July...

ELTW isn't forgotten or finito...
...we still plan to eat more food that's neat-o.
While summer's here, we're taking a break,
eating foods familiar, and easier to make.

When spending time with kids,
and going on vacation...
it's awfully hard to find weird stores
and cook from other nations.

So never fear, in a couple weeks
we'll head back to the kitchen.
And eat around the world again,
Hey, our next country is Britain!

So Long Chad, We Hardly Knew Ye!

It's hard for me to believe that Chad week has been over for a few days.  As I type this, I am sitting in a hotel room in Lansing, Michigan, at about 20 minutes past midnight, after finishing my homework for tomorrow.  I'm smack-dab in the middle of an intensive one-week residency for my graduate program -- Today was Tuesday, and I'm done at lunchtime on Friday.

Anyway, back to Chad.  Our final recipe was on Friday, and Gable picked out the meal.  He picked out corn/sausage/bacon/prune skewers for the grill and bread that's cooked by wrapping the dough around a stick and cooking it over a fire.  Stick bread.  It even sounds fun.

So, yet another "when I got home from work" anecdote, I guess.  Angel and Gable were deep into making the skewers, chopping corn into segments and trying to ram skewers through the cob; wrapping bacon around L'il Smokies and prunes; generally having a good time with food.  I was enlisted to hammer a metal skewer through the cobs, so the bamboo ones would go through.

The recipe is easy enough.  Honestly, it called for good sausage, twisted to nip it down to Lit'l Smoky size, bacon, corn on the cob and prunes.  Bacon wrapped around the sausages and prunes, and all of it was stuck on skewers to be grilled.  Likewise the stick bread was easy, Angel said.  It took beer, flour and like two other ingredients for the dough, and then strips of it were wrapped around sticks for the fire.

So, I cooked the skewers over charcoal first.  I have to say, the drawback to this one is that the corn is browned and the sausages are blackened before the bacon is even a little bit cooked.  Consequently, there were several bites of raw, squidgy bacon that I tossed over my shoulder. (we ate outside at the picnic table)  Except for that, though, I loved this one.  The corn was fresh and smoky; the bacon-wrapped sausages are like a dream-come-true, and the prune's sweetness meshed really well with the pork products.

The kids?  Humph.  I have the only children in the country who steadfastly will not eat food from a stick.  When I was a kid, I wished my parents would make food-on-a-stick, because of the awesomeness.  My kids?  I might as well sling a turd in front of them.  If it were on a stick, they wouldn't eat that, either.

We had problems with the stick bread.  After it was wrapped onto the sticks, I realized I had to slide the bread dough down a bit in order to lay the sticks across the grill, so I unwrapped it and slid it down...but it had already dried enough that I couldn't get it to re-adhere to the sticks.

I took my oldest girl to her T-Ball game while the bread was cooking, but Angel said that it tasted fine, though there were more black and more raw parts .

Saturday was supposed to be a boiled kind of dinner, but we had a crazy hectic day, and it was hot outside, and we decided to grill steaks instead -- cop out on the project?  Sure, you can think of it that way, but we choose not to.  So there.

Actually, ELTW is going to take a hiatus for most of the month of July.  For one reason, I have this residency.  For another, we are going on vacation in two weeks and don't want to try sourcing ethnic foods while in a condo on the beach.  Evelyn did draw our next destination, though.  When we get back from vacation, we go to England.

Welcome BACK to Chad

Tuesday's post about Chad was rather bleak and sobering, I understand that.  However, there is so much more to Chad than sandstorms, strife, refugees and desperation.  Yes, there is all that -- and on a scale that's truly sobering -- but that is only part of that region of the world.

Truth be told, after looking at the cuisine of Chad for about 15 minutes, both Angel and I were excited -- this has to be the most fun country we've visited yet!  The variety of foods, and cooking methods, and seasonings...truly interesting.  Turns out, they eat lots of beef and chicken in Chad, as well as greens, bananas and plantains, and spicy foods.  There's lots of cooking over fire.  There was even a recipe for a pineapple beer that included the instruction "be careful in case the fermenting beer explodes."

Cooking + Explosions = Win!!

