What we’ve been eating

Tonight is our last night in the hotel: tomorrow we move into housing and return to cooking food at home. Well, at least in a couple of days. We’ll probably eat frozen pizza or quesadillas or scrambled until we get settled in. Only our advance shipment has arrived, and even though we’ll receive “boonie furniture” from the base, we won’t have a lot of cookware to work with.

I think I’m most excited about not having to pay for laundry services. The washer that comes with the house is a brand-new “colossal” sized machine by GE. Can’t wait to try it out!

But it is with mixed emotions that we’ll give up our per diem allowance for food. We’ve been eating well the past few days, although we also have had a few disappointing meals, also. I don’t love spending lots of money on food that is often not as good as what we could make if we had a kitchen. Sometimes I’m embarrassed to admit, my disapproval is obvious to my dinner companions. The kids have figured out that we check menus before we sit down in a restaurant.

We finally came up with a kind of routine: We have cereal or fruit in the mornings with shelf-stable milk, complimentary hotel coffee and juice, which we eat out on the balcony. Then in the afternoons we make peanut butter or turkey sandwiches, with apples and snacks from the little grocery, and eat in the room or on the road, depending on the schedule. Sometimes we stop for smoothies or ice cream treats, but at $3 for an ice cream cone or $5 for a smoothie, that is only very occasionally. Then each night we walk out of our hotel and try a different restaurant with prices under $15. We try to avoid chains and hotel restaurants, but since we’re living in the tourist zone, we did eat at a couple chain restaurants. Once we walked into Planet Hollywood, but walked out after seeing hamburgers on the menu were $17.95.

Our best meals have been at restaurants that are a step up from cheap, without being in the “fancy” range. Actually, I think my favorite was the night we ate at the Chamorro Village: every Wednesday one of the towns hosts a sort of flea market kind of event. Food vendors sell barbecue kabobs, rice mixes, grilled meats and vegetables, smoothies, desserts, and coconuts, while other kiosks sell tourist tchotke: jewelry, Hawaiian shirts, colorful sundresses, statues, keychains, you name it. Two stages have performances by dancers and musicians. On one corner you can ride on a carabao, and on another you can pet a monitor lizard or hold a coconut crab. By the time we left the place was packed with Japanese tourists arriving by bus. But it was probably the most fun evening we’ve had so far. I loved my chicken kelaguen, which is a kind of chicken salad with a sweet vinegar dressing, onions, cilantro, lime, and something else – maybe coconut milk. I’ll have to find a recipe.  But I was less fond of the seafood and mushroom side I had with my meal – I’m not a huge lover of tentacles.

My husband had been eager to eat sushi, so we had oriental food multiple nights, but the best meal was a couple nights ago at a restaurant that offered “sushi sets” and “bento boxes” with samples of different sushi and Japanese appetizers. I had futomaki, which was large and fresh.  Loved it, and the older boys loved their sushi sets with a variety of sashimi and vegetable rolls, pickled vegetables, and tempura shrimp and vegetables. The girls stuck with California rolls, but they tasted fresh and sweet. Meanwhile, the 7 yr old, who is the only kid in the family who doesn’t love sushi, ordered Sushi Spam and fell in love. Although I am morally opposed to Spam, it is a staple on the island. Supposedly Guam is the largest consumer of potted meats in the world. One aisle at the grocery is lined with different varieties of Spam. I don’t intend to buy it for the house, but I’m willing to let the kids sample local cuisine.

Last night I picked a Thai restaurant that has been crowded every time we’ve passed by, and now we know why. The service is slow, but the food is fabulous: fresh and flavorful. We all wanted to lick our plates when we were done. We ordered traditional meals: phat thai, lemongrass chicken, rice noodle soup, but each had a slight twist. My chicken seemed slightly sautéed instead of cooked in sauce, the phat thai wasn’t overwhelmed by peanut sauce. The picky seven year old gobbled up mango fried rice.

Our dinner tonight was perhaps our most unusual. It was again my husband’s turn to pick, and he had been wanting to try Korean. I had ruled out a place that was next to a dance club, so we decided to splurge on our last night and eat at a hotel down the street. This was not typical hotel fare, however. We were the only Americans there, and it was obvious that we didn’t understand Korean food when we ordered. The waitress attempted to explain several times that we couldn’t order what we asked for without ordering something else, although her English skills were only a little better than our Korean. We knew we didn’t want the beef tongue or tripe dishes, but we wanted to try something authentic, so we finally ordered a couple of items that were pricier than our usual limit, but fortunately decided to share, as we quickly realized they were meant to be.

Not only was this one of our most delicious meals, it was also one of the most fun.  First the waitress served tiny dishes of different relishes: seaweed, kimchi, tiny broccoli with red pepper sauce, pickled bean sprouts. We weren’t sure if we should eat them or not until we slyly peeked at our fellow diners and watched how they ate. Then on one end of the table the waitress set a grill and at the other a Bunsen burner. The boys had ordered meat that they had to grill themselves, and the youngers and my husband and I shared a hot pot with beef and mushrooms – those thin white ones that grow in bunches. It all was served raw, until we poured it into the broth in the pot on the burner. On son had a dish that was a hot pottery bowl that cooked his meal as he stirred it.  Everything was flavorful and delicious. We all decided that if any relatives or friends come to visit us, this is one of the places we’d like to take them.

So tomorrow back to shopping at the grocery.  Fortunately the commissary does carry some international foods: we’ve tried seaweed chips (high in omega 6!) and coconut water soda. We plan to go back to the Chamorro village multiple times to try different foods. And we’re hoping to plant a banana tree and a mango tree in our backyard.  We’ve already got a coconut tree. I have to admit that I don’t love coconuts myself, but I do like the little coconut cookies we’ve sampled. Perhaps I’ll grow to like them more the longer we live on the island.