Paget’s Belize Journal #24

November 6: Food Experiments

Even though Belizeans (or at least the Garifuna) are content
to eat beans and rice and stewed chicken every day, the food
here is really quite good and varied. The fresh fish and shellfish
of course are wonderful. I’ve also braved the local Chinese restaurant
and it’s excellent. Satisfies my lust for fresh vegetables in
some good stir frys – celery, onion, cabbage, carrot, spinach.
Very nice. The zucchini turned out to be cucumber which just
doesn’t cut it, but other than that a nice change. Last week
Therese and I went to Belize City (called just ‘Belize’ as in
“How did you like Belize?” a little confusing) to a
tourist advisory board meeting and to shop. While we there, we
went to a little fast food place called El Centro. They had the
usual – rice and beans with stewed chicken, fish or pork AND you
could also have it with gibnut or lobster. I was very disappointed
that they were out of gibnut (Paget Almost Eats Rat), but the
lobster made up for it. Three (3!) little lobster tails, rice
and beans, potato salad, fried plantain, all for BZ $8.

Some of my other food experiments haven’t worked out so well
this week. This morning (Saturday) I went to the cassava bread
stand to get some cassava bread since it’s a local specialty.
This is thin, unleavened flatbread sprinkled with paprika-like
ground up something (you can buy some very similar Norwegian
flat bread in US supermarkets). But it’s very tough and tasteless
and I had a hard time eating it. J.C (the young web designer
I work with) said you’re supposed to soak it in water or soup
as you eat it to soften it, or, you can toast it. I think I’ll
opt for the toasting. I can’t imagine that soaking it in water
will improve it much. Fortunately I only bought two pieces. I
suppose I could always feed it to the neighborhood mongrels.
But I don’t want to take a chance of the cassava bread ladies
catching me. Maybe in the dead of night.

When I bought the bread, they also convinced me to get a glass
of the other goodies they were selling. When I asked what it
was they said it was a cassava starch drink, I didn’t catch the
name. Anyway it’s sort of like sweetish, warm, pink glue. When
I first took a sip (chunk), I thought, boy, you have to be weaned
to this stuff to learn to drink it. But after a while it got
better. Strangely soothing. I only drank about an ounce though
and the glassful was probably 8 ounces. If they have any wallpaper
in the general store, maybe I’ll use it to wallpaper my bedroom.

Well, that’s it for Saturday afternoon. Time to go to the
library. The last three book boxes got here this week, so I’m
helping catalog and shelve. Makes me feel very virtuous. It’s
been rainy so it’s not much of a sacrifice.

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