How's the food?

Aelan kakae, or island food, is the typical food that is grown and eaten by the ni-Vanuatu. Taro, manioc, yam, papaya (popo), coconuts (coconas), fish (fis), oranges (aranis), bananas, grapefruit (for this one, they use the French name of pamplemousse), sweet potato (kumala), green onions, pineapple, breadfruit (bredfrut), and island cabbage (aelan cabis) are eaten by everyone. Aelan cabis is not cabbage. It is a bush, but it is very good, and cooks up to something like spinach. They grow pumpkin here too. With the soil and weather here, most everything grows. Papaya trees grow like weeds. Eating breadfruit is like eating clay. Since most vegetables are root vegetables or need ro be cooked, fresh veggies aren't really a thing here. I never saw a salad.

The word aranis means orange, but only refers to the fruit. Arenj refers to the color orange.

Rice, bread (made from the usual suspects of flour, sugar, etc.), and biscuits are not aelan kakae but are also common. There is discussion about how eating and depending on too much of these non-aelan foods is not a good thing, but in terms of health and economically. I think they're right about this. Imported rice doesn't support local farmers, and honestly it just isn't needed here. But it is cheap and easy, a powerful force.

They make a fried flour thing called kato. The people make pretty much the same thing in Africa. It is oily fried flour, like the worst, greasiest donut you've ever had. Think of it as fried fried stuff that is fried. Then congealed. It wasn't made all that much, at least not by my host family. Thank god.

Lap lap is a dish that is a labor of love. It refers to a type of dish rather than a specific set of ingredients. Start off with a layer of banana leaves, then cover that with coconut milk. Add a layer of manioc or banana or maybe even something else. They maybe add a layer of island cabbage. Add another layer of coconut milk. Top it of with another layer of banana leaves. Wrap it up and cook it. Remove the banana leaves and eat. Besides adding flavor, the coconut milk is there to prevent the other ingredients from sticking to the banana leaves.

Lap lap

Coconut water is just the naturally occuring liquid in a coconut. It is very mild and pretty much tastes like water. You can just drink it like water.

Coconut milk is made as follows. Husk and halve a coconut. Scrape out the coconut meat into a bowl with a grater, the more finely shredded, the better. They use special scrapers just for this. The word for sheedding a coconut is sikrasem. Add some water. Using your hands, squeeze and squeeze the shredded coconut. When you've done enough of that, tear out the hair from the coconut husk, clean it up by sort of rubbing it together (there is an art to this), and form it into a bowl (more art). Put one handful of the shredded coconut at a time into the hair bowl, and twist and squeeze it tightly into a new bowl to get all that milk out. Put the squeezed coconut aside for chicken feed. Repeat until all coconut is squeezed. Rinse out the source bowl. Pour the coconut milk through the hair bowl into the now clean bowl to strain out any debris. You have coconut milk.

You can see why making anything with coconut milk is a labor of love. They make coconut bread, in which coconut milk is used in place of water. I added a can of Fanta Orange to it, and the bread tasted like donuts. It was delicious. Fish simmered in coconut milk is yummy too.

Every part of the coconut tree is used. Any part that isn't used as I've described above is saved and dried, and used to start fires. One half of the half shells (the other half has 3 eyes and can leak) may be used as a cup in kava bars, after all coconut meat has been scraped out. Coconut tree branches are tied over roofs during storms to help keep the roof from flying away. Chickens eat excess coconut meat, and cats & dogs like to eat the meat too.

Simboro is another popular dish. Easier than lap lap, you just roll up some grated banana or manioc or something in an aelan cabis leaf and cook it. Since the whole thing is edible there's no unwrapping, and they may be eaten like eggrolls or with a fork.

Someone else's family made tuluk, which is the best thing I've had here. It was pretty much the same as a tamale. Speaking of Mexican food, spices aren't used much here. I never saw them add any kind of spice to anything. The Holiday Inn has Tabasco sauce.

As an exercise we made Tanna soup one night. You just cut up and peel taro, manioc, kumala (sweet potato), and whatever else you want into a bowl with water and let it simmer. Same thing as stew. We added ginger, garlic, onions, and some beef. Aelan cabis was in there too, of course. Cattle are raised here, but the little beef I've had has been tough. Garlic is not grown here. Someone told me they thought the weather was probably too wet for it.

Breakfast was typically a bunch of bread, like 6-8 really thick pieces. The drink was Milo, a Nestle concoction of chemicals meant to taste like chocolate. Although you print "goodness" and have a doodle of a woman doing yoga in the sun on the packaging, you're still just selling plastic bags filled with chemicals, Nestle. I think the Milo was there for us. Otherwise they drink hot water, sometimes with a few orange tree leaves added. Or sometimes they just add sugar and have hot sugar water. I thought the orange leaf water tasted just like water without orange leaves. The idea sounds nice though.