In stark contrast to Tuesday's meal of millet porridge stood Wednesday's dinner of Moo Sate and Futari.  I actually started Tuesday night -- Moo Sate is (are?) thinly sliced beef, marinaded in a concoction of onions, garlic, ground chilies, and curry powder, threaded on skewers and grilled over charcoal.  It's served with a peanut butter sauce that's flavored with Worcestershire, soy and Tabasco sauces, and coconut cream.  Complementing the skewers, futari is a pot of acorn squash and sweet potato chunks, simmered in sauteed onions, coconut milk, cinnamon and cloves  Look at that roster of ingredients and tell me you thought they'd come from a central African country known for starvation and refugee camps!

In our recently re-worked version of ELTW, this was my night to cook a dinner that I had chosen.  I actually got home from work before Angel and the kids and was working on the vegetable dish when they arrived.  As the charcoal out in the grill ashed over, I brought in the skewers to warm up.  This was greeted with "what is that horrible odor?" from my wife.

"Dinner," I said.  I actually thought the skewers had an enticing curry/spices aroma.  Tangent:  did anyone know that curry powder makes your fingers smell like curry powder even after washing several times, sleeping overnight, showering, working a full day and washing your hands several more times?  Well, it does.

So, I started with the futari.  It did what I thought it'd do, essentially.  I am not a fan of acorn squash...I blame over-zealous squash-loving parenting in my childhood (sorry, dad!) for my distaste of orange squash.  That being said, I know that squash and sweet potatoes take fairly well to sweet flavors like cinnamon and sugar and in the end, I actually liked this dish.  The squash and tubers did soak up the coconut, cinnamon and cloves and had a vaguely pumpkin-pie-ish flavor.  Angel thought it was just okay -- she's pretty attuned to texture and I suspect that this was a bit too mushy for her.  The kids didn't like it.

The moo sate was spicy.  Flat out, I could've left out the ground chilies (I used red pepper) and maybe half the curry -- the kids wouldn't eat it, and I don't really blame them...until I tried the peanut-butter sauce with the skewers.  The sauce added a whole new dimension to the hot, curried beef, and cut the heat down almost totally.  The kids still wouldn't eat it.  Surprisingly, even to her, Angel really liked it.  She had to stop before she wanted to, just because of the spiciness.  I dunno, maybe we're wusses when it comes to spicy food.  Very tasty, though.

And last night, Evie chose the dinner and helped with the cooking.  Starting with a cup of oil, seasonings and a big helping of greens, she and Angel cooked some chicken breast, a handful of prawns and rice.  The recipe called for smoked fish, but Angel couldn't find any while grocery shopping.  As an aside, seeing the prawns, I realize that those are what we should've used for the Australian shrimp dinner.

This time, I'll admit that I was the one a little bit dubious about greens boiled in oil, and I generally have a love for greens that's unheard of in most Yankees.

Amusing story:  Years ago we lived in Indiana, and most of my co-workers proudly touted their southern upbringing.  "I wuz born'n reared in Kentucky," they'd proclaim.  So, one Christmas season they were deciding on the menu for the department holiday party and sent around a little menu so we could check off whether we wanted beef or chicken, potatoes or yams, cole slaw or salad....corn or collard greens.  So, I filled out mine and sent it on to my manager.  About a week later, he comes into the computer room while I'm working and starts out, "Nick, um..."  Turns out, the only one in the department of 50 or 60 Hoosiers who wanted good, southern collard greens was the northerner from Michigan!

Back to Chad -- dinner was awesome!  The greens soaked up the flavors of the oil, spices, chicken and prawns, and it all melded into a wonderful, mild dish -- granted it did call for chili peppers, but Angel left them out to have mercy on the kids.  The flavored oil soaked into the rice, and everything picked up a bit of prawn-y essence.  Very good.

---

Recipes:

Moo Sate

• 2 lb Beef; thinly sliced                1 c Peanut butter
• 3 tb curry powder                     1 c coconut cream
• 1/2 ts Ground chilies                  1 tb lemon juice
• 2 garlic clove; minced                1/4 c Soy sauce
• 2 Onion large; minced                1 tb Worcester sauce
• 4 tb lemon juice                         2 x Tabasco sauce; dash
• 1 tb Honey                                1/4 ts salt

1. Slice the meat into thin strips no more than 1/4" thick and about 1" wide.
2. Make strips paper-thin if possible.
3. Mix curry powder chilies garlic onions salt lemon juice and honey in a large bowl.
4. Add the meat strips and toss well to cover with the marinade.
5. Thread meat strips on bamboo skewers 3 or 4 pieces per skewer.
6. Make sure that plenty of Onion and garlic bits cling to the meat.
7. Arrange skewers of meat in a dish cover with any remaining marinade and refrigerate while making the sauce.
8. Brown or grill the meat skewers and serve with the warmed Peanut butter sauce for dipping.
9. Sauce: Blend all ingredients together well to make a smooth sauce.
10. Keep refrigerated but warm before serving.

