Food in Uganda

            Someone told me to describe what food in Uganda was like, so that’s what I will do in this blog. I will basically describe the typically lunch I have here every day. This is while I am in Kampala (the capital city), though when I was in Nakasongola (a rural region) I had the same exact lunch so there you go. Here is what a plate looks like:

            First there is posho. It is maize (corn) flour that mixed and boiled. It looks sort of like mashed potatoes, white but slightly more solid-like. Then we have matooke (pronounce the “oo” as in “go” or “no”), a banana-like plant (similar to a plantain), that is mashed and then boiled. It also looks like mashed potatoes, except they are yellow. On top of the matooke they put g-nut sauce. G-nut is short for groundnuts (i.e. peanuts). The sauce is effectively peanuts grounded up into a powder and turned into a sauce. This is my favorite part of the whole lunch: I love groundnuts. Groundnuts here are slightly different than peanuts in the U.S. They are smaller and don’t have as hard of a shell. I also think they taste better. The posho and matooke take up half the plate. On the other half is beans usually boiled and rice dipped in some kind of meat broth (though sometimes they put the beans on the rice instead). They then also give me a piece of some kind of meat, usually chicken, beef, or fish. Which one they give me depends on what they have that day. Which meat dictates which broth they will add onto my rice (chicken means chicken broth, beef broth when they have beef, and fish means they put my beans on top of the rice). They also give some kind of cooked greens. They have another word for it, but I have forgotten what it is. I always thought it was spinach, and at the least it is very similar to spinach. That has been my lunch for the last several weeks.

            Here are some other notable foods. There’s chabate. It’s a thin bunch of flour that is cooked with a frying pan. It’s kind of like a tortilla but thicker. I really enjoy these. I’ll often eat them plane and sometimes add other things to them to make a little burrito like thing. For example, there’s the rolex (not the watch), which is eggs encased in a chabate (like an egg burrito). Avocadoes are also common and often added as flavor additions. I have noticed them less in Kampala though. In the rural areas, you add them to your rice or beans. There’s also mile mile (spelling may be wrong), but I haven’t had any here yet, so I won’t talk about now. That’s about all I can think of right now as far as food goes. It’s usual when at a restaurant that I don’t know what I am ordering. Sometimes this is because the menu includes words I never heard of before and sometimes I think I know what I am getting but I am gloriously wrong. For example one time I ordered kabobs to find out they are not grilled meat on a stick. I don’t know how to describe them except that they are this like deep-fried breaded meat. I'd include a picture of my lunch, but I don't have enough internet data to spare to upload it.


Quick addition: it turns out that milet is a Western Ugandan food found no where else. That's why I didn't find it in Kampala nor here at the Ranch , which are both in Central Uganda. Someone from Western Uganda did cook it for me. Evidently, it's the staple plant there. They make this bread and/or porridge out of it.