Home, Home At the Table

Well, I've been home a week now and I gotta tell ya: while I generally enjoy Ugandan food and I'm always willing to be adventurous, there are a few things that I'm happy to be eating back in the good ol' US of A. First, the vast majority of restaurants in the Kampala metro area have no idea what the word "ketchup" means. You don't know what you have until it's gone. How I longed for the thick, tasty goodness of Heinz on so many occasions where the chips were so good but so lacking a proper dipping sauce. Can't settle for "tomato sauce," either. That crap is such a piss poor excuse for ketchup that it brings my taste buds pain to describe its thin, runny, tasteless, unfortunate existence to you. Yes, Heinz ketchup is available in Uganda if you look in the right places, but here I don't have to look farther than the center of the table to dress my burger properly.

Okay, I don't eat burgers and chips all the time and I have thoroughly enjoyed being at home in the kitchen with my dear wife. My first meal back home, we made a summer feast on the grill with flank steak (a medium-rare concept foreign to Ugandans, who generally prefer their beef thoroughly cooked in some sort of stew or sauce--nice, but just not my scene with the grill sitting out back). We had fresh corn on the cob, a tasty change of pace from the late-night roasted kasooli to which I had become accustomed and a softer reminder of summers in Iowa. The grilled green beans and garden salad topped off a meal with more fresh vegetables than I'd eaten all summer. Above all, enjoying a meal and a nice bottle of wine with Jenn was a wonderful (if belated) way to celebrate our third anniversary.

It's not that I don't like Ugandan food. In fact, I found most things very tasty. My only dislike, papaya, had nothing to do with the way anyone cooked. But my stomach knows where I came from. Some things just taste like home. I will say this: even in Florida, the fresh fruit can't compare with Equatorial Africa. Pineapple, mangoes, and the best variety of bananas anywhere, you will be missed. Until next time, I'll have to stick to the summer favorites here and just know it's good to be in America, home of Heinz, of sweet corn, of cookin' cow on the grill with beers nearby and home of the backyard barbecue. Yum.