How would you like to wake up to a piping hot bowl of fish soup? How about a side of fried bananas, and some rice? And get used to eating eyeballs, cheeks, and tails, because in the rainforest, we eat the entire fish from head to tail. Welcome to life in the rainforest!

In the town of Bretana, we met Carmen and her four children. They gave us a tour of their huge garden and told us about the foods they eat. Common staples (foods that people eat every day) include rice, bananas, and yuca. Yuca is a wild root, much like a potato, and it grows everywhere! The local people eat yuca like you would eat a potato: boiled, fried, or mashed. Banana plants, although not native to Peru, can be found in most people's gardens. There are many different varieties; some are sweet and some are more starchy. They grow fast, and within a few months, a huge bunch with over 50 bananas can be harvested. People eat the bananas fried, boiled, raw, steamed, and in soups. Yellow or green, skinny or fat, sweet or not, bananas are served with nearly every meal.

Carmen also introduced us to her chickens and ducks. Most families have these birds roaming around their yards. The animals can be used for their eggs, as well as for meat. Most people don't eat chicken and duck every day, but they do eat several kinds of fresh fish from the river almost every day, including piranha and catfish. Like the bananas, they eat their fish boiled, fried, and in soup. Carmen's family hunts other meats as well including: monkey, armadillo, tapir, paca (a large rodent that is said to be delicious), and peccarry (wild hog).

The family garden was full of all kinds of fruits and vegetables. The kids took us around their yard and showed us bananas, lemons, limes, avocados, cacao, mangos, coconut, guava, yuca, potatoes, coffee, papaya, and several other exotic fruits that I had never heard of. Carmen's family was so kind that they let us sample nearly everything in their garden, except of course for the chickens and ducks, since they still had a few months of plumping up before being ready to eat.

People that live in the rainforest can not rely on grocery stores to keep them fed. They must grow, harvest, and hunt their food. I wonder what foods we would eat if we had to rely on gardening and hunting, like the people do in the rainforest. How much of the food that you eat every day can be grown in your backyard? I would love to grow avocados and pineapples, but I probably wouldn't be growing any Oreos, pretzel rods, or Lunchables in my garden!

May the forest be with you,

Anna