A party in the making

We have been here for two years and we have had a total of 7 parties for our students. Last thursday we had our final party of the year to celebrate the student’s graduation from our 8 month program. It is quite an extensive program, so in my opinion, it requires quite an extensive celebration.

Since we have had so many parties and this is where my obsession with baking began, I thought that I would take you through the steps of what it takes to make one of these babies happen.

First I must make the Menu:

1. Chips n’ Salsa
2. Crackers, Cheese & Salami
3. Chocolate Crackled Cookies
4. Chocolate Chip Cookies
5. Zucchini Bread 
6. Carrot Cake

Then I make a shopping list and Curtis goes shopping! 

Yes folks! This is what it takes! A lot of food to feed about 50 students.

The next step is baking! Lots of baking! Last year I made every one of our parties happen without any help from our students, 4 parties later I wised up and started asking the girls from our classes to come help and things move a lot quicker now. Instead of a whole week to prepare a party, it only takes about two three hour days of baking and preparing with the girls to keep me company 

This is one food prep area for grating the carrots and zucchini and also for cutting chunks of chocolate since they don’t have chocolate chips here.

This is the baking area for the more experienced girls 

After lots of hard work we came out with some pretty great looking and tasting food!

Then everyone eats the food and has a great time at the party!

A week of good food

We are really beginning to wrap up our time here and even though we are coming back for a third year, this week consisted of some goodbyes. At this point we will be leaving our city in only 10 days! Amazing, but true.

On another note, I really need to do food prep more often because this week I ate good and a lot of it was due to the food prep that I did on Sunday. Not only did I eat healthy, but I also just ate a lot of delicious food. Some of the good food was due to the fact that we were celebrating with friends, but I am proud to say that I am making a lot more healthy decisions about eating and cooking now, even when it is for a big group of people.

One of the things that I have struggled with since coming here is figuring out how to eat healthy. It truly takes a lot more discipline here, because although the resources are there, you must try harder to find them or take more time preparing them. But now, at the end of our second year here, I finally feel like I know how to live a balanced life here complete with healthy eating and exercise. I know that these aren’t the most important things about life, but they are important to me and it has always bothered me that I couldn’t master them in this country. I don’t by any means feel like I have mastered them, but I feel like I have a hang of how to live life here with that balance 

With all that said, here is a little recap of this week in food.

Tuesday I was really craving something sweet and so I decided to give baked apples a go. It turned out to be the most delicious thing I have tasted in a long time and a pretty healthy recipe. There are lots of nuts, so the fat content is high, but not a lot of unnatural sugar, such a healthy alternative to apple pie!

I modified some recipes that I found online and this is what I came up with:

Baked Apples (for 2 apples)

1. Core apples
2. Mix together:
3. 2 tbs Sunflower seeds
4. 2 tbs Ground up Almonds & 2 tbs Ground up Cashews
5. 2 Tbs Raisins
6. 1 tsp Baking Spice
7. 2 tsp Brown Sugar
8. 2 tsp butter
9. Stick the mixture inside of the apples and the remaining mixture on the pan around the apples.

Bake @ 350 for 40 minutes and then use a knife and fork to devour this perfect piece of apple deliciousness!

On Wednesday I had some girls come over for lunch and I made a Mediterranean meal. Before they came I made hummus for the first time. It would have been a lot better with a food processor, but I don’t have one. So I made chunky hummus, but it still tasted great.

To go with it, I made Mediterranean Couscous.

On Thursday, after my final Russian lesson for the year, we collected a new housemate! Our friend from Holland who has been staying with some guys for the last three months is moving in here over the summer to take care of our flat, but the guys he was staying with left this week, so our time overlaps a little bit, but we actually love having him here with us. He is a lot of fun 

Saturday night my British friend Claire hung around with a short termer named Ruth and we made a Mexican feast to eat with Curt and Gert. Delicious & Healthy! After dinner we made baked apples again. They weren’t as delicious as the first batch because I didn’t cook them long enough, but everyone still enjoyed them.

Today, Sunday, I made banana pancakes for Gert and the girls who stayed the night since we had fellowship here this morning. 

This afternoon, I made Italian food for Curtis’ men’s group that meets every other Sunday. This was their last meeting for the summer and it was a lot of fun to cook for them.

