Baking in Long Underwear

soup weather

2011-09-18T09:51:00.002+08:00

with dropping temperatures and a head cold...it's soup weather here in Nebraska.

i suggest this broccoli soup recipe as a starting point.

(i subbed skim milk for the cream)

chili falafel burgers

2011-08-21T10:37:00.004+08:00

thanks to one of the cookbooks gifted to me for my birthday, a falafel burger recipe that created this:

blue cheese sourdough bread, homemade spinach hummus, avocado, basil, a chili falafel burger, cucumbers and tomatoes.

eaten with a side of tater tots :-)

the burgers are relatively simple, you just need chickpeas, onions, spices and a bit of lemon juice. Then coat in flour and fry in olive oil. Next time I need to be careful not to blend the ingredients too much in my food processor- these didn't stick together too well. Thankfully the lack of cohesion did little to alter the taste.

summer cooking in omaha

2011-08-15T04:53:00.011+08:00

a deluge of recipes and eats since I've been terrible about posting this summer, a bonus being that all but one of these are vegetarian.

chickpeas and dumplings: this recipe comes from one of my favorite bloggers, Mama Pea. It's delicious and I've made it twice now, eating it all week long as leftovers.

vegetable broth with carrots, celery, onions and chickpeas

biscuits dropped on top

let simmer while covered and then eat up the goodness

falafels and pita bread: pita bread is an old favorite from our Mongolia cooking days, but I've been dying to try making falafels for forever. this was pre-food processor so I hand-mashed them with a large plastic spoon.

mid-mashing

fried, delicious goodness, these were a huge office favorite. We ate them on the pitas with cucumbers, tomatoes and plain yogurt and hummus.

green onion soup: this came about when my tendency to over-buy green onions at the farmers' market forced me to come up with a recipe that would use them up. I found a basic recipe that I no longer can locate but then proceeded to basically completely change it, rendering it pretty much useless anyway.

aren't these carrots gorgeous?

toss in lots of veggies, green onions, milk and heavy whipping cream. Yum.

carrot fries and hummus sauce: these are both thanks to Jessi at Naptime Diaries. The sauce has become a go-to of mine for salad dressing and is SO easy to make. Literally you just need hummus, balsamic and honey.

spinach hummus: crossed a goal of my year 24 list when I made hummus for the first time in my life. And Holy Mother of Hummus, this stuff is addictive. I fear I've eaten most of the tub in the span of 12 hours.

quinoa bake: this recipe is compliments of Healthy Tipping Point and is a perfect light version of a casserole that is both healthy and filling.

eggplant lasagna: This is a Mama Pea hybrid. I took her original recipe and subbed eggplant, but the filling is to die for, so it really doesn't matter what you use. Any lasagna that requires cream cheese is a win for me (also means that I made it not vegan).

Lesson of the summer? Eat your veggies. There are too many good recipes that will go to waste otherwise.

anyway you like it

2011-06-21T03:49:00.002+08:00

pizza is a canvas not just meant for tomato sauce. which is why this one has mashed up avocado mixed up with leftover hummus.
onions, black beans, radishes...

cucumbers, pepperoni, bok choy, cheese...
delicious.

when carrots are plentiful

2011-06-20T09:01:00.003+08:00

I have Hol to blame for this most recent creation, as she introduced me to the joy of carrot cake cookies.

And then when I had an abundance of carrots, I couldn't help but want to make them.

And because one of the things that was top on my list of "things I wanted to eat when in America" was pumpkin, I happened to have a can of it sitting in my cupboard, calling my name.

And thus these carrot cake cookies became pumpkin carrot cake cookies.

Perfect with milk, tea or crumbled up in yogurt for breakfast.

I call this the grater from the dark place because it's always trying to cut off my fingers.

Eat up my friends. And when you can't eat anymore (or shouldn't) because you live alone and should never consume an entire batch of cookies, take them to your local thrift store (where you also happen to work). People will like them so much they will describe them with expletives. Points!

bi bim bap

2011-06-10T04:51:00.003+08:00

bi bim bap [bee-bim-bop]

during the summer of 2010, i became very familiar with korean food. it became one of those things i hated to love and loved to hate. it was very frequent in my life, a daily basis--some weeks a 3 meals a day basis.

i heard recently that we crave what we eat.

that summer and then after, i started craving korean food. the spices and sauces and even the kimchi became familiar to me in a way that i craved it, liked it and was excited to find good korean restaurants when i returned to the USA.

i haven't found a great korean food place yet...living in DC, you would think that would be easy but i'll be honest, i haven't looked all over just yet.

so, a few weeks ago, i decided i would make some. i taught cooking classes while in mongolia and boast about my [limited] cooking skills.

so, i went to whole foods [which erin told me stories about that i half-way believed until i went to one--so cool!] and i gathered up the materials to make this rice-stirfry-spicy korean dish.

you can find the recipe i based the meal off of, here. essentially, you need these things:

vegetables, meat, egg, oil, rice and spicy paste

the vegetables each have different ways of cooking. i used carrots, spinach, sprouts, zucchini and mushrooms and for the meat tofu.

after you cook the vegetables, you can arrange them on a plate.

then you can fry and egg [sorry, don't have a picture of this--use your imagination]

then place the rice in the bottom of the bowl and arrange your veggies and meat on top, and add the fried egg that i keep almost forgetting about.

add your spicy paste [korean chili paste works fine]

mix and toss like a salad and enjoy!

some recent eats and a recipe

2011-06-08T08:41:00.006+08:00

I am living in vegetable heaven over here in Nebraska. the farmer's markets are open, the weather is warm, the gardens are growing and I am enjoying a plethora of veggies in my kitchen.

living in Mongolia convinced me that recipes are a starting point and not an absolute. So these last few weeks I've been taking basic recipes and making do with what I have.

For example....

pumpkin soup! I can't remember where I got the recipe from, but it included lots of onions and milk and pumpkin. I used too much nutmeg trying to compensate for a lack of other spices, so it had a bit of a kick, but I liked it just the same.

Or my bok choy black bean veggie pizza that ended up being not nearly as weird as it sounds. I promise! It's just an even better version of vegetable pizza. Especially if you use this pizza crust recipe.

And last but not least, I once again attempted to make one of the Daily Garnish recipes. Except my version of her mexican quinoa dish had a few add-ons and substitutions.

Mine had tomatoes, green onions, green olives, green pepper, cucumber, black beans, an onion, an avocado and instead of lime juice, lemon juice.

Plus I discovered that you can sub plain yogurt for sour cream and it tastes just as good.

