The food here is truly a gastronomical delight. Absolutely wonderful. So wonderful that it deserves it's own little recognition here on the website. Where to begin? Let's start with that lovely bread the monkeys robbed us of early last week. "Ouma's bread." As you can see, this is one solid chunk of bread. Eaten raw, it sticks to the top of your mouth, like a marshmallow. Toasted, it absorbs butter like a sieve. No matter how it is eaten, 1 or 2 slices can fill you for half a day. 'nuff said. What else have we indulged in while here? All sorts of exotic foods. Well, probably not too exotic to the locals. We call kudu and springbok and ostrich exotic. We "oooo" and "ahhh" over these fine tasty meats like they are manna dropped from heaven to feed the masses. "Feed the multitudes with baskets of loaves and fishes"...and ostrich and mangos and other South African delicacies. An exciting event for me is to peer in to the meat section at the shop and pride myself on all the choices I have available in front of me. I feel like I should turn to everyone around me, pass out cigars, and say "That one over there. Yes, the 2 kilogram ostrich package. That's my boy!" In all our excitement, it is essential we contain our enthusiasm, as we do not want to embarrass or insult the locals, or worse yet--appear like we are tourists. I liken it to a foreigner visiting a typical U.S. supermarket and ogling over the choices of horomone-fed chickens pieces. "Oh Zindag, look at ze splendit selek-shun! How are ve ever to schoose?" 'How bout zis one marked 'real chicken meat and other pieces'. Now zat surely must be an exotic U.S .food!" Sure, we get a few stares as we smile when we pick up certain meat packages with labels like "ostrich mince" or "kudu kraachtzgaoughteg." One man's trash is another man's treasure.

We have had the opportunity to eat ostrich, kudu, springbok, cape salmon, litchi, mango, loganberry, granadilla, guava and a host of other fruits I cannot even pronounce. The meats usually come in a sausage-type form and are absolutely phenomenal. I am a true-blood American, but hot dogs, even a coney smothered with onion and mustard, cannot compare. Well, unless of course it is from the greasy Coney Island shop in downtown Kalamazoo, established in 1915 and still run by the same Greek family. I once asked one of the sons what was the best day in terms of sales they ever had. He said "VJ day" (victory in Japan) in 1945. They sold 5,000 coneys that day. Okay, so other than the coneys from downtown Kalamazoo, these ostrich guys are tops. Well, except maybe the coneys from Angelos across from the AC-Delco plant in Flint, Michigan. Or, the $5 hot dogs with mustard and onions from Tiger Stadium. Okay, okay, so there are some great American hot dogs (by the way, Koegels, made in Flint Michigan, are the best brand of hot dog). The dogs available here are better then all of those packs of "all beef", "100% turkey", and "bits of pork, beef, chicken, and other meats" type of dogs you can get from any U.S. grocery store. WAY better.

We have started to have our own "braais" (there is a braai pit in the garden of our flat), and our first attempt consisted of ostrich sausage, which, by the way, has almost no fat whatsoever on it. This is one lean piece of meat and is actually considered a red meat instead of a white meat (like other bird meats). Maybe it's because the ostrich is too dimwitted to fly. Sort of like the cow of the bird species. "Duh, eat some grass, eat some grass, eat some grass. Duh, chew my cud, chew my cud, chew my cud. Duh, eat some grass, eat some grass, eat some grass." We ate over at Andre and Marinass the other night and they prepared a poitje (pronounced "poy key") with meat from ostrich neck. A poitje means "small pot" and is sort of like a stew consisting of rice, spices, peas, meat, mushrooms, onions, and any other vegetable you can find, all thrown together into a pot and cooked for a few hours on the stove. It is absolutely fantastic. We are planning to add a weekly poitje night to our meal selection. Come visit us and we will make an ostrich neck poitje.

