Canned food

At home, I'm not real big on canned food, beyond a few fruits, as I've mentioned before. Too much excess sugar, fat and salt, and I can generally make the same thing, only better tasting. I haven't been able to stomach canned soup in years. It just tastes like salty glue to me. However, here I have discovered the joy that is Marks and Spencer, a clothing store that has branched off into prepared foods.

Not having any desire to cook two dinners a night, I have been buying food for my husband there, in the back of a clothing store. I stumbled onto it through a book I was reading, "The River House", and investigated the shop which is about a mile from our apartment. H is fond of the chicken tikka masala, and if you get a can of that, plus one bag of microwave rice, it's the perfect instant meal for him, with no leftovers to worry about. There's also chicken korma, and I got him spaghetti and meatballs, too. I'd still rather eat food I've made, but since H has no hangups about poisoning himself through canned food, he's happy, I'm happy, and I don't have to worry about what to feed him.

Another nice thing is the Marks and Spencer canned food has far fewer unidentified additives and no corn syrup and such, as it is from England, where they don't put corn syrup in EVERYTHING, like they do in the states. So it's not quite the drek that Chef BoyArDee is.

Anyway, J is watching his favorite show, Big Cook Little Cook, another fine English import, and it willl be over soon, so I must go.

Thanks for reading,
-Anne

Poop in the potty!

Obviously, we won't be discussing a recipe today.

Since we've been overseas, about a month, we have been doing some light potty training, mostly out of boredom. J is 32 months, and pretty good at holding it and has no problem going outdoors or in public toilets. He particularly enjoys peeing in the river at the bottom of the hill. However, he seems completely oblivious to noticing the urge, and will often come up to me and say, "look what happened," and ask why his pants are wet. It's still all me bringing him to the potty. We weren't even attempting poo, and I would just stick him in a diaper every other afternoon. He's quite predictable that way.

Yesterday when I was laying down for a minute while his dad was home, he started to go in his underpants. he always comes up and says, "Can I have a few minutes" before pooing. H asked him if J could try and make it go in the potty, and J said OK. H left him alone on the potty and he finished there. Hooray!

Earlier that day, while he was peeing, J said, "hey, some poops are coming out," and did a teency one in the potty.
We were happy for him, but never really have made a big deal out of it, and don't do stickers or m&m's or shaming or anything. i figured we'd just go all the time and talk about listening to your body and he'd figure it out.

The next step is getting som kind of warning from him BEFORE he starts, but hey, one thing at a time. I'm just glad he's not afraid of the potty. I also know a lot of kids go back and forth with this kind of thing, so I'm not claiming sucess by any stretch of the imagination. It's just nice to know there's hope.

And he looks super cute in the tiny European boy undies.

Sweet and Sour chicken

Dinner last night was a hit. We had my father-in-law over, and he really enjoyed it. The last two times, I tried new things, and they were just this side of poison. The first time, I had cooked some mystery fish filets, and forgotten to take the giant broiler sheet out of the oven. It took so long to cook that R left before he could eat anything. The second time, I cooked a cut of meat I THOUGHT was pork tenderloin. It came in the same kind of packaging, with a picture of a dancing pig on it, and seemed to be the same cut. The striations looked a little off to me after it cooked, and after five minutes of thinking it was the worst, toughest pork tenderloin in the world, we all realized it was roast beef. By then the slices had been cut too thick, so we couldn't really eat it. I also made the mistake of using my immersion blender to try and make mashed potatos. Did you know you could make industrial adhesive out of potatos? Becasue apparently that's what happens when you immersion blend it to death, like I did.

So last night, Jamie Oliver's Sweet and Sour Chicken from his book, Happy Days With The Naked Chef.

Take some bell peppers, two each of red, orange and yellow, two red onions, and chop them into quarters, the onion into eighths. Throw in a giant bowl with a chunked pineapple, three good chunks of ginger, grated with the skin on, garlic cloves peeled but not chopped, and olive oil and sea or kosher salt. Swirl all the veg together to marinate while you prep the chicken. Do the usual chicken stuff, wash, pat dry and rub with a bit of olive oil and salt. Dump the veg into a big, deep oven-safe pot. At home I use my 7.5 quart LeCruset orange dutch oven, which I probably use 4 times a week. Worth every penny.Put the chiken on toop of the veg, and roast at 375 according to weight of the chicken. Baste if you want to. Since I put mine in breast side down, if I forget to baste it's not that big a deal. If you have it breast side up, I'd def. reccommend basting. I tend to throw some white wine in the pot too, to make basting easier.

