Cooking can be a stressful thing in any country and culture.
However, there usually helps or shortcuts to make it just a titch easier. There
are packets, powders, cans, and pre-sliced everything. If you run out of
something or decide at the last minute you want something else, you can pop
into any store or gas station and get it with relative ease. And how about
those days when you don’t want to cook, or are craving something different? You
can go to any number of restaurants and order it.
Cooking on the mission field is a strange mix of being
the same and being very, very different.
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So sweet and welcoming! It's like shopping with friends... and neighbors, and coworkers, and... Oh wait. :-) |
For one, the store on the center is only open 2 days a
week, and if you run out between shopping days, well… I hope your neighbor has
some. Sometimes it’s feast or famine as far as shopping goes; and it’s amazing
how quickly your mindset changes when you have to shop here. You see something
that has been out of stock for a while, let’s say milk… You know you have 2
cartons at your house and a bit of milk powder in a tin, but you can plainly
see that there isn’t much left in the store. You don’t think much about it and
continue on. A couple of weeks later, however, you notice that they got a new
shipment of milk in – and the shelves are full!
At that moment, it doesn’t matter if you were planning on
buying milk or not, it doesn’t matter if you needed it, and it doesn’t matter
if it costs $7. You buy it (and at least 2-3 extras) just because it’s there
and you know they’ll eventually run out again. There’s a little bit of hoarding
that is 100% necessary in order to keep your pantry relatively stocked.
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Just a typical shopping day in PNG supply. How badly do you want a 2kg ham? #notthatbad |
There are some grocery stores in town that we can shop in
if our store runs out of something, but it requires getting a group of at least
3 (including one man) and renting or borrowing a vehicle to make the 20 minute
drive into town. Sometimes it’s worth it, and other times it’s just not– I
managed to find the last kg (2 lbs) of cream cheese in the country (I
exaggerate… mostly) to go on the bagels that I made but couldn’t eat because
there was no cream cheese.
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Mmm.... homemade bagels. |
As an aside, does
anyone else think bagels need cream cheese in order to be edible, or is that just
me? Just me? Oh… nevermind then.
The cooking is pretty much the same as anywhere else in
the world, with the exception that you have to make from scratch pretty much
everything. There are no grab and go shortcuts to make cooking easier or
quicker. Luckily for me, I really enjoy
cooking and there’s something so
enchantingly old-fashioned about making your own food from raw ingredients.
I’ve learned how to make pizza dough, bagels, yogurt (from milk powder), and
granola.
I know that not everyone feels the same way, but I think
it is absolutely so much fun adapting to the idiosyncrasies of a new home
country. It’s a good to be reminded that things work or don’t work differently
than you’re used to, that this center is not “Little America” and it only makes you miserable to be upset about things that simply are and cannot
be changed.
Labels: adventures, josh and erin verdonck, missionary aviation, missionary life, new tribes mission, new tribes mission aviation, papua new guinea, partnership development