Meals

The Samoans are very early risers. When busy with their cultivations they go off at daybreak without having any set 'meal. If there are any cooked talo or breadfruit left over from the previous day, these may be eaten. They return about 10:30 or 11 A.m. with a load of talo, breadfruit, or bananas. The oven for the morning meal is then prepared. This is a hearty meal and combines the morning and midday meal of three-meal races. Enough is usually cooked to provide for the evening meal. Thus, besides the vegetables, extra packages of fish and palu sami are cooked. These remain unopened.

The evening meal usually takes place after sunset. On my remarking that it was a good time, as the flies had retired, I was assured that that was one page 138of the reasons for holding it at that time. It is the most convenient time, as the men have finished fishing and their other duties about the village, and have bathed. Dressed in clean lavalava kilts they are prepared to make themselves comfortable. In these days, family prayers are held and the meal follows immediately after. With visitors in the village, a fresh meal is cooked in the evening as also when food is plentiful.

If food is plentiful, three meals are partaken of, one being cold. The people are not slaves to the conventions of time. If a good catch is taken of a particular fish that is in season, they are cooked and partaken of as soon as the fishing activities are over. On divers occasions, snacks are disposed of. Several helpings of banana poi form a small meal in itself. The women often go down fishing among the rocks, and take cooked banana or talo with them to eat with raw fish. Single dishes such as piasua or vaisalo are often partaken of without relation to a regular meal; so also is the small repast of shark or pork with the drinking of kava. The custom of two meals a day may be regarded as being influenced by food supplies and not by any dietetic rules. There is a readiness to eat and feast at any time should food be available. There is a tendency to overeat and to encroach on what was cooked for two meals. The lack of secure storing places and the availability of the cooked food baskets is against the careful conservation of food. This somewhat wasteful tendency was observed in ancient times by Le Polo of Amouli in Manua. He built a stone platform called a pae where he sat as the villagers returned from their cultivations. Upon the pae, he made them deposit one-half of the food they were bringing in. When asked the reason, he replied with one of those trite sayings so much admired and quoted by the Samoans: "E nanea mea mata, ae le nanea mea vela." (Uncooked food will last, but cooked food will not last). The people returned for the rest of their food on the following day. Le Polo's precaution thus prevented their running short on the second day. The stone platform sufficiently large to accommodate the villager's food is still to be seen at Amouli and is known as Le-pae-o-Le-Polo.

The basis of the diet is a vegetable one of talo and breadfruit. With this is required an ina'i or relish of another kind of food such as flesh or fish. Fish is the staple ina'i. Equally important is the green talo leaf vegetable especially in the form of palu sami. Flesh and fish are not always procurable. A Samoan will then make a satisfactory meal of talo and palu sami. The salt and coconut cream in the palu sami afford the ina'i relish. By acting as a psychological substitute for flesh foods palu sami saves the position, and ranks as one of the most important articles in the Samoan dietary. Water is the universal beverage. Kava is never drunk with regular meals though it may precede them.