Saturday, December 10, 2011

Diet of the South Pacific Islands Part One

Hello All,
I thought I would take the time to write about food of the Pacific Islands. I called my grandma Morris a few weeks ago and she has been keeping up with my blog and has really been enjoying my travels. She told me the only thing that I never explain very well is the food that we eat when we are invited into people's homes so I thought I would dedicate a blog to the subject. I will break this down into countries and I will make this part one of a series.
It is actually not very complicated to explain because their diet is so basic but each country has it's own style.

French Polynesia was the most fun because I had never tried a lot of this food before. They eat reef fish daily, more so than any other country I have visited. They are very small so it usually takes 2 to make a meal. They are usually fried but also cooked in fresh lime juice (Poisson Cru). They also have lots of fruit, mangos, bananas, lemons, limes, guava and my favorite, the famous Pamplemousse AKA grapefruit. They don't grow allot of veggies in French Poly. One of the most famous fruits is the Breadfruit. This soft ball sized fruit is what cost Captain Bligh his ship HMS Bounty while he was trying to take breadfruit trees back to the Carribean to feed the slaves. It is green in color and when boiled tastes and has the texture of a potato. I didn't care for it much but the natives love this stuff. Then there is always the trusty coconut.
There meat, besides fish consists of wild pig and chicken. I could lump the Cook Islands into this food diet also because they are so similar. We only visited Penrhyn which is a coral atoll so they were missing some of the fruit items.
That is it in a coconut shell hehe.
Up next will be the food of the Samoan Islands.

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