Kampala Grub

Our garden is brimming with life again! It is amazing to be able to get fresh produce from our garden for our daily food!

I have a few lemons in the fridge from our lemon tree:

Bananas ripening up nicely from our small banana plantation:

Chillis galore on our chilli bush:

I took special care chopping these chillis for our curry on Monday evning! They are firey, fiesty chillis!!!! I would not want to get a single seed accidentally burning my skin!!

We also found some tomatoes that we weren't aware had been planted! The Kampala soil is fertile and it seems that if a seed falls, a plant will grow! The boys enjoyed harvesting these tomatoes:

  

Our papaya tree is flourishing! Joel surprised me when he demonstrated his prowess as tree climber extraordinaire! He shinned up those tall papaya trunks to fetch the ripe fruits:

Meanwhile, down in Kampala market, food of very differnt variety, but also 100% natural, is being prepared:

These ladies are busy ripping the legs and wings off live grasshoppers! The grasshoppers are collected in sackfuls and delivered to Owino market. where they meet their fate. A fate that I can only imagine to be searingly painful for the tiny beasts!

Once the wings and legs are off, the writhing bodies of the grasshoppers, with their heads still attached, are piled into small mounds:

These piles of living, but mangled, bodies are destined for the frying pan...

Fried grasshoppers are a much-enjoyed delicacy of Kampala cuisine. Although seasonal, depending on when grasshoopers are most in evidence, they are readily available when the time is right! They are sold in paper bags- much like a bag of chips in the UK!

They are fried in salt and garlic. This is a bag of ready-fried grasshoppers:

Last week, Esther's friend bought a bag from a seller on the side of the road as we were stuck in Kampala traffic. She kindly offered us all a taste of fried grubs:

Esther had a taste, but needed much persuasion! She was not convinced about the flavour, nor the texture of fried insect!!

I also had a try... and it was actually quite tasty! I imagine that I would not have enjoyed it without the salty, garlic flavour! And there was something a little odd in the texture- a few stray hairs, or a slightly fuzzy aftermath. It was difficult to define! Anway, this is a local snack to be aware of in the back of my mind, in case we get desperately hungry in another traffic jam!

A grub of  different nature can finish off this blog post for me. The other evening I came home to find this striking creature outside our back door. I can say with certainty that he is not edible grub, but he was so handsome that I will leave you with his photo so that you can marvel at the rich and incredible insect life of God's creation in Uganda!