Shopping Madness: Planning Food for Five to last Six Weeks

Fresh fish from the river.

Mt. Hagen was pretty much a blur.  It was all about getting the supplies we needed for our six-week stay in the bush. My job was to shop for all the food we needed out in our remote location. Have YOU ever tried to buy food that will last for 6 weeks with no refrigerator? It's a bit of a challenge—especially when there are five adults to feed. Fortunately I tend to be a detailed sort of gal, so I made extensive lists months ahead of all the supplies we would need. It was stressful shopping because I kept thinking, "if I forget something, I don't get a second chance to buy it." Like, what if I forget salt? How would bread, rice and other food take six  weeks without it?  When getting to the store, I checked everything off the list as it went in the basket.

The hard part was estimating how much flour we'd need. How many cups will you need for 6 weeks if you're making all your own bread, pancakes and sweets? Could you guess that? Well, I couldn't either, but I gave it my best shot. I looked at recipes to see how much we might use. To be on the safe side, I decided on two 10 kilograms bags of plain flour and 5 kilograms of self-rising flour. (That's about 50 pounds of flour!) I thought the self-rising flour would be great for biscuits and pancakes and save on some salt and baking powder.

In our former mission house. It was still in great shape, but no longer had all the conveniences it used to.

Now for the sugar: I bought 6 kilograms of that. But we ran out because we all had such a sweet tooth. Oops . I think we needed some comfort food! Luckily, we were able to get a few more bags flown in four weeks later.

Several months before our trip, we ran into our former MAF pilot, Vern Bell, and he offered to haul over some supplies for us. So we loaded up a couple plastic tubs for him to take over for our arrival. That was a huge blessing and help. We sent ahead 7 can hams, 16 cans of chicken, and lots of tuna. That would be our main source of meat. That gave us one can of ham about every 5 days. I also sent ahead a few bags of dried beans. Each week, we had several meals without meat – a meatless spaghetti or dried beans and rice.

Most of the shopping was canned food and dry goods—pasta, rice, flour.  With no refrigeration, we had no way to preserve fresh food.

We also planned to eat local vegetables and fruit. Bananas and papaya would be our fresh fruit, and several types of root vegetables (taro and yam), pumpkin and greens were also available. During our stay, our friends also brought us a couple fish from the river, some fresh pig and cassowary meat, too. But we weren't able to get those too often, so it was a treat when we did. 

We ate a lot of the fresh greens ("olgiak") like the little boy is holding here.

Some fresh bamboo shoots.

My friend, Bufui, scrapping a coconut for us, so I could make coconut rice. Yum!

Overall, the food went great. We weren't able to get as many bananas and papayas as we hoped, but we did have plenty of greens and root veggies. Those were great.  There were several days of rather "yucky" meals, but that was to be expected. I planned a menu for what we would use on what day to make sure that we rationed things out to last our time in the bush. 

A random light supper: coconut rice, sago, papaya, fresh bamboo shoots and popcorn. (No, it wasn't microwaved popcorn, either!)

I was hoping to lose a lot of weight on this trip...

I only lost seven pounds. That should tell you we didn't eat too bad!