Food in Uganda

Well, I decided that I should probably write a new blog, since I have some internet time. Honestly though, I wasn't sure what to write about, so I'm going with food, cause everyone loves to eat...
You are probably wondering why you've never seen any Ugandan restaurants around your neighborhood. You're thinking, "I'm hip to ethnic food, why haven't I been eating Ugandan? Am I behind the times?" No my dears, you haven't missed the boat to new multicultural edibles. I think possibly there just isn't the American market for hot banana mush...which brings me to Ugandan Food.
Matooke is the staple food here, which is basically bananas or plaintains smushed up and cooked over the fire in a shell of banana leaves. It's not as sweet as it would be if made from bananas in the US, in fact, it's not very flavorful at all.

Posho is another staple, though not as readily available. It's made from cassava (a root veggie) and is sort of like cream of wheat in the form of clay, and with less flavor.

Stew is eaten with matooke and posho. Generally you would dip fingerfuls or forkfuls into the stew to give them some flavor. Stews can be made with many different things but are most typically meat, beans, or groundnut, which are peanuts.

Mogo or Mogol- I'm not sure exactly the spelling is deep-fried cassava and is pretty good. It's similar to french fries but in larger chunks and a bit more bland. Salt is imperative.

Generally, this is what I eat everyday for lunch and dinner along with some other starches, usually some rice and some pasta, though they tend to be a bit gritty. Vegetables are not so common in our meals here, usually we have some salty chopped, cooked cabbage and some extremely tiny eggplant type things that are very bitter. Breakfast, if it happens, is stale white bread with margerine and sometimes jam and honey. Sometimes we get chapatis which are round, flat breads, a bit like Indian naan, but a little tougher and greasier.
Probably my favorite Ugandan food however is the Rolex. In the evenings you can find lots of little stalls with cooking fires setting up along the roadsides and among them is sure to be a rolex man. Rolex is a chapati with a sort of omelet with cabbage and tomatoes rolled up inside it. You can get one for about 50 cents almost anywhere and it's delicious.

The food here in the village gets old pretty quickly, and unfortunately, I'm a 20 minute walk down a main road from the nearest rolex man. (And the nearest beer, soda, juice). But I suppose that it just makes it all the more awesome when I get to go to the bigger town and eat some other types of food. We all had dinner in a western-style restaurant last weekend and were in heaven over our the delicious sweetness of the pie we got for dessert. We didn't even mind that the beers were warm from the recent power outtage. It's amazing how we take even pastries for granted.