Sausages that grow on trees

“Do you want the salami with the ant or the other one?” Bill asked, as we stood in front of the Italian deli counter. Well, I chose the one with the ant – I mean, they are everywhere and they are pretty small, and there was only one, which is a departure from the norm.

Everyone wants to know what we are eating, but the truth is we are eating pretty much what we do at home with some exceptions. For example, there is an Italian deli close to us, with prosciutto, pancetta, pecorino – all with a little extra something in the form of ants. Apparently there is an Italian community in our neighborhood, including a Catholic church with Italian priests and the Vatican embassy behind it.

We do NOT eat the sausages from the Sausage Tree that we saw on Saturday at the Botanical Gardens in Entebbe (thank you Fr. Matthias once again for a wonderful day!). The local Ugandan food is pure starch: potatoes (boiled potatoes called “Irish potatoes” mainly), yams, maize (a white cornmeal paste), cassava, matoke (a paste made of bananas squashed inside banana leaves that turns to cement almost the second it is taken out of the leaves – imagine what happens in your stomach!).

There is lots of goat – we had goat broth this weekend. And mutton, which is tough.

The people are lean and graceful – no obesity here (no corn syrup or processed food). We have eaten the local food and it is filling, but not too flavorful. They add groundnut sauce to everything (peanut sauce), and that helps some. And a few other sauces, not sure what is in them.

We buy eggplant, zucchini, avocados (oh, they are the best – huge and tasty!), garlic, ginger, and green beans at the market. We peel everything because of pesticides and who knows what else. We also wash lettuce and many other things in water with a little bleach – they are supposed to have something that washes vegetables but we haven’t found it.

The lettuce is pretty sad. But there is something akin to spinach that is pretty good. The meat is tough, tough, tough. So we are rapidly becoming pseudo-vegetarians (except for the ants that we inadvertently eat).

The good news is that there is a great Indian restaurant nearby. And the Italian deli also has a restaurant that is good. Talapia is everywhere – it’s a bland fish from Lake Victoria, but I like it okay. Chicken is so lean you find yourself starring at bones and wondering where the meat went. As I say, we eat a lot of eggplant.

The best, bar none, food is the fruit. The pineapples are huge and juicy – a local woman told us to pick the ones with the biggest hexagonal scales. They cost 1000 sh each – about 50 cents. And they are so great – as are the mangoes, with which I plan to make a chilled mango soup that we had at Xmas in Hawaii with papayas. As soon as I find cream …

We have yogurt for breakfast and it is great too, very much like Greek yogurt. Tart and good. With granola from the UK that says on the package: “Be careful of your teeth. Call a dentist if you break them on this grain” or something like that. The eggs come in bags, so you had better be careful on your way home. And the yolks are very pale.

For dessert we have Cadbury chocolate, but it’s all milk chocolate, sigh. And the coffee … well, it’s not Seattle coffee.

The juice is great! Pineapple and orange, mango … yum. Bill likes the Bell lager beer in huge bottles, but there’s no dark beer for me. And the wine is expensive, so I am losing weight. I’ve lost six pounds, but I think it’s from the heat and also working out every day, dripping about a gallon of sweat all over the little fitness room in our complex. We have had about two glasses of red wine since we’ve been here – it just isn’t so appetizing in the heat.

So that’s it! Anyone coming to visit please bring coffee. We might have to have a weekend in Zaccharo for a good salad before we come home. But, really, where else could you find a tree that spawns sausages???