Here's to a summer of even more vegetable-filled recipes and experiments!

sort of vegan brownies

2011-05-23T05:39:00.004+08:00

these were my official first attempt at a vegan dessert. I was mainly excited by the idea of banana brownies and not by the fact that they would be vegan.

So I diligently saved two of my bananas from normal daily consumption and waited until they were nice and brown. And then I looked up the Chocolate Chip Banana Brownie recipe from the Daily Garnish blog (which I love) and got to work.

Near the end, I started thinking about the three Reese Peanut Butter Cup easter eggs that had recently arrived in a letter from my mom and were hanging out in my freezer. What better way to personalize a recipe than by adding peanut butter cups?

So I chopped them up, tossed them in and effectively ended the brownies future as a vegan dessert. Can't be vegan when you add in peanut butter cups :-)

I also just used all regular flour instead of using half pastry flour, and while they were still reallllyyyyyy good, I could certainly tell in the consistency that they would have been lighter had I used the pastry flour.

Also, a bonus of not using eggs in a brownie recipe is that you can stick the batter that didn't fit in the pan in the fridge and eat it like a DELICIOUS pudding for several days after.

Not that I did that or anything. Not at all.

black bean veggie burgers

2011-05-02T02:56:00.003+08:00

I'm not a vegetarian but I do have vegetarian leanings.

and while I was in Mongolia, eating beef and mutton was a daily reality that could not be avoided if I wanted to be culturally appropriate and sensitive.

so I ate my meat and day-dreamed about having the choice to avoid meat all together.

my list of recipes to make upon returning to the US cover a lot of this vegetarian ground...including one of my favorite vegetarian items, black bean burgers.

I used this recipe, but then also made a lot of changes, so we'll just say that was the starting point.

mainly, I didn't have any onion or garlic so I instead decided to add the vegetables that I did happen to have- which included shredded carrot, diced cucumber and a little bit of parsley for good measure. I also didn't have any hot sauce, so I skipped that all together.

The biggest challenge to making veggie burgers at home is that almost every recipe I have ever found suggests/requires a food processor. I would LOVE to have a food processor. It's on my list of gadgets to invest in. But I don't have one right now. So I mashed with a fork and diced with a knife, trying to get things as small as possible. I also just realized upfront that my veggies burgers were going to be more on the chunky side, which was fine by me.

verdict? definitely good. definitely easy to make. definitely could have used some more seasoning.

next time I think I'll focus on getting the seasoning down right.

served on pita with spinach hummus, some broccoli slaw and salsa on top:

coming baaaack

2011-04-25T10:33:00.004+08:00

well hello people who have probably stopped reading this basically defunct blog.

life got in the way of creative cooking. life got in the way of documenting the creative cooking that did happen. and then by the end, we were just mainly eating some variation of Mongolian food every. single. night.

and well let's be honest, that's just not all that exciting.

unless of course you like looking at various versions of veggies/meat mixed with some carbohydrate.

but I'm in Omaha now. And Hol is in D.C.

And I'll be darned if creativity can't come back to the kitchens in our respective new cities. And we'll sure as heck still be wearing long underwear in the winters since D.C. isn't exactly Hawaii. And Nebraska likes itself a cold, windy winter from what I've heard.

So to bring us back to the now...

I present my very first food post in a very, very long time.

Quinoa Tabbouleh.

Also known as one of those recipes that I drooled over while in Mongolia and dreamt about the day that I could actually attempt. I have quite a lot of those actually. And my googling/bookmarking/salivating self always got made fun of by my more practical roommate who never got why I tortured myself looking at recipes that weren't possible in our current state.

But guess what? I like to dream :-) In multi-colored vegetable, interesting grain dreams!

And this stuff is A.) easy, B.) tasty and C.) healthy.

Defintely making this again and again and again.

chunky chicken salad

2010-10-14T10:49:00.003+08:00

sometimes we splurge.

and by splurge I mean buy and de-bone chicken. and buy five dollars worth of fruit, including a tiny little portion of purple grapes.

then Holli makes her chunky chicken salad and we both rejoice in occasionally making things that take a little more time, effort and money here.

what you'll need:

-chicken. we used two chicken legs, boiled them, took off the meat and then finished cooking the meat on the stove (save the bones and skin for later!)
-sour cream
-honey
-grapes
-apples (we used crab apples because they're in season right now and cheap)
-nuts of your choice (we used peanuts- because they're the cheapest)

chop, de-seed and mix.

enjoy with toast or if you really lucky and have just received a package of goods from your parents, some Wheat Thins :-)

kitchen sink soup

2010-10-08T13:38:00.004+08:00

What does one make with a bag full of garden-grown potatoes and carrots, some soaked and sprouting chickpeas and some onions?

Add in water, vegetable boullion cubes, bell peppers, pasta and some leftover chunks of frozen chicken and you've got yourself a mish-mash vegetable soup that is super easy to make and perfect for a chilly fall evening.

I was so lazy I didn't even peel the potatoes, just washed them really well and cubed them. Then I threw everything together (minus the pasta) and let it simmer for quite awhile. Once the vegetables were soft I added in the pasta and let it cook for a little while longer.

And you know every bowl of soup requires some delicious bread and jam on the side, not to mention some extra-special Wheat-Thins that arrived via my parents' wonderful fall package.

You can't beat soup for dinner when you live in a place where it's already snowed and it's only the beginning of October.

Everything but the sink- a la vegetable soup in our Mongolian kitchen.

comfort food

2010-10-04T10:49:00.002+08:00

sometimes you need the good stuff.
and by good stuff I clearly mean chicken club sandwiches and french fries.
this is not a culinary feat but more of a using up of hoarded ingredients that are hard to find.

such as chicken and bacon...

we also cooked up some onions and sliced up some potatoes- tossing them with olive oil and seasoning.

and then we used up some lettuce and tomatoes (I am already mourning the end of summer and the relative cheapness of these veggies) and piled high our bread with the goodness.

the french fries got thrown in the oven until crispy and they were quite possibly my favorite part of the meal. Also baking was much easier than frying them. I think the key to potatoes not taking forever to cook is slicing them really, really thin.

what are some of your favorite comfort foods?

cabbage rolls

2010-09-27T14:37:00.003+08:00

an end of summer abundance of cabbage meant the market ladies were selling heads of cabbage by the bag for ridiculously cheap.

we've discussed the possibility of cabbage rolls for several months but just finally attempted them a few weeks ago.

our resourcefulness was tested by the need for something to hold the cabbage rolls together- we didn't have any toothpicks, so we improvised and cut up some matches to use instead.

we also subbed tomato sauce for tomato soup and filled them with rice, ground beef and onions.

neither of us had ever had cabbage rolls before so I can't speak to whether or not they tasted like they should, but we liked them and it was a good way of using up a fairly significant portion of our head of cabbage.

any cabbage cooking suggestions? the top parts of the rolls crisped a bit too much in the oven but the matches did an excellent stand in job for holding them together.

soup as a second meal

2010-09-22T07:30:00.003+08:00

Living in the coldest capital city in the world means we crave a lot of soup, and often.

