Deseret News | Missionary food stories: Called

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Missionary food stories: Called — and served

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Fiji | 10:40 p.m. Feb. 21, 2008

Yes, I was one of the blessed to serve in Fiji...learned to love the fish heads cooked in coconut milk, octopus, and various other sea foods that I have no idea what they are called in English. The only thing I never learned to love was goat...but you eat it with a smile and love the sweeet people who are kind enough to share their homes and lives with missionaries so far from a familiar home.

Sverige | 12:39 a.m. Feb. 22, 2008

My most memorable meal in Sweden was having an African member make us "foofoo". All the missionaries spoke of this dish and I was excited to try it. There were recognizable ingredients like mushrooms, and then something that looked like large kidney beans. I asked the chef what they were...after my companion had filled her plate with it. He smiled and said "Chicken hearts"

Other interesting foods: blood pudding, pickled herring (raw - a common holiday food), and several dishes of reindeer - my favorite was "scrambled Rudolph" yum! I miss Swedish food...

S. Hansen-Javier | 1:10 a.m. Feb. 22, 2008

I served in the beautiful country of the Philippines.I did eat some very strange things. My husband and I now live in the Philippines with our children and they have learned to eat everything that is placed in front of them. It's all about teh adventure. They actually eat move things then we do.

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Legolas Greenleaf | 2:01 a.m. Feb. 22, 2008

Sweden are known for the awesome seafood. It really is good, HOWEVER, my companion and I certainly had our faith tested when our hosts broke out the Swedish delecacy of all delecacies,.. sorstromming (sour fish). It is a large can of stromming (kind is what a love child cross between a small trout and an achove)that they pack in brine and some other nasty Gadianton-type combination of bacteria, and then sit on a shelf in a basement for 3 years. Then they open it up, have the hootzpah to actually clean the guts out of this partially decomposed fish, and serve it on a piece of hardbrod with mash potatoes, lots of onions and about a teaspoon of surstrooming. Whooa! The pungent, and I mean pungant smell is so vile and profuse that in downtown Stockholm, in the multi-level apartment buildings, it is actually against the law to open a can of this stuff. We smiled were gracious and ate it with a smile. God bless Sister Ahlback from Umea Sweden that shared this cultural delecacy with us and gave us special memorable event for my companion and I in 1978. The church is true!!!

Sweden land of the midnite fish. | 3:15 a.m. Feb. 22, 2008

Swedish surstrï¿½mming is legendary in missionary circles, It's pungent vile odor is very unpleasant. A fish, strï¿½mming, ungutted, is canned raw in brine & other stuff. It is left to decompose (which bloats the can) for 3+ yrs before it is ready to eat. This delicacy is often used (like eating a scotch bonnet pepper) when males congregate to posture & boast. A small amount is served on hï¿½rdbrï¿½d, w/ mashed taters & onions. Challenging to eat. I was serving in Stockholm in 1979, assisting the mission president, we got a call from SAS airlines at the mission office telling us that one of our missionaries had put a can of surstrï¿½mming in his luggage on his way home. The bloated can exploded in the unpressurized cargo hold somewhere over Denmark & they were forced to land in Copenhagen because the smell engulfed the plane. True story! He just wanted to share Swedish culture with his homies. The airline security people were very ticked off, but after 2 hrs on phone, we convinced them to put him back on the plane for the USA, w/ a kiss on the head & tell him to go forth & sin nomore.

Brasil 66-68 | 5:16 a.m. Feb. 22, 2008

My best food story was doce de batato doce. That is sweet potatoe sweet. this is the sweetest, sickest, most discusting desert I have had. I was a greenie and the hostest asked me if I wanted my companian told me to say pois nao. it had no in it so I thought he was right. well it means yes. and she brought me another serving. it was so bad I could not eat it and I stuffed it down the sofa. I love Brasil so much I am now living in Brasilia, with my wonderful Brasilian wife.

J Golden Incarnate | 6:44 a.m. Feb. 22, 2008

This makes me SO glad I served in Michigan, the good 'ol USA. I do have a story though; when I was transferred to Traverse City, MI everyone thought they needed to make me chili and jalepenos since I was from Texas. They didn't know that I was originally from Iowa wasn't the Tex Mex fan they thought I was. We had chili 5 nights in a row one week! The last one of these gave us food poisoning and we were all sick for a week.

Ed Smith | 7:50 a.m. Feb. 22, 2008

These stories can go on forever, but I can't resist. In the 70's I was servingin Nuremberg Germany. Anna Jindrich, a 70 year old recent convert considered it her calling to feed the missionaries, and her culinary talents were exceptional. When you were invited to her home, you knew it would be a savory event. Six of us sat down at her table one afternoon and stomachs groweled from the amazing aroma coming from her kitchen. first a plate of Schnitzel was laid in front of us. Then another filled with roast rabbit. Tantalizing. next came a huge bowk of Schweinekopf (pigs head), much tastier than it sounds. She encouraged us to begin dishing up and we complied. I speared an inviting chunk of Schweinekopf onto my plate where it rolled over and two nostrils stared back at me complete with the bristles still attached. I couldn't face the prospect of scarfing down the snout and quickly flipped it back into the bowl as my companions nearly died laughing. When Sis. Jindrich finally joined us, she forked oved the the snout with greatr delight and ate every bite. Raw fish and steak tartar, no problem. Pig snout,...not.

