Great food in Haiti

The food in Haiti is great! Even when we switched to mainly rice and beans to make the food last with all the house guests, we were still having great meals thanks to the regular employees who cook meals for missions teams and JeanJean’s family who took over most of the cooking.

The yellow flower is pigeon pea which people grow in fields. We have it with rice, as seen in the photo with the okra and the fried manioc in the middle. The manioc is a small tree (shrub?) that has a large root that is also ground to a flour to make cassava bread (in photo) which JeanJean buys fresh from the market.

Corn is hung to dry (or to keep it from mice and rats). Not sure if the corn in the photo is for chickens or people. JeanJean made popcorn for us a couple nights. Cabbages are plentiful and the photo shows them stored in the kitchen, along with a couple breadfruit that is served fried. The cooks also make fried plantains (bannann preze), and we had boiled plantain served with a red sauce (see photo).

We had real milk one morning! Because most people have no refrigeration, milk is heated to sterilize it and then drank while it’s still hot. The rest of the time we use powdered milk. Real cheese is not available, so it makes a great gift for missionaries (freeze a couple cheese blocks and put in your luggage). The only cheese that can be found here is Laughing Cow or equivalent (again, doesn’t need refrigerated).

The little boy is holding a live crab. Don’t know where it came from. The cooks occasionally cooked chicken before the earthquake, but I don’t remember it being served afterwards, though beef was served once. It’s easy to be a vegetarian here. We have eggs for breakfast quite a bit. The chickens run free and scramble up the trees to roost in the evenings.

I took down fixings for s’mores which made for a fun evening.