It also means we frequently have soup leftovers sitting in our fridge, waiting to be re-heated or recreated into new things.

Which has brought the soup becoming casserole process into our kitchen.

It's an easy thing really:

Step One: Make some rice (Or pasta- we usually choose rice)

Step Two: Chop up some vegetables or other additional add-ins.

Step Three: Mix the rice (or pasta) and vegetables with the leftover soup.

Step Four: Stick in a casserole dish and sprinkle with cheese or crushed chips or whatever else you have laying around that sounds good.

Step Five: Enjoy your old/new dinner of leftovers :-)

fried green tomatoes

2010-09-14T21:18:00.003+08:00

It took until Mongolia for me to have fried green tomatoes.

Hol spotted them at the market a few days ago and upon discussion, discovered I had never had them. Which then of course led to us having them for dinner a few nights after that.

And when you have extra batter? You should totally make homemade onion rings.

Not technically healthy food, however we did eat homemade hummus sandwiches prior to the fried onions and tomatoes. So really, it all evens out in the end.

ice cream cake

2010-08-23T17:11:00.003+08:00

birthday cakes need to be special, ya'll. it's a requirement in the world of birthdays and it's doubly important when you're celebrating your birthday in Mongolia.

in the week that was Hol's birthday celebration, we had a lot of cake. Kind of a ridiculous amount in fact. But this was my favorite one to make (and I didn't make all of them, thank goodness).

I tried to keep it a secret, but I'm not a good secret keeper and Hol is a very good secret guesser. So with a combination like that, she had it figured out pretty early on that I was making an ice cream cake.

It was my first attempt at an ice cream cake, so I was a bit nervous. Thankfully it was actually super easy- I made a basic vanilla cake, sliced it and put ice cream in between the layers. Then I frosted it with chocolate icing and added crumbled cookies on top. I was originally going to put cookie in between the layers as well, but it didn't end up happening as I had already frozen the cake again.

The end result? Not quite DQ, but a good summer birthday cake if I do say so myself.

homemade granola

2010-08-09T17:26:00.003+08:00

I've been intimidated at the idea of making granola for years- opting to buy it instead of make it. For whatever reason I was convinced that it would be complicated, hard or something that I would inevitably mess up.

In Mongolia the only place that attitude gets you is missing favorite foods that you can't buy here.

Enter an easy stovetop granola recipe from AllRecipes and my determination to try it.

It took all of maybe 15 minutes and turned out way better than I had hoped. I doubled the recipe and added an extra tablespoon of honey or two...and it was incredibly easy to make.

I added cashews and raisins (no almonds or dried cranberries in these parts- not unless I want to pay an arm and a leg) and then enjoyed some with milk and then took the rest with me to Khonghor for our ger building festivities. My friends here had no idea what it was but they loved it just the same :-)

concoctions

2010-08-07T11:42:00.002+08:00

My parents love chili. Growing up they'd frequently make a big pot of it for dinner and I'd make some alternate meal for myself. I didn't like beans, had never liked beans and so chili was not my meal of choice.

Then I moved to Texas, the land of Tex-Mex and black beans and I discovered that I do actually really like black beans. Which led to me discovering a recipe for vegetarian black bean and corn chili and falling in love with chili for the first time.

Black bean love led to liking other beans and now chili is one of my favorite recipes to experiment with. There aren't a lot of beans available here in Mongolia, but you can get cans of kidney beans and tomato sauce.

So when I was craving chili a few weeks ago, I took what was in our pantry/fridge and created perhaps one of the strangest versions of chili yet:

The original recipe calls for no beans, lots of beef, crushed tomatoes and red wine vinegar.

I used a can of kidney beans, a bunch of leftover lentils, a can of stewed tomatoes, a little bit of leftover ground beef, onions, garlic and balsamic vinaigrette instead of vinegar (we didn't have any).

It was admittedly a pretty bizarre combination and not particularly chili-like, but it ended up being exactly what my veggie-loving self was craving.

swirls

2010-08-07T10:59:00.002+08:00

vanilla cake waiting for its swirly partner

adding the chocolate batter

all of the swirled deliciousness

there were some sprinkles and frosting eventually as well, but I didn't get a picture before the Naadam eating frenzy began:-)

this recipe is pretty basic, but Hol made an incredible version of marble cake a few weeks ago that included brown sugar cinnamon almond crumble topping. Best cake I've ever, ever eaten.

churros

2010-08-01T21:08:00.002+08:00

Churros in all of their cinnamon goodness.

The recipe calls for a fancy piping thing and long thin churros, but this is Mongolia and we make do with what we have. Which means circular churros that went perfectly with our Mexican themed June birthday dinner.

Posting these pictures (way over a month after the fact) makes me want to make some more as soon as possible.

Cinnamon, sugar and fried dough. Yes, please.

fourth of july

2010-07-09T16:19:00.003+08:00

our fourth of july menu:

main dish: homemade pizza with lots of veggies and some precious pepperoni that was sent to us
side dish: watermelon
and of course, for dessert there isn't anything more American than apple pie, right?

I had been wanting to try making my favorite (and super easy) apple pie recipe as little mini pies, so we did just that.

The only differences? It took a little bit longer to arrange the crusts since we had to do mini versions of the lattice crust. And we diced the apples instead of slicing them.

Perfect mini-apple pies. And no messy cutting a slice deal- just personal pies for everyone.

How's that for individualism, America?

countryside food

2010-07-05T13:15:00.005+08:00

we've returned from our first ever trip to the much revered Mongolian countryside and it was absolutely beautiful and filled with fun and blessings.

and we of course ate all of the beloved Mongolian countryside food-

boiled goat insides- they loved this more than you could possibly imagine

roasted goat meat on a stick

goat meat sitting on a wooden board, waiting to be cooked and consumed

tsuivan- potatoes, carrots, onions and flour noodles

milk tea!

the boys slaughtering the second goat of the week

Hol bought popcorn and brought it with us, so we made big buckets of it and they devoured it:-)

Now, I have not suddenly become a large fan of boiled goat stomach, but I do generally really like Mongolian food. And being able to drink milk tea made with pails of fresh milk, eat bowls of homemade yogurt and have soup with goat meat was a delicious treat.

which just proves the myth that everything food wise really is better in the countryside.

rainbow cupcakes

2010-06-23T17:59:00.003+08:00

"pleeeeeeeeeaaaaasssseeeee bachshaw!"

