food

I can't cook. This is my first attempt at brownies from scratch. I won't show you a picture of what they are supposed to look like to save myself further embarrassment. Anyway, I have never been a very good cook. In fact, I did very little cooking until we moved to China and I was pregnant and having an aversion to what else? Chinese food! I had to learn very quickly how to cook some things I could keep down. Finding ranch dressing helped.

Anyway, I have been practicing some things. I think I finally have chocolate chip cookies down, but it took 4 months...looks like I am going to have at least as long with the brownies. Luckily, my husband is up for trying new and weird things, and at least one of my kids is. (Mae will either learn to eat something other than potato chips or lose a lot of weight), so we can eat simply and some of what the tribal people eat. Some veteran tribal wives have suggested that I pack cases of dry ranch dressing mix because it makes anything better. (I have previous experience with this as noted above).

I have heard that PNG food is terrible which is disappointing for us. Our favorite thing about traveling is trying new foods. My food aversions in China subsided after about 4 months and then I was able to enjoy some really great food! Yes, China does have weird stuff, but they also have some amazing dishes that I might cry over right now just thinking about! UGH! Let's move on...Wait. I will include a picture of my favorite Chinese dish at the risk of never being able to look at this blog post again. Just looking at this photo makes me want to change all my PNG plans and head straight back to China! (then I remember that it takes at least 3 years to learn Chinese and for me, more realistically it will take 47. Melanesian Pidgin takes 6 months. PNG it is!) Anyway, the dish is lamb with leeks or "cong bao yang rou". Let us all take a minute and enjoy the beauty of this... Ok, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, bad PNG food...


This is a group of people preparing for a pig roast in New Guinea. This can't be that bad right? I mean I like all kinds of pork... bacon... chops... ribs.......... GUTS? Wait... maybe not... Could you stir fry my pig intestines with leeks, please? That might make it go down a little easier.