Living deep in the jungle like we did, often meant for unusual meals. Never more so than when it came to holiday meals. There is no Fool Lion or WalMart Supercenter to run to. No butter ball turkeys to be had. No Virginia ham or my favorite the sugar cured ham. If the airplane schedules did not sync up there were often no potatoes or other vegetables. So we had to look to what was there for the pickings. Meat, the main course on any thanksgiving table, was often variable and interesting. There is a bird they call a wild turkey but looks nothing like one here. The meat is all dark. Then if the hunter was really lucky, we might have tapir. Don’t know what a Tapir is? Well, the meat is indistinguishable from beef. Looks and tastes the same. The photo shows you what one looks like. Maybe catfish would be on the menu. That would not please me as I am not a fish eater but most that are proclaim it delicious. My LEAST favorite of the possibilities is what has been called a glorified rat. Yes, it is of the rodent family but many like it. It is called PACA in English but you would hear us call it a LAPA, the Spanish name for it. It is a rather large rodent like animal but is favored among most. I ate a bad bit of one once and never could go it again.
Then there are the sides. If potatoes could not be flown in, we looked for alternatives. There are a few. Yucca is one that could be eaten boiled or fried. They have something they call yams but again looks like none of what is in the U.S. The meat is white and kind of dry but not bad. Then there is mapue (mah pway). (not sure I know how to spell that) The taste is very similar to potatoes once you get past peeling it. There is a slim under the skin so you want to peel it under running water. But then you boil and mash it just like you would potatoes. The MOST surprising thing is that when you are done you have a bowl of very PURPLE potatoes. Yes, I said PURPLE. But they are really pretty good.
Vegetables are not that plentiful in the jungle. Not naturally anyway. Sometimes the villagers would grow corn and we would buy it from them but often they didn’t pick it until it was hard. Canned veggies could be bought so often we had them flown up. But if we didn’t have any at the time we had the starchy ones mentioned above and often some kinds of fruits. Fruit found there are delicious. Papaya, pineapple, bananas (lots and lots of varieties), citrus, others such as guava and the list could go on.
Flour and sugar were usually bought in abundance so there was never any loss of sweets. Mostly no pumpkin pie but other things made up the difference. If bananas were overflowing there would be banana bread, banana cake, banana smoothies, banana whatever. Had to get creative because when they ripened on a stalk 3 or 4 feet tall they ripened all at once. One can eat only so many bananas.
Whatever the dinner, many thanks for souls saved, family and friends that loved us were offered up. Most of all we were thankful then as now for God’s amazing love.