After it's cooked, you can serve half of the roasted vegetables, and then process, not puree, the rest, minus any liquid which might be in the pan, with two tablespoons of sugar and 6 tablespoons balsalmic vinegar. I process all the vegetables, then freeze the leftovers in three quart containers so I can just roast a chicken and have the sauce already made. It's so good, I eat it on toast. This is one of my favorite Naked Chef recipes. There are other good ones too, so you should buy his book.

A few notes.
When I say olive oil, I am referring to extra virgen olive oil. I prefer Spanish for cooking and Greek for salad dressings and such.

As always, fresh is better than canned, but chopping a pineapple can be a hassle, and the taste isn't really affected.

Last night, due to lack of resources and a smaller pan, I only chopped one red and one yellow pepper, and used two small white onions instead of red. It was still delicious. You can get red onions here, but the one we had was molded all the way through, so hey, subsitution time!

Really Flat Bread

I had to invent a bread recipe the other day, so J and I could make biscuits. I'm not completely sure what's in all the bread here, so it's best to make our own. Plus, J really likes to bake, and kneading the dough is one of his favorite things. He puches it down with his little hands, and folds and turns it like a pro. Then he usually makes a face in it, paying special attention to the ears.

The yeast situation threw me. I couldn't find any Red Star, and had to explain yeast by miming bread rising. Go ahead, try it. The women in the shops would tell me either they didn't have such a thing, or would hand me baking powder. I finally just pointed to the word I thought was yeast on a bread package, and they gave me a brown brick from the refrigerator.



It was a yeast paste, and I had NO idea how to measure that out, or mix it in. In the States, you put the contents of the yeast packet in warm water and let it dissolve and foam before proceeding with your recipe. I finally randomly found some dried yeast, but it called for mixing it directly with 1Kg of flour, no dissolving necessary. I had to buy a whole new bag of flour for this, as I had no way to measure out 1Kg, and decided to wing the rest of it. I mixed the yeast and flour, then added about 1/2 cup of sugar, some salt, and then took half of the dry mixture and threw it into the freezer. Hopefully it will keep. Then we added very warm water until the dough looked like dough, then kneaded the heck out of it. It was really stiff, but we managed it. We let it rise, which it did, thankfully, then I made a HUGE mistake and tried to add honey, which of course
meant we couldn't get the dough to stick together any more. So we made weird shapes with half the dough, and put the
other half in the fridge in a bag. We stuck the biscuits in a cast iron pan to rise again. They rose fine, and we cooked them, and they were pretty good. They were like rocks the next day, though. I think we'll add some melted margarine
next time, as I've heard it helps the bread keep.

The next day, yesterday, I tried to pull of hunks of the dough in the fridge, but they wouldn't rise, so I pulled the dough sort of flat and made a sweet pizza -like shape. It was good for about 90 minutes, then became homemade duck food.

So yeah, don't add honey after the first rise.

I'll try to do some more with about half of what's in the freezer, then report back.

Dairy Free

Tonight, J and I had honey and jam sandwiches for dinner. It would be peanut butter, but we're still sorting out a food intolerance that has recently appeared. It seems to be mostly milk, but there's something else lurking that hits him every few days, and honestly, I don't have the resources to do a healthy elimination diet over here, so we're doing the best we can.

It's a little frustrating becasue I did all the things you're suppossed to do to keep this from happening. Breastfed 2+ years, no formula, no whole milk or peanuts until he was 2, and then out of nowhere in March he starts pooing blood and mucous. Three DR visits, including one ER later, it's not bacteria, it's food, and a child who lives off of cheese and yogurt can no longer have them. In the states it's not so bad, as there's readily available, soy/rice/almond milk, almond butter, and other delicious things he'll eat, but here it's a bit of a hassle to get to the stores with the rice milk, which comes in tiny tiny boxes. Last time I went to the store I bought 16 boxes. That will last us about a week, I think. There's also no sweet potatos or winter squash, which I find surprising in a country that puts regular potatos in everything. How hard can it be to grow a squash? Those were my two go-to, high nutrition, peace of mind foods for him.