That's what I heard last week from my elementary students. They were desperate to make cake during English class.

And I, being a complete sucker for my students, baking and their pleas- promised that we could.

I even pinky promised Mongolian style.

And so we tackled cupcakes on Tuesday- measuring and stirring and dripping and cracking eggs.

To add to the fun I brought food coloring and let them stir the colors into the cupcakes.

Rainbow-colored fun was just what this English teacher ordered.

a happy class and colorful cupcakes to boot. An A+ in my non-existent grade book.

fried veggies

2010-06-17T14:34:00.002+08:00

lightly fried collection of all sorts of vegetables- snap peas, corn, cucumbers and some onions that were supposed to be onion rings of sorts. Not quite so, but they still tasted oh so good anyway.

random delicious carbs

2010-06-10T21:02:00.003+08:00

pita bread- a favorite that we used to put homemade veggie patties in (corn and bean variations)

everything bagels- with all sorts of good stuff baked inside and sprinkled on top. Then used to make egg, bacon and fried pepperoni breakfast sandwiches. Best bagel sandwich ever.

Carbs are good. All the time. Especially in the pita bread and bagel variations.

a mongolian version of mexican casserole

2010-06-01T10:32:00.003+08:00

The little American food store here got a new container shipment a few days ago. This is like an every few months Christmas day for us. We usually just walk around the tiny little shop and look at all of the food we won't buy because the prices are too expensive. And exclaim things like, "Ah! Look at that [insert food item we can't usually find here]!"

But this time around we did find some reasonably priced tortilla chips and salsa. (Chips and salsa, oh how we have missed you!) So Hol and I have been planning Mexican themed meals with our finds :-)

Our version of a Mexican casserole began with a layer of tortilla chips:

And some corn mixed with tomato sauce and garlic.

Diced tomatoes, onions, red and yellow bell peppers and rice

More crunched up tortilla chips on top

And some hunks of cheese to melt on top

There are no finished pictures because we were too hungry to wait for photographic evidence :-) The casserole was a good substitute for real Mexican food (or Tex-Mex for that matter).

holy yum

2010-05-29T18:16:00.002+08:00

This was all Holli's creation. And man oh man, it was gooooooood.

Chicken BBQ vegetable pizza- with homemade barbecue sauce, bell peppers, onions, broccoli and a little bit of garlic on top.

mongol xool

2010-05-23T21:03:00.002+08:00

The best Mongolian food I get to eat here is definitely the food cooked by the ladies at church.

Seriously, I've never not liked anything they've ever made. soup, rice dishes, pasta dishes- doesn't matter. the only issue ever is the fatty meat and well that's just always an issue in Mongolia.

We had a three-day seminar this past week and I got to eat church food three days in a row. Yum.

Behold dish number 3- two kinds of rice, potatoes, salad made out of shredded carrots and onions and peppers, some meat (mutton, I believe) and there was some bread that didn't make it into the picture.

Church food > restaurant food

cooking for many

2010-05-13T11:40:00.005+08:00

i have a scar on my arm as proof of what my summer in Brooklyn taught me about cooking for multitudes of people in hot, crazy kitchens.

Don't try to give directions to high school students while pulling out huge pans of heated leftovers from the oven. It will end badly.

Also, if you ever need taco meat for 70 people, you should bake it in the oven. And pray that you don't flip a circuit in the process, leaving you with half-baked pans of 42 pounds of beef and an hour until dinner. (yes, that really happened. not one of my finer moments)

Since that introduction to cooking for a crowd of hungry teenagers and adults, I've thankfully learned some things. Four years in Dallas taught me how to cook Thanksgiving side dishes for sorority potlucks, my mom's lasagna for my small group girls, new dishes from farmer's market produce for summer dinners with friends and vegetarian friendly options for our weekly Sunday night New Day meal.

But Mongolia? Mongolia has taught me all sorts of new things about cooking for lots of folks at one time.

Our first try at this was a Thanksgiving dinner for 15 folks at our apartment. It was fun and the food turned out delicious, but there was a lot of panicked running around with bloody chicken as we didn't have enough room/time/space to cook all of it at the same time and still keep it warm, etc. Which resulted in the chicken being brought out in shifts as it finished cooking and looking like it had kind of been through a war zone. Live and learn. No one minded and all was well.

Around New Years I cooked for the young adult group at my church here. I was nervous. Stressed. Anxious about not having enough food/things being a disaster. I made more potato salad then one would think humanly possible. As well as an interesting jello fruit salad situation. All was well once again- but I had a hard time enjoying it.

This past Saturday was my second time to cook for all 40 young adults.

And whew, what a difference a few months makes.

Lesson #1- Spread out the cooking and baking. I purposefully did NOT cook/bake everything on Saturday this time around. I went grocery shopping for all of the supplies on Thursday and baked four dozen cookies that day. Then I stuck them in ziploc bags and saved them until the weekend- when all I had to do was arrange them on some plates at the church:

Lesson #2- Pick easy recipes that you are familiar and comfortable with and that won't be super difficult to make. And that are easy to double, triple or quadruple.

On Friday I made all of the focaccia bread dough and then baked half of it then and half of it early Saturday morning. This recipe is easy, I've made it quite a few times now and I knew it would be hard for me to screw it up. Not to mention it's easy to make in large quantities.

the rising dough...I love the smell of yeast and the hard work of kneading.

laying it out and covering with olive oil and spices...warm and crispy and delicious...
so much bread! I made 7 baking sheets worth and cut them each into 10 pieces...bringing us to 70 pieces.

Lesson # 3- Don't be stupid about transporting ingredients. And don't make things harder than they have to be.

I knew I'd have to bring both a 5 kilo bag of flour and a 2 kilo bag of rice to the church at some point. I also knew I'd be bringing a bunch of meat, lots of cans of sauce and several kilos of veggies. So I borrowed Hol's backpack and tried to bring the big things in different loads on different days.

Also- I used the huge rice cooker in the church kitchen instead of making the rice at home in our tiny rice cooker and bringing it with me. That meant I just threw in all 25 cups of rice and let it cook, instead of having to make lots of smaller amounts . Huge time saver. (It pays to double check that you're actually cooking the rice though when the directions/button labels are all in Korean)

Lesson # 4: Make something that can stay warm for a long time. Because nothing will ever start on time (maybe this is only applicable in Mongolia?) Lunch was supposed to be at 12 p.m. (everything was done at noon) and we didn't sit down to eat until 3 p.m.

So...making chili worked out well. Not only can you easily feed 40 people with a huge pot of chili- but it can simmer for hours. Which it did. Out of sheer necessity and not any grand cooking plan.

a bunch of beef, onions and garlic:

I also tossed in several large cans of tomato sauce, a kilo of diced tomatoes, some seasonings and a cup of vinegar.
We poured this over the rice and ate it with the bread :-) Yum!

