Ugandan food: A Carbivore's Dream, An Atkinz Dieter's Nightmare

Ugandans are very proud of their food and have a right to be. Families spend a lot of time cooking the day's meals and you can tell from the finished product. It's all very filling and delicious, I'll definitely be craving g-nuts and Chapatti when I get back to the states. The tricky bit of cooking in Uganda is that refrigeration is not available to the majority of the population. Even to those to whom it is, it is too expensive to be used all the time so it is usually kept at a temperature slightly below room temperature simply to cool drinks.

This means that the foods they prepare are quite limited compared to the western diet, and consist mostly of carbohydrates because they can be stored for a long time. The food we eat is also determined by what is locally available (for example the staples are different in Northern Uganda) and what is in season. In most households, the cooking is done outside on a small camping stove heated by coal or stripped wood.

Their main crops are bananas, matoke (green bananas), coffee, avocado, tomato, onions, peppers, ground nuts, rice, passion fruit, jackfruit (huge fruit that tastes like candy!), mangos, popo (a giant green-ish fruit that's the texture of mango), sugar cane, pumpkin, potato, cassava, cotton, tea, and corn.

Popo fruit

Most of my meals consist of 75% starch and 25% beans or meat (which they call soup). But I became a vegetarian four weeks ago so most of my meals are heavy on the beans. Sometimes there are some vegetables on the side when they're available. Breakfast is a cup of tea with two slices of bread and a non-refridgeratable "medium fat spread" (butter-like thing) called Blue Band. This breakfast is almost ubiquitous throughout Ugandan homes.
One big thing that has been difficult to adjust to is the timing of meals. Like in the states there are three meals throughout the day. Breakfast occurs whenever you wake up, but lunch and dinner are pushed back about two and a half hours from American times. We eat lunch around 2:30 or 3 in my house and dinner occurs around 10 or 11. A saving grace in this is that Ugandans also like to "take tea and bread" around 7 pm so by the time dinner rolls around I'm not completely famished.

Drinks:
AFRICAN TEA- This delicious concoction is like a chai tea late that you can make at home. They simmer water, black tea leaves, cardamom, ginger, cinnamon sticks, and sugar then strain the liquid to make the tea.

BLACK TEA - This is the same as in the US, but they often add some powered ginger spices to add a kick to it. They also tend to pile on the sugar, adding about three spoonfuls to each up.

SODA- The biggest soda here is still Coke, followed closely by Fanta and a drink called Miranda. Mirinda comes is a ton of different colors and fruity flavors, and like most sodas here, it is almost exclusively in a glass bottle. The other local soda is called Stoney (bottled by Coke) and it's a ginger soda. It takes a little funky in my opinion, but it works wonders when you have that traveller's tummy trouble.

COFFEE- Coffee is a big crop here and locally brewed coffee is wonderful. Surprisingly, most Ugandans don't use the locally grown coffee beans, but buy instant coffee at the supermarkets.

ALCOHOL-  The best thing about Ugandan alcohol is how cheap you can buy it. The local beers such as Nile or Tusker can go for about 80 cents to $1.50 max. The local beers are just as good as a classic Budwiser or Corona so I have no problem saving money and going for the cheaper alcohol.





Starch
MOTOKE- In Central Uganda (the region in which I live) the staple food is definitely matoke.
This is prepared by peeling sweet green bananas, mashing them together and steaming them inside a blanket of banana leaves. Here is the finished product.

IRISH POTATOES- This is self explanatory, we have them in the US. I have to say the Uganda version is yummier, though.

POSHO- This is a corn flour steamed into a sort of porridge consistency.

Irish, Posho, Matoke, and rice

MILLET- This is the same thing as posho but instead of corn flour, they use millet flour

RICE ON RICE ON RICE- There is a love affair between Ugandans and rice. It's a constant with every meal.

CHAPATI <3- There is a love affair between me and chipati. This is by far my favorite food I have discovered in Uganda. It's like a greasy, thick tortilla that has small bits of carrots, onions and peppers in it for flavoring.

Cassava- This is a root that is also very starchy. Definitely my least favorite Ugandan food. Whenever I eat it I have to drink three or four glasses of water as well to be comfortable.

YAMS- I know that Things Fall Apart occurred in Nigeria. But the obsession with Yams has spread to the other end of the continent. They are a prominent part of the Ugandan diet as well.

SPAGHETTI- It's still yummy in Uganda. There is only red sauce though, no pesto or alfredo :(

g-nut sauce on matoke

PUMPKIN- I have learned to loooove steamed pumpkin here. I have never eaten any part of pumpkin except for the seeds and the sugar-diluted pumpkin mash in pies, but I now know I've been missing out.

"Soup"

Eating dry food is a trial not to be endured in Uganda. they pour "sauce," in the form of beans, meat or fish broth, or ground-nut sauce on the dry food. Ground-nuts are kind of like peanuts but the sauce is not at all like peanut butter. It's much less thick and in my opinion, much better (but I'm biased because I have zero taste for peanut butter).

Ugandan avocado vs. American avocado vs. egg

Fruits and Vegetables
The vegetable selection here at provided meals is pretty limited. Ugandas cook with onions and tomatoes, but are not fans of eating vegetable by themselves. When we are served vegetable they are usually in the form of fried cabbage, kale, or spinich. But, the fruits and vegetables sold at the market are amazing. The avocados and mangos are double the size of those available in the US!

Snacks
G-nuts
The most popular snacks here are pretty filling and can work as a small meal. My favorites are triangular thin pastries filled with either peas or meat called sumosa. There are also mandazi which are yummy triangular donuts.

Rolex

My favorite of all is something called a rolex. It's a rolled up chipati filled with a scrambled egg white mixed with peppers and onions. Definitely a useful college survival food to know of.

People here joke to Muzungus that the difference in Uganda is that when you are eating meat one night, the animal was probably slaughtered that same morning. From what I have seen so far, this is strongly true. Everything really is as fresh as it can be. On more than one occasion, I have been walking with a Ugandan and they have grabbed a jackfruit or mango from a tree beside the road, and started to eat the fruit!