 Futari

• one Onion, chopped
• one pound Squash, peeled and cut into bite-sized cubes
• a pound or two of yams (sweet potatoes may be substituted), peeled and cut into bite-sized cubes
• oil to sauté
• one cup coconut milk
• one-half teaspoon ground cinnamon
• one quarter teaspoon ground cloves
• salt to taste

1. Fry Onion in skillet, stir and cook until tender.
2. Stir in all other ingredients, and heat to a boil.
3. Reduce heat, cover and stir occasionally.
4. Cook until vegetables are tender (ten to fifteen minutes).

 Sweet Potato Greens with Fish and Shrimp

• 1 cup cooking oil
• 2 to 3 pounds (or more) of sweet potato greens, or similar
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 hot chile pepper, cleaned and chopped (or left whole)
• 1 piece of dried, salted, or smoked (such as cod or herring), soaked in water and washed
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ cup of dried shrimp or dried prawns (or a handful of fresh shrimp or prawns)
• any, pan-fried and cut into pieces (optional)
• chicken, pan-fried and cut into pieces (optional)
• salt and black pepper to taste

Directions

1. Heat the oil in a large pot.
2. Add the greens, onion, pepper, dried, tomato paste, baking soda, and dried shrimp or prawns (if desired).
3. Cook for fifteen minutes, stirring often.
4. When greens are tender, add fresh shrimp or prawns, and fried or chicken.
5. Adjust seasoning to taste.
6. Serve with rice. 

-- all recipes from the wikia lifestyles Recipes Wiki.

Welcome to Chad

"You don't...have...to live like a refugee." -- Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

So Tuesday was our first real start of Chad week, and we began with what we thought of when we thought of Central Africa -- refugees, subsistence rations and so on.  The family from Chad detailed in Hungry Planet is actually from the neighboring country, and living in a refugee camp in Chad, where they subsist on millet provided by aid agencies, and not much else.  Over 350,000 people currently live in refugee camps in Chad, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency, and 541,000 people are assisted by the UNHCR.

The acute malnutrition rate in the refugee camps is around 12%.  There is not enough water.  The majority of camps lack enough latrines.  Movement to and from the camps is restricted due to attacks by roadway bandits.  Women are raped in the camps.  Regularly.

That is right now.  In 2010.  While my children play at their grandparents' house.  While I sit in an expensive office chair and put a blog on the internet.

If there is a bright side to look at, the U.N. has a $161 million budget to try improving the situation.  The "general health condition" in the camps is "acceptable."  Most amazing to me is that school enrollment in the camps is at 80% -- in stark contrast to my son, who would skip school for a hangnail if he could.

So with that bleak background, last night we set out to make aiysh, a congealed porridge of ground millet.  I think most people in America are familiar with millet -- it's the little round seeds in birdseed.  Chadian refugees are given a ration of millet seed, and either take to a mill to be ground into flour, or they grind it themselves with mortar and pestle -- or rocks.

So, we found and purchased millet seed and some millet flour.  We measured out a pound, which would be the ration for a family of six.  I found and washed a couple of rocks from our firepit, and a couple pieces of flat granite that I had lying around, and took them out on the deck. And we ground our millet into flour.  Our deck is on the west side of the house, and in full evening sun.  Yesterday was an 85-degree day, so the kids almost immediately started complaining that they were hot.

"Yes, it's hot," I said.  "Just like Chad.  In fact, it routinely hits 100 degrees in Chad, so this would be a relief for them.  And they can't just duck into the kitchen to cool off like we can."  I think they got it.

First, we put some millet in a Ziploc bag and tried to grind it, to keep from losing any.  We didn't do much but rip the bag.  Next, we sprinkled some on a granite slab and rolled the rock on it, and that ground the millet nicely, but was slow.  Lastly, we put another granite slab on top and rubbed back and forth, which was quicker, but ground less finely, and also spilled a fair amount of the seed on the deck, and on that point we told the kids of the women who will spend hours sifting through the sand where the millet is distributed to pick out individual grains so their children have another mouthful.