Lesson # 5- Let cute little ones steal food before mealtime. And relax. There will be enough food. And it will be fun.

I think I'm finally getting to the point where I can do all of those things (well, the first was always a given :-)).

food irony

2010-05-08T19:07:00.004+08:00

chopping peppers

dicing onions

sauteing broccoli

pulling fat off the beef

food irony is making Mongolian beef in Mongolia for Mongolians (and Koreans and Americans) when in fact it is not at all a real Mongolian food.
But dang, it's tasty.

bell peppers, our veggie best friend

2010-05-05T20:29:00.003+08:00

Nine times out of ten, if you were to drop in unannounced on our Mongolian kitchen you would find bell peppers sitting in our fruit/veggie bowl. We go through them like other people go through daily things like milk or coffee.

They are available at the market consistently, both Hol and I like them a lot and they're easy to cook in a variety of dishes. Hence the bell pepper is our vegetable-version of a best friend here in UB.

A few weeks ago I attempted stuffed bell peppers:

The filling was a mix and match of random stuff we had in our fridge/cupboards, including some leftover tomatoes, rice, half a can of corn, some spices and some onion. I also mixed in a little spaghetti sauce and olive oil for moisture, although these were certainly more on the dry side of stuffed peppers.

I made waaaay too much filling, so I stuck the extra in the bottom of the dish and then set the stuffed bell peppers on top. I stuck them in the oven for awhile and voila- two of our favorite things: bell peppers and rice, together, in something other than stir-fry.

guest appearance.

2010-04-17T09:56:00.000+08:00

And, here we have another special edition on our cooking blog.

Pictured below is our dear friend and tutoree, Enkhuush. He is the son of our friends Batkhuu and Bora. We have been tutoring him for almost the whole time we've been here. When I say tutoring, though, I really mean hanging out. This boy's got some mad English skills. He's super intelligent and HILARIOUS.

He said he wanted to cook this past Monday so he inspected our refrigerator until he found something he could make.

He found 2 eggs and some pepperoni...

So, he decided he would fry the eggs and pepperoni. He's a humble chef so he wouldn't allow many pictures. I'll have you know, even though it wasn't captured on camera, he's an excellent egg flipper.

Chef Enkhuush decided we should have toast with our eggs so I started cutting the bread into slices. Recently when we purchased a new oven, we purchased new knives too--and they were sharp--and I sliced my finger. This is Enkhuush's "Come on! Haven't you ever cut anything before?!" face.

Viola! Here we have a delicious mid-afternoon snack thanks to the guest chef in our newly-but-dangerously-applianced kitchen.

dark chocolate apple bread

2010-04-15T16:33:00.002+08:00

the discovery of a too-dark-to-eat-outright bar of dark chocolate and some about to go bad apples led to them being chopped up and throw into what became dark chocolate apple bread.

I subbed chunks of a chopped dark chocolate bar for semi-sweet chocolate chips. And used a little over double of the apples called for in the recipe. And added a heaping amount of cocoa powder to counteract the super darkness of the dark chocolate I had. Also we had no nutmeg or walnuts, and I used regular milk instead of buttermilk.

Sprinkled with some cinnamon and sugar mixture...This stuff? Was gone in a day. No lie.

focaccia stromboli

2010-04-14T17:52:00.003+08:00

focaccia bread dough + stromboli fillings (sauce, shredded cheese, pepperoni)

rolling it up...

sprinkling more cheese on top...
crispy and perfect.
we heart pepperoni. thanks to Holli's mom and dad for sending it to us!

this also makes me super excited to use the focaccia recipe on its own - as it was quite good. And I've never spent a lot of time making bread prior to this- so I'd love to be able to get some practice making focaccia bread in. Who doesn't love focaccia bread?

so I add chocolate to everything

2010-04-12T14:23:00.002+08:00

I am a bit of an oatmeal fan. And by a bit I mean could probably eat it every day.

And this translates into a love of oatmeal cookies in all variations. I had previously found an oatmeal cookie recipe that I've made here before (sans raisins) and was going to make it again last Thursday. Thursdays are my day off and I love being able to bake on those days.

As I was looking up the recipe again, I came across some recipes for brownie oatmeal cookies. I was going to make those but then realized I didn't have some of the necessary ingredients.

So.....I just used the original oatmeal recipe and decided to dump in 2/3 cup of cocoa powder.

And this picture speaks to how this was most certainly a good move...

I then added in the oats. Because oats make everything healthier. Combating the chocolate to some extent at least :-) Baking in our new oven- hurrah!
Finished and proving themselves to be addictive:
So addictive that I packed them up and took them with me to the mission center the next day so that my students could consume them instead of me. No one needs over a dozen chocolate oatmeal cookies.

And we all happily munched on these as we watched Wall-E and studied prepositions on a Friday afternoon.

pancakes of all shapes and ingredients

2010-04-10T15:47:00.006+08:00

We are equal opportunity pancake eaters in this household, so it is only fair that we would diversify our pancake consumption. A task which we have succeeded at quite well in the past few weeks. It is not hard to convince us to eat breakfast for any meal, at any time or basically ever.

Pancake variation # 1 was my attempt at German potato pancakes. I say attempt because this before picture doesn't reveal that I managed to forget the eggs that were supposed to be mixed with the rest of the ingredients. Opps. I got ahead of myself and wanted to start frying :- )

So these potato pancakes became more like potato pancake hash browns. Tis hard to know the difference I say, except that these were sans eggs in the batter and we made scrambled eggs to go with them on the side.

These were center stage hash browns with eggs playing the supporting role. Trust me when I say these were good. Because they totally were. And I now know one can easily forgo the frozen bags of hash browns for the real stuff.

Pancake variation #2- Cracker Barrel pancakes for Easter morning made with a recipe Holli found and that required our created-with-a-lemon buttermilk that she has become such a pro at making.

And when chocolate chips are not an option- walnuts and chopped up snicker bars. What Easter pancake shouldn't have mini snicker bars chopped up in it?

Pancake variation #3- Potato pancakes round 2. Except this time I ix-nayed the previous recipe in favor of a recipe called "Amish Hash Browns." Being a Western PA girl, I know the goodness of Amish food. And these called for corn meal! And I also couldn't help but throw in some red bell peppers for color and redeeming vegetable qualities.

A bell pepper version of Amish hash browns....so good.

I need to do some AllRecipes searching to discover what other pancake variations can come from our Mongolian kitchen :-) Breakfast is always a welcome meal at our house.

recipes are merely suggestions.

