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Uganda unit study - foods

Every tribe in Uganda has different food preferences, but they tend to revolve around these basics.  Boarding school students (i.e. the vast majority of secondary school students) generally eat posho and beans daily except for a Sunday portion of meat.  Imagine eating the same food for every meal!

"Food" is the starch while everything else is the "soup" that goes with the food.  Generally a large quantity of the starch is portioned out with a smaller quantity of the soup. "Foods" include:

  • White sweet potato (peeled and boiled)
  • Cassava/manioc (as chips)
  • Irish potatoes (peeled and boiled)
  • White maize (posho - as a loaf of sticky "bread")
  • Millet (atapa or kalo - as a loaf of sticky "bread")
  • Matoke/green plantain (best when steamed in banana leaves)
  • Rice
The "soup" includes a wide variety of ingredients in these categories:
  • Greens
  • Beans
  • Cabbage
  • Peanuts - ground into flour or paste depending on the tribe
  • Meats (generally reserved for special occasions) - chicken, goat, beef, pork
  • Fish (regionally) - tilapia, Nile perch
  • Boiled pumpkin (not actually a soup - perhaps more of a side dish)
Snacks would be:
  • Chapati (can also go with a meal)
  • Rolex (yes! Look it up here)
  • Fruits off the trees (mango, papaya, banana, pineapple, guava, jackfruit, oranges)
  • Peanuts/groundnuts
  • Porridge (maize or millet or cassava mix)
  • Chai (any black tea - with or without milk or spices but always with sugar - to be taken most definitely around 10:30am every day)
  • Popcorn
Here are some very interesting pages from a book about the social aspects of Iteso eating.

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