Food - gotta eat, right?

We ate some very interesting things while we lived in Kiribati. Some were local, some were imported (usually past date!) and some things we came up with on our own using what we found available. Some of those invented meals became traditions!

Some of the local foods we learned to eat:
Taro - an island grown root crop like potatoes (see picture above)
Fish
Shellfish
Pandanus (yuck, I never acquired the taste)
Toddy - an exceptionally nutritious sap from coconut trees made into drinks (but that's a whole other post!)
Lobster - (even my 14!)
Green coconuts - way better than brown, the juice tastes almost carbonated, and the flesh is soft and luscious.
Pork (for special occasions - I LOVE it now, even prefer it to beef!)
Chicken (ocassionally?)
Fruit - I'm getting mixed up in my memory which were from Tonga, and which were from Kiribati, and even from the Philippines where I went later as a missionary, but I think we had bananas and pineapple? I seem to remember papaya. I didn't like it until I lived in the Philippines as an adult, where they put squeeze a lemon type fruit on it. Mom & Dad, what kind of fruit did we get in Kiribati?

Foods we found available to purchase:
Rice - a local staple I learned to make rice, knowing how much water to add by measuring with my finger. We eat a lot of rice in our family today, but I measure the water now, mostly, although I had to the other day when my son couldn't remember how much water he'd added. I have yet to get us a rice cooker. It seems so basic to me to make it they way I have for all these years.
Sweetened condensed milk - reconstituted, we'd use it as a milk replacement wherever milk was called for. Just don't add the sugar, (and be prepared for it to be a bit sweeter than necessary.)
Milo - a British kind of chocolate milk mix, we'd make it with the sweetened condensed milk. I found some at a local grocery store a few months ago, and just had to try some...memories!
Cordial punch - a liquid juice mix that you'd add water to. Locals used it made thin with too much water, and served, sometimes with their tea.
Stale cornflakes - they were shipped to the islands in the shipping boxes, sometimes taking six months to get there. I suspect they were already past their due date when they shipped them. But we ate them with the SC milk.
Tinned butter, a bit rancid - it was real butter, but it was in a can, with the same shipping arrangment.
Tinned makerel - mmmm - we quickly LOVED this. My kids love it too. (I see Spam on the shelf of this picture taken by a more recent visitor to Kiribati, and I seem to remember tasting that there too...?)
Cabin biscuits (big 4X4 thick, hard crackers, not salted, and they grew on you.)
Locally made white bread (I don't remember having it often, I mostly remember this as a treat we'd get down town - it was that kind that the crust is well done, and the inside is soft and fun to smash together into a small ball before eating. I still love french bread, as it's the closest thing to it.)
At school the British kids had "Milk Biscuits" which were these creamy like chocolate is supposed to be, but I never liked them. (Maybe that was in Tonga?)
We must have found some Kool-Aid-type drink mix packets at some point, because I remember the time I made some, but, oops, with a cup of salt instead of sugar - YUCK !!

Stuff we came up with on our own:
Corned Beef & Tomatoes on Rice (later generations are loving this one too! Recipe's easy.)
Fried toast - butter it on both sides, then fry it.
Milk rice - the usual cinnamon & that sweetened condensed milk, but I don't remember raisins.
Fish patties - using the makerel and cabin biscuits. We still use a variation of this recipe today.

None of:
Regular milk, liquid or powdered
Potatoes
Chocolate (other than Milo)
Fresh red meats, never beef, if my memory serves.
Probably LOTS more, but I can't think of more just now.

Once I had spaghetti at my English friend Xanthe Wynn-Jones' home when I stayed the night there - they added the sauce separately over the top of the pasta! I had never seen that before. Our family was big enough that we always mixed the sauce in with the pasta to make sure nobody got left out.

At first we cooked on a gas burner only, and later a gas range. We did not have an oven until my Mom or Dad found a stove top oven, but it never worked very well. So all those things we bake - we didn't have them for a while.

The water we had available was well water, and after we moved to Eita, it had to be drawn from the well in the middle of campus by a bucket on a rope - seriously. We did have running water in Nanikai. At some point while we were there, there was a cholera epidemic, and all water used for consumption had to be boiled for 5 full minutes. We were VERY careful, and none of my family got sick. Thank heaven for modern medical knowledge!

Hmm, we must have had access to pastas too, come to think of it, but I don't really remember. I think I'll request that my mom put together a food post sometime from her memories there. Her post would be much more accurate, surely. But my memories of food are real, and I'm glad I've finally documented some of it here!