2010-04-08T20:38:00.004+08:00

"Recipes are merely a suggestion"

I'd say that's the motto we've adopted. When preparing for a meal for our Mongolian kitchen, it is not unusual to visit 4 different stores. So, the adoption of this motto comes from some frustrating times of not finding the ingredients we need. Now, we use most of the recipes we find as a guide. In other words...we make it up.

As of late, that's been a little difficult, though. Our beloved and trusty oven said "NO MORE" and it quit working. After a few weeks of stove-top only recipes, borrowing a microwave and finding out our oven is "unfixable," we finally got a new oven.

I can honestly say the day our new oven arrived was one of the most joyous days of our Mongolian life.

Prior to the arrival of our new oven, I had already decided we should try making the Korean sushi called "kim-bap" or something like it. We did our best and although it didn't turn out perfect, it tasted good.

This, my friends, is the first thing we baked in our new oven. That's right peach cobbler. Delicious, or amtay as we say in Mongolia.

And this is our latest suggestion-creation. Indian food. After we discovered, became obsessed and had to limit ourselves to a once-a-month visit to our local Indian Restaurant "Hazara" we decided maybe, just maybe we could make our own. Well, we did. This is "Murg Makhani" roughly translated to: butter chicken. It turned out well but WAY spicy.

We are rockin' our Mongolian kitchen. Watch out America because when we get back to easily accessible ingredients, we're gonna be out-of-control. I'd venture to say even then, we will keep our "recipes are merely suggestions motto."

-Chef Holli

the other lettuce

2010-04-08T14:19:00.004+08:00

Cabbage! I know, I know- it's not really the other lettuce.

But I live in a country where basically the only vegetables you can get easily without paying an arm and a leg for them are carrots, potatoes, onions, bell peppers and....cabbage.

And I'll admit that I can't ever remember even eating it prior to about two weeks ago. If I were to buy a leafy green in the States it was consistently spinach.

But six months of being here had me finally wanting to try making something with cabbage. Combine that with the fact that our oven broke, leaving us only with the stove top and my desire to always consume more vegetables....and you have the cabbage, potato and chicken stove top casserole recipe that Hol found.

Which is to say that it included ingredients we didn't have and called for ham.

But we chopped and diced ourselves some onions and potatoes.

And then we did the same with some cabbage and chicken.

It was quite good and I'm always a fan of anything that allows me to combine chicken, potatoes and other veggies.

Since we've needed to be using this head of cabbage up we've also:

-steamed cabbage and put it with rice
-stir-fried cabbage with other veggies for an orange chicken recipe
-chopped it up and put it in baked vegetable spaghetti casserole

Any cabbage recipe suggestions from you all? So far we've mainly just thrown it in as an additional vegetable to already vegetable-filled recipes, but I'd be up for a cabbage-centric recipe if you know of any good ones.

navajo fry bread in ub

2010-04-01T14:46:00.004+08:00

visitors who bring recipes are always welcome at our apartment :-)

Heather brought the recipe for Navajo fry bread with her (she lives and serves on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico) when she came in March. And so we set to making it in our UB kitchen, enjoying the connections that we've discovered between the Navajo and Mongolians- including but not limited to their love of mutton and fried flour concoctions. Fry bread is similar to a Mongolian dish, except the Mongolian version has meat inside of it.

Frying the dough....And then we took the pieces of fry bread and dumped ground beef, cilantro, bell peppers, onions and shredded cheese on top. Fry bread makes an excellent foundation for a taco of sorts.

Anything that allows me to make a mountain of vegetables on top is a-ok with me :-)

peanut butter is expensive in mongolia

2010-03-30T18:41:00.004+08:00

which means that no-bake cookies are not really a cost-effective option here. 1/2 cup of peanut butter is a lot to use for a batch of cookies. Especially since Hol and I try to stretch our little containers of peanut butter imported from Mexico as far as we can.

However, nutella-like things are relatively abundant and not too expensive. So when we happened to have a jar of that around and a craving for no-bake cookies, nutella became our peanut butter substitute.

if you don't like chocolate, these cookies are not for you. if you do, enjoy :-)

perhaps next time I'll use 1/4 cup peanut butter and 1/4 cup nutella. peanut butter/nutella no-bake cookies anyone?

(thanks to Heather who took the pictures while we made the cookies and then let me steal them to post this :- ))

taco time.

2010-03-20T20:59:00.005+08:00

Special Edition: Cooking Class.

Recently I started a cooking class on Fridays. It started with a simple request to learn how to make cake we soon realized it was too much fun not to make it a part of our weekly schedule. So far, we've learned French food and Mexican food. It has turned out to be the ladies of the church and I cooking and then sitting down to share a meal together and talk. It has been more of a blessing to me than to them, I think. I'm beginning to think that is what "mission" is all about anyway. We are supposed to be infinitely blessed by the people that God has surrounded us with, they are there to teach us and point us back to Him with gracious hearts.

Here are some pictures from our Mexican Friday.

Rolling out the tortillas...

...cooking the tortillas...

...ready for another...

...mmm...peppers and onions...

...taco time!

We had a lot of fun making the tortillas and then making the tacos. Next week...Italian food.

3 apples can totally become a pie

2010-03-19T20:37:00.002+08:00

a different crust recipe this time around, but same filling recipe from thanksgiving. it calls for 8 apples, but we only had three. cutting up the apples into thin slices helped make up for the lack of heaping piles of apples.

before baking:
after baking:

this recipe is the first I've ever used that calls for the sugars and butter to be heated on the stove top and then poured over the apples/lattice crust. this makes the lattice crust all kinds of delicious as the sugars solidify on top and seep down into the apples.

next time I think I'll make sure we have more apples (this pie was an impromptu dessert and not planned) on hand....and I'll definitely re-use this crust recipe- it's flakier than the thanksgiving pie's and it still doesn't require shortening (which is not readily accessible here).

crazy pretzels

2010-02-28T16:49:00.003+08:00

i love salty foods. especially pretzels.

Hol and I tried making pretzels when we had been here about a month and did not yet know where to get yeast or what it looked like (our efforts are documented here).

They were good, but definitely not made with yeast (despite our best intentions).

So I've been waiting to try another go at pretzels, this time using what I knew for sure was yeast.

And so, Saturday morning I did just that.

First, I made some regular, salt pretzels.

And then....well, then I got a little crazy with the pretzel toppings.

Here from clockwise we have: poppyseed, cocoa with marshmallows, sprinkles and sugar, crushed up animal crackers, oregano and cinnamon sugar, with another cocoa with marshmallows in the middle.
I think my favorite so far has been the oregano- it tasted like a really good bread stick that should be dipped in tomato sauce.