Lasagna is a lot easier than I used to think it was. I made it for the first time about a year ago because one of my local friends asked if I could teach her how to make it. She thought I was some sort of cooking pro. But in reality I was really intimidated by it with all those fancy layers, I found out that it is not so complicated after all,  just the sauce & meat/veggie layer and the cheese layer. Super easy and great for big groups. I challenge you to try it if you never have.

Gert also helped me to make some garlic bread. It is super easy to make garlic bread if you make the garlic butter first.

Here is an easy garlic butter recipe:

1. Melt 1/4 cup butter
2. Add 3 cloves garlic
3. 1 tbs parmesan cheese
4. 1 tsp salt
5. 1/2 tbs Italian Spices (I used Tuscan Sunset from Penzeys)
6. Put in the freezer for about 10 minutes until almost solid.
7. Mix around and then spread on your favorite bread

We use something called le pioshke, it is a russian bread with different designs in the middle. It is really delicious, cheap and super popular here.

Overall it was a really great week with lots of amazing food and even more amazing people. I am so glad that we have our new housemate Gert helping out too!

Food Prep

Yesterday was a very productive day. I was so proud of my accomplishments that when I finished I decided to take pictures and make it into a blog entry. This is a picture of my refrigerator after I completed my food prep for the week.

Why did I need to prepare? Mostly because eating healthy here is a little less convenient than in the states, but at least you can get organic for less $  And, what did I need to prepare? A lot of things that could have waited, but much of this preparation will ensure a healthy diet during this busy week.

First I went to work on the strawberries. We bought a whole kilo, which is about 2 pounds. So I had to wash them and cut the tops off. While I was doing that I put the chickpeas into a pot to boil. I bought raw chickpeas and I am so glad that I made this 195 tenge investment (about $1.50)

When I finished the strawberries, I moved onto the lettuce. I chopped about four heads of lettuce, rinsed it, spun it on my awesome salad spinner from aunt diana, let it dry for about an hour while I was prepping other stuff and then stuck it in ziplocks. I did take a quick break after I cut the lettuce to make a delicious strawberry salad. I knew I had tried something like it before so I just threw together what I thought might be in a strawberry salad and it turned out to be perfection on a plate.

It was so delicious that I did not take a picture because it was just too good, I chowed it all down before I even thought of taking a picture… Sorry. This picture is just a place holder, so you can find the recipe if you come here again. Believe me, there was lots more to it than just strawberries and lettuce.

Strawberry Salad:

1. lettuce (spinach would be better, but we can’t get it here)
2. A handful of strawberries sliced up
3. 1/4 cup of sliced or chopped almonds
4. a handful of feta cheese
5. 1 small cucumber

Dressing:

1. 1 tbs balsamic vinegar
2. 1 tsp olive oil
3. a pinch of salt & pepper

This recipes serves one person. The only thing that I might add to this salad to make it more of a dinner meal would be cooked chicken breast. Otherwise it was perfect, especially because I was ravenous at the time.

After lunch I hard boiled some eggs, the four at the back are the hard boiled ones. Then I went on to make granola, since it is the perfect addition to yogurt and a good break from eggs in the mornings. The granola was also pretty amazing.

I used a recipe that I got from a friend before I came overseas, but modified it a little bit to make it healthier:

1. 4 cups Oatmeal
2. 1  cup coconut
3. 1/2 cup sunflower seeds
4. 1/2 cup chopped cashews & almonds
5. 1 tsp cinnamon
6. 1/2 cup raisins
7. 1/4 cup honey
8. 1/4 cup oil
9. 1 tsp vanilla

Mix all dry ingredients together in a large EXCEPT raisins. Then mix in honey, oil & vanilla making sure all the dry bits are coated. Spread on two cake pans and bake @ 250-300F until slightly brown, stirring every once in a while. Add raisins. Ziplock it and save it for the rest of the busy week! 

After I finished the granola, I went to work cleaning the kitchen. I was so proud of myself for working so hard, so I rewarded myself with a bowl of granola topped with fresh strawberries   

The only problem now is that, this is all I want to eat. But today I resisted the urge to eat granola for lunch and modified this recipe for guyanese inspired chickpeas at my favorite food blog eat, live run.

Couscous

I can’t believe that I just discovered this stuff! It is really quick, delicious and pretty healthy too, as long as you fix it with lots of fresh veggies. I found it at one of the local stores that often has imports and snatched it up off the shelf to give it a shot, because I have really been enjoying trying new things lately.

