Paget's Belize Journal

The Preliminary Trip - It Begins - First days - A tourist trip - Flying, sand crabs - San Pedro 1 - San Pedro 2 - Braids, snakes, dogs - Leaving Dangriga The Actual Stay - Help for library - Books; departure - Arrival; weather - Sensations, housing - Security, more housing - More security, snorkeling - Dock activities - Day-to-day life 1 - Day-to-day life 2 - The Quadrille - The apartment! - Cleaning and culture - Hurricane Irene - Too much reality - Hopkins Village 1 - Hopkins Village 2 - Weather - Minimum wage - Transportation - Food Experiments - The Brits; furniture - Meeting and greeting - Night noise, Settlement Day - Dragonflies! - More noise - A good 19th - Wrapping up the 19th - Traveling to Mexico - Thanksgiving in Mexico - Cockscomb Basin - A Belizean week-end - Tobacco Caye - Is it really Christmas? - This is the life - Christmas wishes - Headwear - Christmas Experiences - Lottery - Caye Caulker haircut - Caye Caulker 2 - Geckos - Red Bank - The last few days		Nov 6, 1999 Food Experiments Even though Belizeans (or at least the Garifuna) are content to eat beans and rice and stewed chicken every day, the food here is really quite good and varied. The fresh fish and shellfish of course are wonderful. I've also braved the local Chinese restaurant and it's excellent. Satisfies my lust for fresh vegetables in some good stir frys-celery, onion, cabbage, carrot, spinach. Very nice. The zucchini turned out to be cucumber which just doesn't cut it, but other than that a nice change. Last week Therese and I went to Belize City (called just 'Belize' as in "How did you like Belize?" a little confusing) to a tourist advisory board meeting and to shop. While we there, we went to a little fast food place called El Centro. They had the usual--rice and beans with stewed chicken, fish or pork AND you could also have it with gibnut or lobster. I was very disappointed that they were out of gibnut (Paget Almost Eats Rat), but the lobster made up for it. Three (3!) little lobster tails, rice and beans, potato salad, fried plantain, all for BZ $8. Some of my other food experiments haven't worked out so well this week. This morning (Saturday) I went to the cassava bread stand to get some cassava bread since it's a local specialty. This is thin, unleavened flatbread sprinkled with paprika-like ground up something (you can buy some very similar Norwegian flat bread in US supermarkets). But it's very tough and tasteless and I had a hard time eating it. J.C (the young web designer I work with) said you're supposed to soak it in water or soup as you eat it to soften it, or, you can toast it. I think I'll opt for the toasting. I can't imagine that soaking it in water will improve it much. Fortunately I only bought two pieces. I suppose I could always feed it to the neighborhood mongrels. But I don't want to take a chance of the cassava bread ladies catching me. Maybe in the dead of night. When I bought the bread, they also convinced me to get a glass of the other goodies they were selling. When I asked what it was they said it was a cassava starch drink, I didn't catch the name. Anyway it's sort of like sweetish, warm, pink glue. When I first took a sip (chunk), I thought, boy, you have to be weaned to this stuff to learn to drink it. But after a while it got better. Strangely soothing. I only drank about an ounce though and the glassful was probably 8 ounces. If they have any wallpaper in the general store, maybe I'll use it to wallpaper my bedroom. Well, that's it for Saturday afternoon. Time to go to the library. The last three book boxes got here this week, so I'm helping catalog and shelve. Makes me feel very virtuous. It's been rainy so it's not much of a sacrifice. Next