Kelly Larson | 8:35 a.m. Feb. 22, 2008

I served in the Netherlands Amsterdam mission, where the food is reputably mouth-watering, but once did get offered the horrible blood sausage in my first area in Leuven, Belgium. The host was laughing as he served us. It was awful.

My MTC group all vowed that none of us would gain weight while eating all the delicious Dutch pastries, the gevulde koeken, waffelen, poffertjes, and fresh breads from the bakeries. We had arrived in Europe in January, then by May when we gathered in the tulip fields of Keukenhof for a mission wide event, the ten of us reunited for a photo op and were cracking up when we noticed how we'd all blimped out and indulged in the new fare, even with all the bicycling. Eet smakelijk! (Dutch for Bon appetit!)

What a fun topic!

Yerba1 | 9:57 a.m. Feb. 22, 2008

I was in Argentina - Northeast Corner. I remember well, suffering through a Thanksgiving Day dinner in the town of Concordia, Entre Rios. I felt cheated by having to consume a stake that was only as big as my plate, a loaf of french bread that had already cooled, and a bottle of Orange Crush that was only ice cold until halfway through our meal. We shared a platic litre of ice cold milk and 2 lbs of fresh made vanilla wafers as dessert. If you're not already hungry I'll next right about Gizo...

Yerba1 | 9:52 a.m. Feb. 22, 2008

Steak - medium rare - sorry about the speellinng

Nate Kimball | 10:12 a.m. Feb. 22, 2008

When I first got to Japan, I had the "opportunity" to try something different. Something that only a small percentage of missionaries would ever try. At least, that's how my trainer put it.

Mr. Nishima pulled something out of the fridge and put it in the frying pan.

I asked my companion, "What is that?"

He said, "Forget it, YOU ARE EATING IT!"

I said, "Fine. At least let me know what it is, so I can write home about it."

So he told me, "We are frying up some pig placenta."

Yes, I did try it. Yes, I lived to write about it. And yes, it tasted like Pork!

Enjoy!

Jerry | 10:19 a.m. Feb. 22, 2008

I grew up in SE Idaho and remember eating meat that tasted a bit like chicken only we didn't have any chickens. It was years later that I found I had enjoyed rattlesnake.

James J | 11:14 a.m. Feb. 22, 2008

On my very first day in the hills of North Carolina (1973)we ate at a big family gathering. The big pot was cooking out back on a tripod over an open fire. When they told me it was squirrel stew I thought this is one of those "greenie tricks". But as everyone was enjoying their meal I had to choke mine down with a smile. My smile was convincing and they sent us home with 2 Mason jars filled with the stew where we could still see all the intestines and eye-balls. It sat on our shelf as a monument for some time.

Philadelphia Fan | 7:52 p.m. Feb. 22, 2008

I served my mission in Philadelphia, and my first area was in Salisbury Maryland, and the first Saturday I was there, my trainer and I, as well as the Elders in our district were having our weekly meeting with the ward mission leader, and before we would have our meetings, which were on Saturday mornings, we would have breakfast. And as we were walking through the kitchen, I said to my companion that it smelled like sausage, and she its not sausage, it is Scrapple, which is a meat that is common in the eastern United States. All I Can say it had a very strange taste and texture to it. I never ate Scapple again!

aggiefather | 10:09 a.m. Feb. 23, 2008

The worst: In 1968, at one of the first(and only dinner) appointments I enjoyed in North Germany, I helped myself to a large portion of what I thought was cheese at the urging of my companion. It turned out to be clarified animal fat and the taste made me nauseous. Good manners prevented me from taking any of other delicious-looking dishes while I still had the uneaten fat on my plate. I'll never forget the smug look on my companion's face as he feasted while I fasted. The best: Cold strawberry soup accompanied by potato pancakes served at the apartment of a old woman who lived in an outlying community north of Hamburg. Although it was a simple meal, it stands out as the gustatory highlight of my mission!

Scott S. Heiner | 8:43 p.m. Feb. 25, 2008

In the Japan Fukuoka mission in the early 70's, I had...
* Whale stew. It was quite fishy and rancid-tasting; I never found out if whale always tastes rancid or this was a bad cut of meat
* Mutsugoro - A salamander-like legged fish. The host said the cheek meat beneath the eyes is epecially prized. Tasted good
* Pitan (1000-year-old eggs) - they were actually only 8 months or so old...hard-boiled and buried in the ground (as I remember) the eggwhites looked like black jello and the yolks were jet-black. They were sliced so you couldn't tell what they were. I ate several slices before the host told me what they were. They had a strong sulfury taste.
* Barbecued eel - The merchant would reach into a tank and grab a live eel, stab it to the cutting board through the head with an ice pick and clean and dress it while it writhed around. Barbecued eel is delicious.
* Some sort of cold sweet bean pudding. I don't remember the name of it, but it was about the only thing I couldn't stand.

Levin | 9:23 p.m. Feb. 26, 2008

A few months into my Norwegian mission, the elders in our ward found ourselves at the bishop's house for New Year's Eve. We were served as an appetizer, a gelatinous green glob with bits of some undefinable substance mixed in. We had never heard of such a thing in Norway, and were sure that this was "that dinner" we would be writing home about. After some uncomfortable moments of our staring and wondering, the bishop's wife came into the dining room. Seeing our obvious hesitancy, she declared, "It's jello salad with nuts and fruit."

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