Lastly, I told the kids how if we were in Chad, I wouldn't even be there.  "I would've been killed three years ago when our village was raided."  And I went off to mow the lawn.  Angel says they got through about half of the millet before they were all fed up, and she used flour to fill out the rest of the pound.

The porridge itself wasn't actually too bad.  I thought it was rather like Cream of Wheat cereal, with no cream or sugar in it.  Angel likened it to rice, with the consistency of mashed potatoes.  Gable liked it as-is.  The twins did not.  Evie started out liking it but quickly turned to thumbs-down.  I found much the same thing...it started out okay, but started leaving a mildly acrid residue in my throat and I needed a glass of water.  Regardless, aiysh is very filling and at least palatable, if not scrumptious.  Actually, in the end I added butter and brown sugar as if it were cereal and everyone but Gabe liked it more.

As a final aside, we were all pretty darn hungry again by 10:00 p.m.  It doesn't take much empathy to understand how full one would NOT feel from eating this every day, three meals a day.

---

Recipe:

Ingredients

• 1/2 coro (approx. 1 lb. millet flour
• 1 coro (approx. 2 qrt) water
• vegetable oil (enough to coat aiysh) 

Bring millet flour to mill to grind.
After obtaining ground millet flour, light fire and bring water to a boil in a pot.
Add millet flour in small amounts until it begins to thicken and bubble. Stir constantly, pulling mixture toward you in the pot until it holds together in a gelatinous mass.
Press mixture into an oiled bowl to make a round shape. Invert onto serving plate or tray.

Hanging Chad

So, I realize I never let on what country we're traveling to this week.  It's Chad.  You know, Chad.  Central Africa, poverty, starvation, refugees...Chad.  From the moment I even put Chad in the official tin, I knew I was gonna have to make the "hanging chads" joke at some point, so there it is.  It's even a bit relevant.

You see, last night was supposed to be our first Chadian night.  (Chadians, that's what they call themselves.)  So all we (and I) had to do last night was:

• 5:10-5:15 -- get home from work
• 5:30 -- run Evie to her T-ball team photos and game.
• 7:30-8:00-ish -- get home from T-ball game
• 8:00 +2hrs -- Cook authentic Chadian Dinner
• After That -- clean up authentic Chadian Dinner
• After THAT, what's this now...10:30? 11:00? -- Begin homework: Business Law Case Discussion
• 1:00 am -- Continue homework: Business Law online lectures
• 2:00am -- Business law quiz
• 2:30am -- quiz complete, go to bed.

So we punted on the first night of Chad and ordered pizza to cut out the two hours of cooking and subsequent hour of cleanup.  My wife took the kids to the T-ball game and I got those two hours to work on homework, so I was able to go to sleep before 1:00 am.

So I'm sorry for the bad pun...but we've left you hanging, Chad.

Vegemite

"He just smiled, and made me a vegemite sandwich." -- Men at Work

Vegemite is an Australian staple.  It's one of the first foods fed to Australian babies.  It's a phenomenal source of B vitamins.  I've heard the taste described as "distinctive," and been cautioned that I won't like it.  We know that it's sold by Kraft, and it's a yeast extract.  So yeah, if we're trying the Australian experience, we needed to experience Vegemite.  We ordered a jar of it from a website.

When we got it, the first thing I did was open the jar and smell it.  Well, I've smelled worse things, I guess.  I think everyone has a different description of what it smells like, but my stab at it is a mixture between beef bouillon and boiling beer wort.** -- like yeasty barley malt with beef undertones.  I swiped my pinky finger in it and tasted it...kind of like salty beef-yeast malt.  Kind of icky, to tell the truth.

Well, Sunday morning came and we'd put off having traditional Vegemite for breakfast, as we read the Aussies do.  On toast.  So I toasted two slices of bread, (not six...I've heard that we probably wouldn't like it, so I figured baby steps) spread a liberal amount of Vegemite on them, and cut them into toast points.  When spreading, I would describe the color and consistency of Vegemite as somewhat akin to axle grease, or maybe really dark Vaseline.

Anyway, I carried the toast points to the table, and distributed them amongst us.  The kids looked skeptical, and we admonished them that they had to at least swallow ONE bite...there would be no spitting.  We agreed to eat on the count of three.  One...  Two....  Three...

...and we all bit down on our Vegemite toast.  The initial flavor wasn't good, but wasn't too awful.  Rather like the smell, actually.  Salty, yeasty (I guess) and sort of tangy...

