On cooking

Someone asked me if I would write a little bit about the kinds of foods that are available here and what kinds of meals I am making….  So I’m finally doing it! 

I’m afraid it might not be all that exciting, though, because basically, I am able to make meals very similar to the ones I made at home, with just a few exceptions:

• I’m still skeptical of the meat here.*  We didn’t eat much meat at home, either, but here we’re eating basically only chicken.  I’ve been in the habit of roasting a chicken once a week, using the meat in one or two dishes, and then using the bones to make chicken stock.  Other than a little canned tuna and some salami occasionally, this has been it.
• We have been extra-careful with the fresh produce.  When we first got here we peeled or cooked everything, having been warned that there would be bacteria that our bodies wouldn’t be used to.  Now, hopefully we’re more used to it all, and we’ve been eating some raw things – after we wash them really well. 
• The oven in this house doesn’t work right, so it’s either off or blazing at something like 600 degrees.  This makes baking anything rather challenging.  So I’ve been doing more stove-top dishes.**
• I can’t make yogurt here like I do at home, and they don’t sell large amounts of plain yogurt, so we’re buying tons of little individual cups, which feels weird.
• We can’t get things like molasses, Mexican seasonings, mixes, canned soups, etc., so I’m limited a little bit in my recipe choices.
• Groceries are NOT cheap – except for a few things, like fresh bread, onions, garlic, potatoes, cabbage and wine.  So we eat (and drink) a lot of those things.  J  We’ve also added a few products to our diet that seem to be regular staples here, like buckwheat.

Overall, I’d say we’re eating just fine.  In fact, if anything, I’d say my cooking has stepped up a notch, if I do say so myself.  J   Maybe it’s because I’ve had more time on my hands. Or maybe it’s because of Pinterest.

Anyway, for dinners, our regular dishes are things like:

• Mediterranean tuna and pasta (with red peppers, onions, peas, lemon juice and a little olive-oil-based sauce I make up)
• Lemony-dill chicken and quinoa salad (also made up)
• Potato and cabbage bake
• Potato soups
• Vegetable soups with chick-peas and potatoes
• Black beans and rice wraps (with chili powder spiced peppers and onions).  The only challenge with this one is finding tortillas… we use lavas bread instead, and I just cut it up.
• Pita pockets with roasted chicken and coleslaw
• Omelets
• Pizza with salami and veggies (again, no real pizza crust, but we find pita pockets work)

If I don’t want to cook, there are a few options.  We can have these little frozen pasta things called Pelmini that have chicken or something in them… but our local friend said she wouldn’t eat them too often.  Hmmm.  There is also a local pizza place called, of all things, “Andy’s Pizza” which we like.  Unlike most of the other pizza places here, they do not just offer mayonnaise-sauce-based pizzas, and we can actually get something like we’d recognize at home.  Most of the pizzas do have corn on them, though, for some reason.  Or Pete could bring home food on his way home from work from either McDonald’s or an American-style coffee shop.  We’ve only done this a couple of times. 

Well that’s probably way more than anyone wanted to know about our food situation here!  And now it's time for me to head back into the kitchen...

*If you want to know why I’m skeptical, ask Pete about the handling of raw meat that he saw – even at the new, “nice” meat shop!  Where are the sanitation board people when you need them??  We’ve also been warned against eating the fish caught locally.

**Despite this temperamental oven and the lack of brown sugar, I think I’ve finally perfected a chocolate chip cookie recipe – they only take about 5 minutes to bake and they include honey as an ingredient.  Where there is a will, there’s a way!