new experiences: cooking and eating PNG style

There is no doubt about it--in these past two months, we have experienced SO MANY new things!  We are excited to try and share these with you all, even though pictures and words are so different than the real thing.  I will do my best though :)

The first one I will share with you: what we are learning to cook and eat!

I know many of you are probably wondering what kinds of things we are eating over here.  Well, most of the time, we eat much the same as we did in America!  Right now we are in the town of Madang, and this town has a couple of good grocery stores.  We can get many things--spaghetti, bread, canned fruits/veggies, very good meat, and lots of other things.  Now granted, we have way less variety--such as, just one kind of spaghetti sauce as opposed to 20 choices like in America!  But at least we can buy it if we want it :)  So anyway, most of the time at our home, we eat "normal" things--like tacos, spaghetti, pizza, taco soup, etc.

However, it has been fun to try new things at home, too!  Like crocodile meat (we bought it at the store, we didn't get it fresh!)...also fresh PNG fruits and veggies, like mango, papaya, guava, kau kau (kind of like a sweet potato), pit pit (I don't know how to describe that one!)...and many more!

Some people in our family have also started eating fish in new ways--just throwing it on the frying pan and cooking it, then picking off the meat!  Notice I said "some people"--a.k.a, not me! :) 

In the States, Kaine would usually spend his own money on Legos.  Here in PNG, there are no legos :)  So Kaine loves spending his money at the market!  Sugarcane is one thing he likes to buy!

Nathan definitely wins the prize for "The Mueller Most Willing To Try New Things".  Haha!  He bought two grubworms at the market last weekend and ate them like a pro!  He chewed them up and everything.  I'm so proud of my PNG man :)  But I will NOT be joining him in eating grubs anytime soon!  Maybe someday, for the sake of the gospel...

We'll give Kaine second place.  Here he is, getting ready to eat an octopus tentacle (?!)  He obviously takes after his daddy! ;) 

So...even though we are eating fairly "normal" foods at our home (minus the occasional grub or octopus), we are learning many new things as well!  Our PNG friends are so good at teaching us--so gracious and helpful, and very, VERY patient :)


One of our favorite things we have learned to make is what they call "garden food" or "garden "soup".  Basically just a lot of really good veggies/fruits, and boiled over a fire.  It is SO good!  First, we chop the veggies:

After the veggies are chopped and ready, someone cuts open a dry coconut and scrapes out the insides...

Here is Nathan trying his hand at scraping the coconut.  Basically, you sit on a little wooden bench that has a scraper thing on the end of it, and then just scrape it over and over.  The people here rock at doing this!  It isn't easy! 

Once the insides of the coconut are scraped, then you pour water over it and squeeze it with your hands--over and over.  After that, you pour it through a strainer into the pot of garden food. Basically, it is making homemade coconut milk!  Pretty awesome!  Our kids love trying helping with this step :)

After the food is all cooked over a fire, they "scale" it out into everyones bowls and then we eat it!  I told Nathan--it is so crazy.  Back in America, there is NO WAY I could have gotten our kids to enjoy eating looooong green beans, and sweet potatoes, and multiple types of greens...they wouldn't have wanted it!  But here?  They love it.  I chalk it up as another display of God's grace :)

Another kind of "soup" that we have learned to make--one that maybe isn't our favorite ;)   It's called "sak sak soup".  Sak sak is made from a sago palm tree--the people scrape out the insides and have ways of processing it into like a powdery substance.  We haven't been able to see the process yet, though I am positive we will eventually experience this.  But anyway, when they take that powdery "sak sak" and mix it with boiling water--it turns into this jello substance that does NOT taste like jello!  It's kind of like a tasteless jello--but more of a gel than a jello.  It is very hard to describe, but just know that it is VERY difficult for me to get down my throat!  But even though it's not our fave thing to eat?  We still are so thankful that our friends have taken the time to teach us how to make it!  It is a major staple for them, so we want to know all about it!

Sophie mixing up the sak sak--it turning into the gel form 

Me eating it with a smile ;)   

Daisy puts me to shame when it comes to eating new things!  She went back for more bites when she tried the sak sak soup!  So proud of that girlie!

One more thing we learned to make:  rice baskets.  These things are so stinking awesome!  First, they taught us how to weave these small baskets out of leaves from a coconut tree...

Then, they fill the baskets with rice and throw them in a boiling pot of water over a fire.  When the rice is done cooking, we just remove the basket and the rice is in a "ball" that we just hold and eat!  It is so good!  And just pretty amazing the way it is cooked!

Whew!  There you have it, probably more than you wanted to know about the foods we are cooking and eating :)  These new cultural experiences are pretty fun to learn!  We wish you all could experience them with us!