You've probably heard that the food at the MTC is plentiful. You can choose from a wide variety of types of foods and desserts - it's a crazy buffet of food. A lot of missionaries have been college students (i.e. eating Top Ramen for weeks on end) or have had their mom making most of their meals for them, so the food situation at the MTC change be an awesome situation with so many great choices! You don't have to do any cooking, and if you don't like something that they are serving, you just choose something else! Many missionaries tend to gain weight from eating all of that great food (combined with all of the sitting in class). When you arrive in your actual mission, you will have a totally different experience...
Once they get to their actual mission (after the MTC), some missionaries will be eating foods that are totally unfamiliar to them. Other missionaries will be eating the same types of foods they had back at home (trust me, you will still likely need to eat things you don't like at some point, no matter where you serve). Depending on the mission (and different areas within the same mission) you may need to cook a lot of your meals by yourself, or you may cook very little.
No matter where you serve your mission or what the food is like, here are two tips that are actually really going to help you PREPARE when it comes to dealing with food as an LDS missionary "in the field" (in your mission):
1. PRACTICE EATING THINGS YOU DON'T LIKE
Before I left for my mission, my branch president advised me to "get used to doing things you don't want to do" and that was great advice, because it came up...a LOT. Some of it was food-related. Although I served my mission within the United States, I still encountered a lot of dinner appointment situations that were....awkward.
For example, at one particular dinner appointment, we were greeted by the family who excitedly told us that they were making us homemade pizza. They showed us the many pizzas lined up on the counter (some already cooked, some uncooked). While we were admiring their creations, we couldn't help but notice that there were 3 (or maybe more!) long-haired cats walking on the counters. We watched as the cats walked around and around (and sometimes across) the pizzas. If you were in a restaurant and you were served pizza with a single hair on it, you would probably send it back. But as we were invited guests (and ALL of the pizzas were covered in cat hair) and we didn't want to offend, we had no choice but to eat the pizza, cat hair and all. Don't get me wrong, we were very grateful to be invited and thankful for the meal. And I did pick off a few hairs when they went out of the room... But experiences like this are not unusual. I ate many things that I didn't like and many things that I didn't want to eat because it was gross or a little scary. I don't mean to scare you...you don't have to eat something if you are truly worried about safety, but it is considered rude to refuse food that is served to you, so be careful because you may offend.
I don't like cooked carrots, yams, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, etc - I don't like any cooked orange vegetable. At all. At home, I just wouldn't buy/cook/eat them. Even if they were served to me at my parent's house or a restaurant, I just left them on the plate. During my mission, I ate them. A LOT of them. They weren't prepared badly or anything, I just don't care for them, so rather than be rude, I just learned to eat them. At first I had to really try to eat them with without making a face, but after a while, I learned to eat them with a smile.
*I AM NOT IMPLYING THAT YOU SHOULD EAT THINGS THAT YOU ARE ALLERGIC TO OR REALLY SHOULDN'T EAT FOR ANY OTHER REASON. PLEASE ALWAYS FOLLOW SOUND MEDICAL ADVICE. IF YOU LEGITIMATELY HAVE A CONCERN WITH CERTAIN TYPES OF FOODS, BE SURE TO INCLUDE THIS IN YOUR MISSION PAPERWORK, SEEK YOUR MISSION PRESIDENT'S COUNSEL, AND MAKE SURE THAT YOUR WARD MEMBERS KNOW YOUR LEGITIMATE LIMITATIONS AHEAD OF TIME (NO ONE LIKES A SURPRISE WHEN MISSIONARIES SHOW UP FOR DINNER WITH A FOOD ALLERGY WITHOUT TELLING THE FAMILY AHEAD OF TIME). IF YOU SIMPLY DON'T LIKE CARROTS, THAT IS A DIFFERENT THING. JUST EAT THE CARROTS.
When I have missionaries over for dinner, I try to serve family-style (meaning that you serve yourself at the table), so that they don't have to take something if they don't like it. I tell them so, too - every time. So if they don't like salad, they don't have to take salad. In my mission, we were almost always given a plate of food that was already dished up (with everything already on it). People tend to give missionaries huge portions (even Sisters), so the sooner you get used to eating what you don't like, the better. This is something that you can practice before your mission.
Find a food that you just don't really like that much (guacamole, olives, peanut butter, whatever it is) and practice eating some of it, imaging that you are eating it in front of someone who is serving it to you as a missionary. Try this in front of a mirror, so you can see how well you are doing at keeping your face looking as positive as possible. You don't need to eat things you don't like all the time, but practicing occasionally will help you if you're worried about this happening during your mission.
2. PRACTICE COOKING SOME BASICS THAT WILL BE AVAILABLE IN YOUR MISSION
There are over 400 different LDS Missions, so its impossible to predict what you will need to know to cook for yourself in your mission until you get your mission call. Until then, practice some basics (see suggestions below). If you get too stuck on learning how to cook a certain style (say, how to cook Japanese foods because you secretly want to serve in Japan), you may wish later that you had taken a little time to learn to cook dried beans :) Learning anything isn't bad, but maybe stick to the basics until you know for sure where & what you will be cooking. Some ingredients (and cooking methods) that you are used to are not available in every country.
Once you get your mission call, you can start talking to RM's who served there (or current missionaries or their family if you know any). When you start telling people where you are serving, you'll probably hear "Oh, I know someone who served/is serving there!," so you'll likely be able to get some good info on what the typical food situation is. For example, if your diet will mainly be vegetables and rice, you can learn now how to cook rice and the same types of vegetables at home. If you find out that the apartments don't have microwaves and just have single burner stoves, you can practice cooking with just one burner. When you arrive in your mission, your first companion will have some experience already, so they can help, but anything you can do to prepare ahead is a good idea.
If you know you will be serving in a place that is in the US or is more modern, you will probably have a regular stovetop/oven and a microwave, and knowing that, you can probably start to think about what simple kinds of things you can make as a missionary with ingredients that will be easily available. Recipes with less ingredients are usually best (if you have to buy 5 kinds of spices, thats a lot of money for a missionary to spend).
If you haven't received your mission call, but want to be better prepared to cook for yourself as a missionary, you can learn some very basic basics (like rice on the stovetop, baked potatoes, etc) and they may help you cook in your future mission. It's great if you know how to cook Chicken Cordon Bleu, but if you don't have access to dairy, chicken, ham, or an oven in your mission, that won't help you much as a missionary!
I hope you've found these tips for preparing to survive mission food helpful. Please check out our other posts about preparing for your mission!
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