Amongst many foods available here I am surprised at the availability of Chocolate. Every single Chocolate bar I have bought this year has melted before being eaten, albeit the last one I deliberately melted to put into the cake mix.
In reality it is surprising what foodstuffs are available and what aren't:
- Meat is readily available, although seemingly all frozen this could just be that I don't get to the shops in time to buy fresh (other than bacon). Some 'fresh' meat is actually defrosted for sale I think.
- Fish is readily available fresh. Tuna is probably the staple 'meat' product in the way that Beef is in the UK.
- Dairy products are not available except in long life or defrosted form. Fresh milk isn't available, butter and cheese is frozen to get it here. Yoghurt is occasionally available (in small fruity pots), but as I don't eat it I haven't investigated. Eggs seem to be a mix of local and imported, but could be that some are just in imported boxes.
- Non Dairy alternatives don't seem all that available, although Soya Milk is sometimes around.
- A range of Frozen Foods from the likes of Iceland, Tesco and Asda is available. This isn't a wide range and things like Meat Pie isn't available. Posh Iceland foods are normally reserved for special occasions.
- Tinned/Jarred foods are not as available as you might think. A wide range of tinned ready meals and vegetables, but things like tins or jars of Sauces are limited in variety.
- Tinned meat (corned beef, spam, frankfurters) and tinned fish are more common that you would expect.
- Pasta is available, but in fairly small packets. Rice is plentiful and is something of a staple food.
- Fresh vegetables are limited to Onion, Potato, Carrot and some sort of Cucumber/Marrow type thing which I don't buy. Apparently on a Thursday morning fights regularly break out over the last cabbage or whatever other veg is around. Salad is readily available, but only from cafe's as far as I can tell...
- Fresh fruit is fairly available - apples, lemons, oranges, bananas, green tomatoes, peppers. Not every week, but often enough for me.
- Breakfast cereal is available if you look, but expensive.
- Bread is becoming more available the longer I stay. And now I've found Sliced bread as well!
- Biscuits are everywhere, cake is not. When asked locals point at a bag of flour, and a bag of sugar..
I've come to the conclusion that the staple foods are:
- Sausages
- Tuna
- Other Fish what you caught
- Beef
- Chicken
With:
- Rice
- Rice
- Potato
- Rice
- Bread
- Rice
The national dish is plo (pronounced 'plo', goodness knows how it's spelt, I think it has an A and a U and a W in it, that's assuming there is an official spelling) which is basically rice, with rice and stuff. The Stuff is whatever's available and often consists of veg, meat and bone. The alternative national dish is curry and rice. This is basically plo with more sauce and spices, occasionally curry has less meat and more bone. Neither are found on the menu at any foodery I've been to.
Surprisingly I like both; you don't eat the bone, but it adds flavour and is a good value way of getting meat as the bones have a fair bit of meat on when put in the pot, it just all falls off in the cooking.
The main tourist dish is Fishcakes, probably because they think Tourists would object to bone in a curry.
Living here and eating local food makes you realise what is thrown away in the rest of the world. I recently read on the BBC website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17393376 about how they were stopping eating Pink Slime in America. While I started off thinking 'about time' having realised what Pink Slime is it's no different than putting bones in a curry and eating the leftover bits of meat that fall off.
Either way, provided you're fairly flexible in what you'll eat you won't starve. If you're picky then you will, unless you don't come here of course.
