this makes me sad I’d much rather mourn the loss of that life when it happens than not even think twice about it as I pick up my package of bacon and put it in my cart while checking what’s left on the list to get.  I’ve learned so much about the different varieties of fruits and vegetables that grow on this planet.  Did you know that oranges can be green?  Neither did I until I came to PNG and was given the best tasting orange (that was green) of my life.  Mandarins can be green as well.  I learned this when I purchased limes at the market the other week then opened it to find a not so lime-y inside, but a sweet mandarin-y insides.  And don’t even get me started on all the different varieties of bananas that exist.  In the States we get one kind, Cavendish, and it’s tasteless compared to other bananas but ships well so that’s your one and only choice. (There’s a book titled “Banana” that gives the history of bananas and all the crap the US has put other countries through to secure our constant supply of bananas.  It’s a quick, informative, and interesting read if anyone cares to check it out).  There are green beans that are a deep rich purple until they’re cooked and that’s when they turn green.  And tomatoes that can be green and yellow in addition to red.  And peppers that are purple.

Food is an incredible thing.  Walking through the markets and selecting my food has opened my eyes to a whole new world.  It’s created an awareness of what I put in my body that I didn’t have before and a greater appreciation of cooking.  With that being said I’ll still consume more Oreo’s and chocolate than is healthy for any one person, but Oreo’s are a good American comfort food and chocolate is just plain scrumptious.  Next step in my food journey is starting my own small garden and seeing what I eat go from seedling to the dinner table. 

Welcome to the Kavieng Market.

Capsicums (peppers), tomatoes, ginger,
onions, avocados, and peanuts.

I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts.

Bananas, bananas, bananas.... mmmm my favorite!

Yummy greens

I never liked pineapple until I came here.

This was dinner one night...
well, a couple nights actually.

A baby Cus Cus for sale.  I would have
brought it home if I knew I could keep
it but I'm quite certain Monica would
have marched me down to the market
it and set me up with a sign that said
"FREE".

Mint and limes... if you're thinking Mojitos you would
be correct.  I was stoked to find both at the market on
the same day.  Score!

Dinner another night.  Nom Nom Nom