Silly Rabbit, Trix are for Wids*!

*"Wids" is an abbreviation I just made up. It's short for "med-school widows." So, yaaa . . .

Grenada can be a cruel lady when it comes to food.

>> One time I bought a bag of plantain chips that were so stale that I'm pretty sure they were shipped here by a jolly good friend of Christopher Columbus back in 1492. We considered holding on to the chips in case we ever need to use them as kindling to start a fire for burning other stale foods, but in the end we just invited our BFF over for dinner and made him eat them for us.

>> I like to keep frozen chicken and frozen fruit in our freezer. Too bad we experience power outages every few weeks that give the frozen goods just enough time to melt and then freeze back together in one giant unbreakable food block. Chicken blocks and fruit blocks can only be penetrated by being forcefully hurled against walls. Good thing we don't have downstairs neighbors. I just know they would think we have a ritual of brutally murdering someone every third Tuesday after brunch.

>> Other island food tragedies include local beef that tastes like sour grass, corn on the cob that has the texture of bouncy balls, a chicken I bought for $20 EC that came packaged with a cute little baggy of its liver and gizzards and brain (and a truly horrifying amount of blood), and odd ingredient substitutions I have to invent whenever I need something that hasn't come in on the most recent shipment (so . . . every time).

It's really not all as bad as I just made it sound though. I've had some excellent local food here and some downright fun adventures at the grocery store. (My favorite days are the days when local men hit on me in the "ethnic foods" aisle and then offer to be my personal grocery store tour guide. Then I say, "I'm murried," and they say, "Can I have some money?" Seriously, grocery days are bomb.)

PLUS, Grenada totally blows America out of the water when it comes to my favorite cereals. Remember when Trix used to have awesome shapes and taste, oh, good? Well, thank you Grenada for returning my childhood! All is right with breakfast again. Dear America, I'm genuinely sorry that you must tolerate those colorful "Trix" balls of yours, made of whole grains, styrofoam, and LIES.

One of my favorite memories of settling down in Grenada happened in our second week here. I was feeling a little overwhelmed by the newness of everything, but then in the bulk foods store I saw something old. Not like nasty plantain chips old, but like throwback to the good times old. When I was a kid, my favorite cereal in the world was Post's Blueberry Morning. It was kind of like Honey Bunches of Oats, but actually five trillion times better. Unfortunately, Post "stopped making it" when I hit my junior high years. I'm going to blame junior high for that one instead of Post. Thanks for nothing, junior high! Turns out, Post was just moving their beautiful product to Grenada.

I'm winning some food battles and losing others, but overall things ain't too bad on this lovely little speck of land.