Next time maybe I'll attempt some chocolate-covered pretzels :-)

there has never been a better idea

2010-02-25T16:50:00.003+08:00

It's a well-known fact that Holli and I both love tea.

And drink a lot of it here in Mongolia. I had tea this morning with breakfast. We shared another pot of green tea at one of our favorites cafes mid-morning. And I'm drinking more tea as I write this.

So when I came home to discover Holli making chai tea cupcakes earlier this week...I couldn't think of a better kind of cupcake.

First, Hol boiled milk and then steeped some chai tea bags in the milk.

This chai tea milk mixture was added to the cupcake batter and poured into the pans...

delicious chai cupcakes. they ended up with chocolate icing on top of them, but I didn't get any pictures of that and they were all devoured before the night's end.

jimmies or sprinkles?

2010-02-24T19:07:00.005+08:00

regardless of what you call them (I definitely called them jimmies as a child), they are a necessary ingredient for funfetti cupcakes.

i may have gone a little overboard on the sprinkles, but what's the fun of making funfetti cupcakes from scratch if you can't up the amount of sprinkles in the batter?

don't they look so cool once they've been baked? they're like tie-dye cupcakes (they made me think of you, Jamila!)
pouring on the chocolate icing that Hol made.

yum.

the finished product- with even more sprinkles on top.

3 minute chocolate cake

2010-02-22T14:21:00.003+08:00

Hol found this recipe online* just as we were getting ready to go over to our fellow missionary's apartment for dinner. We decided that was the perfect excuse to try out the recipe on them- especially because they have a microwave and we do not:-)

And when I wished out loud that we had a camera to document the process for the blog, we searched for one, discovering that the only one available had a dying battery. So instead, Michael pulled out the video camera and set to taping our chocolate cake experiment.

Enjoy our silly video and trying this recipe for yourself-it's easy and totally worth it.

*This is not the exact website that we used, but it's the same recipe and I can't recall which one we did use.

broccoli and bell pepper casserole

2010-02-19T20:39:00.004+08:00

rice is a good, cheap base for a casserole. and we have plenty at our disposal.

we also had some frozen broccoli- a treat! and some onions to steam in our rice cooker.

add some red and green bell peppers that we needed to use up.

add the vegetables to the rice, as well as some chunks of butter, some chunks of cheese and one can of cream of mushroom soup.

bake in the oven for a little over 30 minutes and voila, you have a delicious vegetable casserole.

i miss vegetables.

this casserole made me happy and grateful for the little things like broccoli and bell peppers.

i say potato, you say patato

2010-02-17T20:28:00.003+08:00

super easy baked potato soup a la our mongolian kitchen

there are limited vegetables to be found in mongolia, but we can consistently find potatoes, carrots, onions and bell peppers at the market.

this leads to us constantly trying to think of new ways to cook meals with these four vegetables. we eat a lot of steamed vegetables with rice, make hash browns with our eggs (that have onions and bell peppers in them), eat veggie stir-fry and use veggies as pizza toppings.

we've been talking recently about how we wanted to make soup, as we haven't been able to find our favorite soup at the store as of late. Ready made broth isn't an option, so we've been thinking up ways to make our own broth.

but to start our soup-making adventures, we went with a milk base and used a recipe for baked potato soup that Hol found online.

I didn't use whole milk, we don't have bacon, chives or green onions- but my goodness, this was a darn good soup.

and all it took was:

ten small boiled potatoes (the recipe called for them to be microwaved, but that wasn't really an option in our kitchen), 1/8 of an onion, 6 cups of milk, about a cup of flour, 2/3 cup of butter, a bit of salt and pepper and some sour cream for on top.

sans long underwear

2010-02-17T20:01:00.003+08:00

cooking in Cambodia meant not having to wear long underwear. it meant having good tasting milk and bean sprouts (never underestimate the deliciousness of bean sprouts).

it meant cooking with only a stove top. it meant having things available like bacon, fruit and vegetables other than potatoes or carrots. it was beyond wonderful. we pulled a mongolia stand-by and made breakfast for dinner one night.

i'm not a big meat eater, but bacon is the most wonderful thing ever when you haven't had it for four months.

"Hillsong loud on the speakers, barefoot, the kitchen hot with the blue flames of a gas stove, crackling bacon, flipping pancakes, eggs forming in the pan. Singing as a meal takes shape, the night easing forward as we let it slip away, grains of time sliding away with peace and worship danced upon the tile floor."

- excerpted from Cambodia Hues on Once Upon a Time in Real Life

cambodia also meant getting to cook for our friend Joseph. it's unfortunate he doesn't look happier in this picture :-) he ate the food anyway.

the item I miss the most

2010-01-30T21:23:00.003+08:00

I undoubtedly miss bagels the most. It's funny really, because I ate them infrequently when I lived in the States, but for some reason I've been craving a good bagel like mad.

So not too long ago, Hol and I attempted some homemade bagels.

Forming the bagels...

boiling the dough...
after baking- plain and cinnamon bagels:My mom used to make homemade bagels when I was little, so making these with Hol in our Mongolian kitchen brought back all kinds of fun memories. They're not as good as say Panera bagels, but they will do :- )

cookie cake

2010-01-30T15:37:00.004+08:00

sometimes you just crave chocolate chip cookies.

i was craving some a few weeks back, but needed to bake something to bring to our staff New Years party at the office.

i thought chocolate chip cookies would be too boring for a party, so Hol suggested I try making a cookie cake.

and let me say....yum.

layer one:
Add some chocolate frosting:

Second layer:
More frosting: (I cheated and bought frosting from the American food store- I can't find powdered sugar and I didn't have the time to try other alternate frosting from scratch recipes)And some decorative sprinkles:
There were zero leftovers:-)

chess pie

2010-01-07T18:54:00.003+08:00

This was a first time recipe for me, although recommended by both Holli and Heather as a good Christmas dessert to make for one of the several Christmas parties we went to over the past few weeks.

The filling was heated on the stove and then poured into the crust and baked. I fretted over the baking of the pie, as it took way less time than the recipe called for- but let's recall our oven:

It is a creature of incredible unpredictability, meaning that one never knows if it will take half of the time called for or double. I will say that it never ever takes the amount of time called for in a recipe :- )

new years celebrations

2010-01-07T08:23:00.003+08:00

Behold the massive amount of food prepared for the youth group's new years celebration:

Potato salad made in a massive bowl- my mom's recipe and without the chunks of ham that Mongolians usually put in their potato salad. I told them we were making vegetarian potato salad.

And the fruit salad in a wok (what can I say, we were lacking in large dishes). It has apples, mandarins and red jello.