... that was for the first 1.4 seconds.  Then all hell broke loose in my mouth, and from the sound of it, in everyone else's mouth as well.  A sort of strangled howl loosed forth from all of us at the same time.  Hands started flapping, eyes started watering, and at least one of us spun around in place a few times.  During the following 2.3 seconds I debated whether the contents of my mouth were, in fact, swallowable, or whether someone had actually shat in my mouth when I wasn't looking.  I came to the conclusion, as I lunged across the kitchen for the trash can, that neither scenario was possible, and I spit it out into the garbage.

This was not happening in a vacuum, mind you.  Behind and around me, bedlam was breaking loose.  In my peripheral vision, I could see what looked like a dozen people rushing back and forth and spinning around.  Person after child after person bent over the garbage can and spat.  I looked over at the twins, trapped in their high chairs, and they were inconsolable.  I carried the can over and they blew out the vegemite slurry in their mouths.  Poor Elouise had big, sad tears and a look on her face that said, "Why, daddy?  Why would you do this to us?"

But things didn't stop here.  Vegemite toast appears to have adhesive qualities similar to spackle, and we immediately found that even after spitting, the flavor remains, as do little bits and specks in your teeth.  I didn't know if I should use my beleaguered tongue to scrape out the Vegemite -- thus tasting it more -- or leave it in my teeth -- thus tasting it more. I found iced tea in the refrigerator and swigged, and swished, and spit...and found marginal relief.  Unthinking, I upended the nearly empty jug in the sink as Angel screamed "NOOoooo!" over her outstretched hands.

The kids were still crying, by the way.

I sprinted across the house and out into the garage, where the beverage fridge sits, and found a 2-liter of diet orange soda.  I brought it back and poured glasses for all of the kids and handed it back to my red-faced wife.  There was a disgusting chorus of gargling and swishing, and we all, finally, found some relief from the oral putrefaction.

Whereupon we went out for brunch.

** beer wort is the raw barley malt / water / hops mixture that one boils for an hour before putting in a bucket with yeast to ferment for two weeks.  It's a heady aroma, malty, yeasty and warm-smelling.  If you've ever driven by a distillery, it's much the same.

Aussie Weekend, 'Mate

Saturday was an off-kilter day at the Eating Like The World laboratories.  Friday night was spent at the drive-in, and we didn't turn in until three in the morning -- well, the kids fell asleep way before that, but Angel and I were awake until three.  So I didn't get up until 11:00 Saturday morning, which is uncharacteristic for me.  I spent the next hour and a half cleaning all of the dishes from Friday's awesome burgers, and then had to run into work for a few hours...and THEN run another half-hour north (I know, right?  Further north from Traverse City must put me in Canada, or Santa's Workshop, right?) to pick up an internet purchase for a friend of Angel.

When I returned, Angel already had dinner mostly prepared.  We had a pair of Australian staples:  Meat pie was the first.  We served it with a pea salad and had a dessert of the other staple: damper bread -- apple/cinnamon in our case.

Nobody really liked the pea salad -- peas and bell peppers and water chestnuts in some kind of white sour-cream-like sauce.  I like peas, especially fresh and snappy like these were.  I like bell peppers.  Together, though it left me cold.  Sorry peas'n peppers, no hard feelings.

The meat pie, on the other hand, was great.  Honestly, it was like a home-made, 12" beef pot-pie with no vegetables.  Savory, flaky, beefy...yum.  There wasn't enough to satisfy all the requests for seconds.  The damper, too, was pretty good.  Sort of like an apple-y sponge cake.  It was supposed to be covered with "golden syrup," which is totally unavailable in northern Michigan, and akin to a 50/50 corn syrup/honey mix, I guess.  We had some honey syrup and it was pretty good with that.

Sunday morning we tried a common Australian breakfast...and went out for brunch.  I'll save that for another post.  For dinner, Angel chose fish'n chips, a staple brought over from England, I'd wager.

We used whiting fillets, which still had the skin on one side, and made a batter using an Australian beer (*not* Foster's!!) that I'd found in an awesome beer store in Lansing.  We also sliced potatoes and made our own home-made chips.  The fish was pretty good -- the skin imparted more of a fishy flavor than I prefer, but the batter was golden, crispy and great, and the fish was white and flaky, apart from the skin.  I did have four pieces, I couldn't have hated it TOO much.  Even the kids ate fish, which they typically regard as on the same level as old socks or Brussels sprouts.

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Recipes: ...coming soon!