Of course, this coincides with him being in the throes of toddler food refusal. The only vegetables he'll eat are avacado and carrotts, and the only fruits are peaches and bananas. He'll eat chicken, turkey slices made to look like sails, meatballs (straight ground beef in balls), cheerios, oatmeal, honey, jam, bread, plain muffins, and of course rice milk.

Now that I wrote that down, it doesn't seem too awful. I'm just bummed about the vegetable thing. He used to eat peas by the fistful, and blueberries constantly, but not now. The other day he asked for blueberry mufifns, and we made them (dairy free, of course), and he picked the blueberries out. Ugh. I'll make zuchinni muffins next time. That'l show him...

I am thankful it's intolerance and not allergy, so if he does sneak ice cream he won't die. It is alwasy disturbing to see blood issuing from your child, though, don't you think? ANd it's a good thing I did most of the cooking from scratch already, or this would be much harder for us.
Alright, gotta run. Tomorrow, I'll tell you all about marinara sauce.

Taco time

One thing I like about this country is it is just assumed that babies and small children will nap in their strollers outside. In the States, it seems if your child is not sleeping by themselves flat on their backs in a crib, you must be some kind of failure of a parent. J has always preferred motion for sleep, especially as a baby, and even now, at 2.5, he's napping in the stroller again. It's usually only about 40 minutes, but yesterday it was 2 hours. He's got a bit of a cold, so he needed the extra sleep. Here's a shot of him passed out on the balcony of our apartment.

I got this monster stroller, a Huack, threee weeks after we got here, as the Quinny Zapp, while a fine, compact umbrella stroller, was not well sutied to napping or long walks on the bumpy streets and cobblestones. J even said one afternoon, after a long walk, "I'm tired of all the bumpies." He loves the new one. Even thought it's massive, it's perfect for the nap, an essential part of our day. Full recline, footrest, and all that other stuff.

We had tacos for dinner last night, with the leftover hamburger meat. J didn't touch it, preferring instead to fill himself up with some unidentified Italian biscuits. I meant to just get shells and sauce, but accidentally picked up the "taco kit". It wasn't bad, but it wasn't NEARLY enough food, and I ended up eating a rice cake afterwards. My husband had a supplemental bowl of cereal.

Tonight we make the chicken! Hooray for fail-safe food.
Thanks for reading,
-Anne

Where's the beef come from?

It's almost time for dinner, and I'll be making plain penne for J and I, then hamburgers for my husband when he gets home later. The burgers here are quite tasty, although you can't get a decent one in a restaurant. They do all sorts of tradional dishes with ground beef, but in the 1,000 years since this country's existed, it seems no one thought to smash the meat together and cook it that way.
I think it tastes better because of the way the cattle are raised. I'm sure they have their version of factory-type farms, but since this area doesn't have the grossly subsidized corn surplus that America does, the ruminants are allowed to ruminate. As usual, animals allowed to be what they are, and eat what they are suppossed to, taste better and are better for you.
If you're interested in this kind of stuff, namely, where your food comes from, read this book.
It's The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. It's great. When I read this, I was already going down the path to eating more whole foods. I kept the boxed, bagged food to a minimum, although I do admit to a love for canned peaches, organic and in juice, of course. One of the biggest points I took away was about the eating habits of animals, and it's eventual effect on us, and the planet. My favorite example is that cows should eat grasses. In American Factory Farms, where we get the vast majority of our meat, cows are forced to eat corn, which makes them so sick they need antibiotics just to stay alive long enough so we can kill them and eat them. Makes a lot of sense, right? So the next time you want beef, get grass fed. The difference in taste is unbeleivable. I can tell now when I have factory beef, although it's not often. If I can't at least get "naturally raised", I'll just get something else for dinner.
Speaking of which, it's time. J has already pulled his chair up to the counter, and is trying to get the pot out. Cheers!

-Anne