The fruit here is also exotic. None of that basic apple and orange stuff, but rather a whole host of sweet fruits. Bekah has fallen in love with litchi juice, which comes form the litchi fruit, which is like a nobby rubber superball that you peel to get to the fruit inside. The grapes here have seeds, not like the "powerful, robust, and massive" grapes in the U.S. that contain no seeds. The more we sample the foods here, the more we begin to wonder what we are doing back in the U.S. fiddling with the genetic makeup of our foods. Seedless grapes? That is becoming more and more a strange concept to us here. Have you ever mistakenly bought one of those nasty plantain things from a grocery store, thinking it was some kind of huge genetically engineered banana only to discover later it was a tasteless plantain? If you have, I'll bet you anything you have been tricked into buying a can of hominy thinking it was some type of big corn. Karie (my sister), this one is for you: I bet this talk of genetically engineered vegetables reminds you of that Gilligan's Island episode where they find that box of radioactive seeds, doesn't it? Well, the bananas here are the size of plantains. And they are REAL bananas. Not the ones that are green when you buy them. Kathy tends to be the "let's-buy-the-green-ones-so-they'll-last-for-a-couple-weeks" type of shopper. I tend to be the "let's-buy-the-yellow-ones-so-we-can-eat-them-today" type of shopper. There is nothing worse then taking a bite into a green banana, except maybe taking a bit into a nice yellow plantain because you thought it was a big banana when you bought it. I once asked the grocery store guy what the deal was with the green bananas. He told me they are picked from South America and Africa when they are extremely under ripe, shipped to the U.S., and then gassed to make them feel like they should have ripened previously. Ummmm boy, sounds good. Well, the bananas here are only a couple of days old; big, yellow, and full of flavor. Yes, they'll overripen in a day or two. People here have learned to shop on a daily basis for what you need to eat rather then buy grocery carts of food to "stock up." Part of realizing that "give us this day our daily bread" actually includes finding food for the day. I like that concept. When we get back, we're done with the "mega-super-hyper-market" and green bananas and hot dogs and huge chicken breasts. Time to find the little mom and pop shop and get what we need for the next day or two. Every once in awhile I'll grab one of the kids and we'll have a date down at the Coney Island.

Andre and Marina were shocked--when they came to visit us last summer--at the milk we drink in the U.S. At home we drink what used to be called "skim milk." I guess it is now called "fat free milk." It'll still be skim milk to us. Just like Kmart is still Kmart, even though the sign out front now says "Big K" or something like that. In South Africa, "fat free" milk is actually "2%", which I think really means "2% of the fat is free. The rest will cost you 6 Rand." The South Africans love their milk fat. You can only imagine what "full cream" milk tastes like. No, not like "whole milk" in the U.S. More like "whole-cow-utter-in-a-jug" milk. This stuff is thick. A few drops in the morning coffee and the world is mine. That's the two choices for milk. Based on the milk choices, you can only imagine what the ice cream tastes like. It is a unanimous family vote that the ice cream here makes ice cream in the U.S. taste like it is made with skim, er sorry "fat free" milk. So, with this high level of fat, you may be thinking a huge problem exists in South Africa with obesity and other saturated fat ailments. No. Unlike in the U.S., where 2 out of 3 people are obese, it is difficult to find much evidence of this problem here. Maybe it is the weather, More sunshine provides greater opportunities to be active outside. Maybe it is because a majority of the people do not have the financial means that allows one to over indulge. I think it may be related to the lifestyle we choose to live in the U.S. which focuses on large serving sizes, massive grocery shopping days, chemically treated food, etc. Our refrigerator here is half as full as it is at home and we aren't missing a beat.

PE has it's share of U.S. junk food chains, including McDonald's, KFC, and a couple others. Fortunately, though, these are not on every street corner as they are in the U.S. and they seem to be rarely visited by the people living here. I think they cater more to the U.S. tourist who needs that "Big Mac fix." We stopped at a Wimpy's to eat lunch the other day. We refuse to go to McDonald's while we are here and are trying to buy South African brand foods at the shop (rather then Kellogg's, etc.). However, I felt an urge to visit Wimpy's--a British version of a fast food chain--primarily due to nostalgia associated with travels I experienced as a child with my family. Fortunately, the whole family was into it. So, we did eat an "American hamburger via British interpretation and prepared in South Africa" meal. Needless-to-say, we do not miss McDonalds, Burger Whop, or any other fast food chain from the U.S....or England.