And vanilla cake with caramel glaze:

We also made sugar cookies and bought some additional tomatoes, mandarins and cookies.

And while I was convinced there was no way all of this food would be consumed by thirty youth, I was proven wrong, as it was gone in 10 minutes flat: -)

peppermint brownie cupcakes

2009-12-28T19:10:00.003+08:00

thanks to the wonderful arrival of a few Christmas-themed packages, I had cocoa powder and peppermints at my disposal when pondering what to bake for my secret santa.

the result of such lovely baking supplies (thank you Hollingsworths and Talbotts) was the creation of peppermint brownie cupcakes.

we don't actually have any sort of cupcake pan, but I just set them on a cookie sheet, figuring the funny looking shapes wouldn't matter that much in the grand scheme of things.

I cut up some of the peppermints and threw them into the brownie batter and then I placed whole peppermints on top.

The most wonderful thing happened- all of the peppermints melted and sunk down, forming a peppermint bottom to the brownie cupcakes.

Chocolate and peppermint has never before tasted so good.

And you better believe I left a few behind for Hol and I, and my secret santa got a Christmas sized serving of them as well.

cinnamon chocolate chip pound cake

2009-12-26T19:59:00.003+08:00

It began with a recipe for vanilla pound cake...

and then I couldn't help but add some cinnamon...

and then some chocolate chips....because what are Christmas baked goods without chocolate?

and somewhere along the way my vanilla pound cake batter became cinnamon chocolate chip pound cake.
and all of the chocolate chips sunk to the bottom and formed a delicious chocolate crust.

and the pound cake became Christmas gifts for our fellow GBGM staff members here in UB.

thank you Christmas for being the perfect excuse to bake all sorts of delicious things.

baby ьууз

2009-12-20T22:09:00.005+08:00

Friday night some of my English students came over for some Christmas cookie decorating. After cookies, cards and Scrabble, they asked if they could make dinner.

I'm always up for our friends teaching us how to make Mongolian food, so Holli and I readily agreed.

Tevna, Od, Jawa and Brdne took over our kitchen to make a Mongolian soup (phonetically spelled "bansh") that is made up of ьууз (dumplings filled with meat, onions and garlic), ground beef boiled in water to make the broth, along with some potatoes, onions and salt.

They had fun laughing at my calling the dumplings we made "baby ьууз," for they are smaller versions of the normal ьууз that are a staple Mongolian food. Thankfully the baby ьууз are much easier to fold than their "grown-up" version :- )

new recipes for old favorites...

2009-12-14T16:08:00.006+08:00

Erin and I have been having some withdrawals from some things that we love from back home.

We both share a deep love for hummus and pita bread. I did not have high hopes for being able to make either but I decided to see if I could find some do-able recipes.

After finding some recipes I realized all we needed were some chickpeas for the hummus and some yeast for the pita...both have recently come into our possession.

I'm usually up for trying anything once (with the exception of animal parts that are too disturbing to even think about eating) so, I set off to the kitchen to give it a try...

(hummus)

(pita bread)

Both turned out pretty well. The hummus needs a few more ingredients to increase the flavor but I'll figure it out. The pita bread was delicious.

I made some pizza like things with both.

(half hummus/half regular pizza with tomatoes and yellow bell peppers)

(cheese pita pizza)

We enjoyed all of our new-old favorites here in Mongolia. And will love to make them for you when we get back.

I've decided we're going to be chefs and geniuses in the kitchen when we return.

I also made jambalaya recently but forgot to take pictures, just imagine...it was good.

peace.
holli

apfelkuchen

2009-12-11T19:07:00.007+08:00

yet another fruit-themed cake- but this used up the last of the abundance of fruit we collected during Thanksgiving week, so perhaps we can go back to non-fruit themed desserts for a bit :-)

I'm not sure there's real consensus on what an apfelkuchen recipe looks like, as every time I've looked them up I've ended up using one that is different and produces a different result.

Above is a pre-baked picture of the cake- this recipe called for one layer of dough to be placed on the bottom of the pan, then half of the apples placed in the middle, another layer of dough and then the remaining apples on top.

Post-baking, pre-glaze. I think it would have been less lopsided in a bundt cake pan like the recipe called for, but alas there is no such pan in our Mongolian kitchen. This circle pan is it unless we want a loaf of cake via a foil loaf pan.

With vanilla glaze on top- this cake was less dense than the previous apple pound cake I made and didn't have any brown sugar in it.

apfelkuchen a la Mongolia- definitely different from the one I made about five years ago, which had sliced apples with lattice crust on top and was made on a long baking sheet. And it is for sure different from the apfelkuchen I had while in Munich in high school. Too bad I don't think I'll ever be able to duplicate that one.

Anyone know if there is a definitive apfelkuchen recipe that is THE recipe?

peel banana, peel, peel banana

2009-12-07T21:20:00.008+08:00

Banana bread.

I know of few better ways to use overripe bananas- it's easily one of my favorite breads to bake.

We took half of this loaf with us when we had dinner with the Seo's (one of the other missionary families serving here with the UMC)and it was gobbled up quickly.

And we had no trouble at all finishing the rest of it all by ourselves:-)

Baking this made me think of how good banana-blueberry walnut bread would be- I'm adding it to my "to-bake when back in the States" list.

chocolate, vanilla and oranges

2009-12-05T13:28:00.004+08:00

We're still in the midst of trying to use up all of the fruit we received as hostess gifts at Thanksgiving.

Holli found and made this recipe for Chocolate Orange Marble cake- which allowed us to bake and to use some of the many, many oranges we had before they became inedible.

The challenge in baking chocolate recipes here is the lack of cocoa powder- but Holli used melted chocolate for this cake. I think there was some yogurt involved as well, though I'm not sure.

when life gives you lemons, make lemonade

2009-12-04T17:08:00.003+08:00

My new adaptation to this saying is:

When Mongolia gives you no tortillas...make tortillas.

So I did.

(excuse my hair)

There they are. In all of their Mongolian glory.

I have decided that it will be my Sunday tradition to make tortillas for the week. It is a lot of fun, I highly suggest it. Let me know if you want the recipe.

In the name of tortillas,
Holli

apple harvest pound cake with caramel glaze

2009-12-01T22:28:00.003+08:00

pre-caramel glaze

This apple pound cake was super easy to make and incredibly good. I've eaten more than my fair share over the past three days.

I found this recipe because Holli and I ended up with a ton of fruit this week and we were looking for some creative ways to use some of it. We made apple pies for Thanksgiving, so this was a good non-pie alternative that used up some of our apples.

I was most uncertain about making the glaze- we don't have caramel here (at least not that I've found yet), but all it took was butter, brown sugar and a little bit of milk.