Protein

**This post is not for vegetarians**

A balanced diet includes a certain amount of protein, but this is often a scare resource in PNG. As a ‘meat minimalist’* in my home country, I have been faced with some unusual protein challenges here…

Bat: surprisingly beefy but lots of bones

Beans: green beans grow all over the country and are often served fresh, no more than a day from the garden to the plate. Yum.

Bush rat: any of the small marsupials of the bush. I don’t want to know if they are rat or bandicoot, I just thank the hunter for sharing his catch and try not to think about it.

Chicken: village chickens are scrawny and tough. Chickens raised for market are fed specific stock feed, are fat and are a little scary as I’m not sure what hormones are in the stock feed. I want to support the locals who take the initiative to start and maintain chickens as a business, but I’m not sure I want to eat the product they provide.

Corned Beef: not the yummy stuff one of my farm Aunts used to make, but the tinned version which oozes fat. I try not to think about what is in it but about the generosity of my hosts in sharing expensive store bought goods.

Crayfish: at a dollar for a small, live crayfish, I have no complaints about price, just about having to kill my dinner. It is a good reminder though that eating meat involves taking a life.

Splurging on a seafood buffet
in Kavieng

Crab: the only animal I know of that can still hurt you once it is cooked and served. Those shells are dangerous!

Crocodile: commercially harvested and tastes like a cross between chicken and fish. I expect the wild version would be tougher.

Eggs: for all the chickens in villages, there are surprisingly few eggs. When located, they are small and a very generous gift to have given to me.

Fish: smoked, salted, fresh… so many types, so may preparations, so many options of good or bad.

Looks pretty
Tastes bad

Lentils: when they are available at our store I stock up and they are a common part of my self-catered diet.

Parrot: has a very strong flavour and I was glad to only be given a small piece.

Peanuts: a common roadside snack. There is somewhere on the road to Lae where you can pull over a purchase a bunch through the car window to shell and eat as you continue your journey.

Be gone, alarm clock!

Pig: wealth is counted in pigs, unless you are in a Seventh Day Adventist area, then it is counted in goats. Once killed, a pig is generally boiled and shared with all rather than stored or preserved. The fat and skin is considered the good bits, so given to guests. This guest usually finds a way to politely eat the meat and then pass the rest on to a kid who is very happy to help me clean my plate.

Prawns: yum!

Rooster: tough to eat but satisfying to no longer have him waking me before dawn.

Surprisingly tasty sago grubs

Sago grubs: thankfully they were toasted, not fresh, with a surprisingly bacon-like taste, probably because they are mostly fat. I surprised myself by liking them!

Shellfish: tiny black ones, big crawly ones… all salty tasting and chewy but good.

Shellfish kebabs on the fire

Spam: this is the luxury brand name version that tastes like polony/fritz/devon/luncheon (Why does Australia have so many dialect choices for this smallgood?). Usually it is the cheaper and fattier version of tinned pork which is on offer. Even the smell is enough to make me cringe, but I can eat a piece when required.

Stingray: the only protein I couldn’t eat and quietly slipped to the dogs. Maybe I struggled because it was breakfast, but I think the chewing on a car tyre sensation was the bigger issue.

Tree kangaroo and cassowary: thankfully I’ve so far been saved from eating these, as my nieces love to see them at the zoo and I don’t want to have to explain why Auntie Hanna ate their favourite animal. Turtle is another one I hope to never be faced with at dinner.

Pet with a dubious future

Tuna: tinned in oil and has a strong flavour, but is the winning option of the tinned meats available.

Victoria Crowned Pigeon: beautiful, endangered and tasty.

Wallaby: I ate roo meat in Australia, so wallaby is just a relative.

Weevils: the little pests get in my flour, my weetbix, my pasta and anything that I fail to store properly. Some days I fish them out, some days I just eat them.

The ethics of many of these protein sources is questionable, but I choose to focus on the hospitality of sharing an important and limited resource. PNG is not a country for gourmet dining, but it is a country for generosity in hospitality.

*meat minimalist: I do eat meat, but in limited amounts. For the practical purposes of catering on ships, I defined it to the cook as eating whatever they served at lunch (usually meat light anyway) and vegetarian at dinner. Even with that guideline, I generally ate more meat at sea than I did when catering for myself at home.