I made it tonight without any recipes and it was good, but it was even more amazing the first time I made it when I used the recipe I got from CookingLight for Mediterranean Couscous. I did not use wheat couscous because you cannot get it here and I also used cilantro instead of sage. It was such a fresh dinner, ideal for a hot summer evening, and since the temperatures are already scorching here it was perfect for us.

I hope you’ll take my advice and give this little gem a shot too 

Holiday Breakfast

Any excuse to make pancakes. But really, what is better on a holiday than sleeping in and eating a big breakfast? Even if it is not an American Holiday… No Monday morning meeting, no obligations. So, we made pancakes. I have been trying to use recipes from CookingLight lately and I was so jazzed this morning by how amazing these banana pancakes were.

I did modify the recipe a little bit, but I think it made them even better! The recipe calls for buttermilk, but I didn’t have any and when I looked on the internet for possible substitutions it told me to simply add 1 tablespoon of vinegar to 1 cup of milk and let it sit for about 5 minutes. I thought it sounded a little weird, but I tried it and the milk seemed to get thicker in that time and the recipe turned out perfect too 

I added a couple other things to make these babies simply perfect. I added a 1/2 cup of oatmeal and also 1 teaspoon of Penzey’s Baking Spice which I got from Curtis’ Aunt Sabina. It is one of my new favorite things! You can use it instead of cinnamon, nutmeg or cloves to give your baked goods an extra kick. I normally would have added cinnamon and I think it would be a good choice if you can’t get your hands on this wonderful spice.

We topped our pancakes off with some beautiful strawberries, which, much to my satisfaction, are in season here now! I love it here in the spring! Bon Appetit!

Happy Mother's Day!

To all of the wonderful Mothers in my life!

To my Mommy! A very strong and inspirational woman. A loving woman, from whom I get my love for hospitality and entertaining. The woman who taught me about my creator and held me during my first heartbreak. A woman that I cannot wait to embrace this summer when I get back. It’s been almost two years since I hugged this woman. I miss you mommy and can’t wait to see you soon!

To my beautiful sister Tara who now has two precious children! I can’t wait to meet #2! She is beautiful and looks just like her mommy! This woman is so special to me, she held me during heartbreak #2 and helped me to make good decisions and stand strong against the wrong guy. She was like the cool aunt because she was ten years older than me and I love her so much. I can’t wait till we can have kids together. Love you Sis!

To my sister Angela. My “soul mate.” As I used to write in cards. We have shed many happy and sad tears together. We have driven in cars late at night and laughed our fannies off. We have gotten obsessed with stupid romantic comedies and at times been the annoying little sisters to Tara. Now you have a little girl of your own, just like Lorelai and Rory, just like us. I hope that you two have even more good times together than we had. You are an amazing Mommy!

And to my creative and spirited sister in law Brenda. You were the first one in this generation of girls to be a mommy and you have done it beautifully! I love you so much and I am so proud of you and your beautiful girls. You are strong and you love your creator and have clung to him through trying times. I am often inspired by you and am proud to call you part of my family!

And Finally, my wonderful Mother in law Chris. You are a better Mother in law than I could have ever imagined! You are strong and you are beautiful inside and out! You raised Curtis to be a wonderful, cuddly, strong man and you came all the way to Central Asia to visit us and you have blessed us in so many ways. We both love you so much and could not have asked for a better Mommy!

Happy Mother’s Day to you all and many more. A special shout out to Lindsey, Kelli, Bethie and Danielle who will be celebrating their first Mother’s Day this year! 

Happy Cinco De Mayo!

I realize that I am a little bit late on saying this, but Happy Cinco De Mayo my friends! I hope that you enjoyed this holiday. I assume that many of you went out for Mexican food at your favorite little hole-in-the-wall, but surprisingly enough, we do not have that luxury here in Central Asia.

But please do not feel sorry for us by any means. I am actually happy about this, at least most of the time  Because for this very reason last year on Cinco De Mayo I made Homemade Salsa or Pico De Gallo for the first time in my life and I fell in love with it!

So, last night salsa was definitely on the menu! I also made some homemade chips from Lavash (the turkish version of tortillas), but I baked them with only a little bit of oil and salt, then topped them off with some cheese, green onions and green peppers.

To go with these nachos and salsa I made some beans and chopped up some lettuce and came out with a pretty healthy Taco Salad for our Cinco De Mayo Celebration.

Hope you enjoyed your Cinco De Mayo Feast as much as Curtis enjoyed this one!