Both Abigail and Josiah are making good recoveries from their recent illnesses.  We thank our Father above and everyone’s thoughts and petitions!  We still don’t know what Abigail’s illness was…(we have our hypotheses, but we will have to wait on further diagnostic testing-which we may do someday, just out of curiosity…) but her fever and strange rash is fading and we are grateful!  Now that our house is no longer an inpatient ward, we can get back to the daily adjustments and navigations of living here.

So one of the other ongoing challenges of moving to the Islands has been shopping for food and cooking meals.  Which is especially hard because, we have three boys who love to eat!  I would remind myself that I really did cook meals for my family everyday and liked doing it!  But, it feels like a lifetime ago… Imagine no longer having your kitchen panty, your grocery stores or a vehicle…Imagine that almost all of your regular standby recipes are no longer relevant…because the ingredients or appliances are just not here.  And, sometimes when things are available here, it’s just not that easy to get.   Other times, you get lucky and find beef at the store!

Here is the main market that can be very busy and crowded. You can find all your fresh (local) produce here as well as household items.

Meat and fresh fish can also be bought here in the market, but we can’t get passed the flies and lack of refrigeration. There are a few small grocery stores that have a frozen meat section where you can get chicken legs and ground beef patties.

Some of our standbys that we can still make here are: pasta, pizza, chicken, and rice stir fry.  Some of the new things that our house help has helped us with are: chicken with coconut sauce, chicken with tomato based sauce, fried fish, fried green bananas, and fried sweet potatoes.  After that, there is always french bread.  We are blessed to have a bakery not too far from our house…