On food
Sarah Grace goes to sea
Chris Yerbury and Sophy White
Tue 6 Mar 2007 03:31
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Cien Fuegos, March 4th,
Sunday, 2007
When you get to go to any
shop only once, and are surrounded by mysterious brand names, shopping becomes a
bit of a lottery. By the time you discover that something is edible,
you are usually five hundred miles away. I have made some spectacular mistakes
with the victualling. In a massive Venezuelan supermarket, I
recognized Coca-Cola, Tang, Helmans mayonnaise, Camay soap, and Campbell's
Soup. That was seriously it, everything else was a South American mystery
brand. They add serious sugar to EVERYTHING, it is all sickly sweet, even
plain yoghurt, and MILK!! Chris accidentally bought sugar milk on the
final stockup from Venezuela, called chicha, and it is REVOLTING!
We are now down to can 37
of a crate of 48, of tinned ham chunks, that all aboard now refer to as catfood,
that has an unmistakeable nasty flavour, however disguised in casseroles or on
pizzas. The Cuban dogs think it is lovely, and I feel that a lot
more may have to go that way.......It sounds terribly wasteful, but that taste
is SOOOO horrible.
One way around this is to
start scoffing things in your trolley in the supermarket, and if you like them,
buy another ten. It does make for a rather messy checkout though, with
loads of half eaten packets of stuff.
We haven't had much success
with new fruit. Jamaican kneeberries were revolting, and the apples, which
looked like a cross between pears and cranberries, were very odd.
The fifteen packets of
bacon are standing us in great stead in Cuba, where you cannot buy anything
dairy or meat, unless it is frozen chicken or pork. We seem to have an
attack of mini weevils, different from the ones we picked up in Lanzarotte,
which are meandering their way from locker to locker. Time to have a
serious blitz soon.. I didn't mention that the Cuba customs
bizarrely insisted on inspecting our rice. That'll be pretty
straightforward thought I, as I dug out a large plastic container from under a
seat. Imagine my boggle-eyed horror when I saw it seething with MOTHS, all
flying around in the box. They seemed pretty relaxed about it, and
didn't even take it with them. Needless to say the moths all got
dumped into a bin bag with the rice. Have to try and find some more now,
hopefully bugless, before we go offshore again.
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