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!