The Best Yet

Yesterday Aquila prepared this amazing Moraccan dish.  I had already went out for dinner but I snuck a few spoonfuls of it when I got home because it looked so good.  I didn't look at the recipe, so I'm not entirely sure what's in it besides chickpeas and tumeric.  I had it for lunch and dinner because it has been my favorite dish from the recipe book thus far.
By the way, I lied about the ginger beer...I said it was ok, but that's entirely not true.  The more I tried it the worse it became.  I think our friend Regina described it best when she said it tasted like Pine Sol.  That is a precisely correct comparison.  I managed to drink an entire glass somehow.  The rest is still in the fridge.  Aquila only made it through a few sips.  We thought about tricking our friends into thinking it was great, but that seems too mean.  It reminds me a lot of this soda in Kenya called Stoney, which is a little like ginger ale to the extreme.

The Recipes Continue

Don't worry--we haven't given up on cooking the street food.  It's only that I can't keep up with blogging.  I actually forgot to photograph the last 2 dishes I made.  Perhaps I purposefully forgot during my kashata disaster.  Kashata is a dessert with coconut, peanuts, and sugar, which are then rolled into balls.  I remember seeing it frequently sold in Kibera, always sitting in plastic containers with blue lids.  I'm fairly certain that it was typically rolled in sesame seeds too (although my recipe didn't call for any).  I don't know why, but I never actually tried kashata in Kenya, which is unfortunate seeing as mine didn't turn out at all. The recipe tells you to cook the sugar and then add the other ingredients.  And then magically the whole mixture is supposed to become sticky and roll into a ball.  Perhaps my phone ringing in the middle of my attempt threw the whole thing off.  Let's just say that mine looked merely like crumbs.  My friends decided to buy ice cream and use it as sprinkles on top...a very nice Valentine treat indeed, although not very African.  At least it got eaten.  We hate wasting food in my house (something about seeing people in Kenyan who often didn't have anything to eat will do that to a person), and so we get creative about finding ways to finish eating whatever we fix.

The next dish I made was a lentil stew from Ethiopia.  This one actually turned out nicely.  Basically it was jut lentils with nutmeg, garlic, and some other spices.  It was a basic dish, nothing fancy about it, but good just the same.  There were no disasters in my attempt.

Last night Aquila and I attempted making ginger beer, which is not alcoholic at all but very potent indeed.  We had to grate 1/2 cup of ginger, which by the way is soooo much, in case you've never grated ginger before.  Our hands were hurting by the end.  Then we poured hot water over the ginger and let it sit all night before adding sugar, lemon juice, and cloves this morning.  We had to dilute the mixture with more water and more sugar because the ginger taste was over powering.  The drink isn't exactly bad but it's so strong.  I told Aquila we won't be fixing this for any get togethers!  i only had a few sips, and now it's sitting in the fridge until I can handle a few more sips. 

I am feeling really blessed to be able to try so many new foods.  We have created our own little international kitchen, right here in the Midwest.  Hope you all are having a blessed week.  Enjoy the sunshine that God has given us today.

Ministry in Chicago and Crafting with Friends

Yesterday was a relaxing afternoon of making some Valentine's crafts.  My friends and I are obsessed with Pinterest (what girl isn't?), so most of our inspiration came from that site.  My basement became filled with lots of people and lots of paper hearts.

On Saturday I went with some friends to help with a homeless ministry in Chicago.  Basically a group of people, mostly college students get together every Saturday evening to walk the streets of downtown Chicago.  They bring sandwiches to people living on the streets.  Once we arrived we split into small groups.  Micah, Kelsey, and I walked along State Street.  There was another group passing out food in a nearby location, so we didn't meet that many people, although we did find a few.  Micah had the idea of bringing hot chocolate along to offer to people since it was so cold.  So there we were...three people and three thermoses full of hot chocolate.  We got a lot of stares from other shoppers who were wondering just why we were walking along with thermoses (that were very 70's looking by the way).  The first guy we met seemed like he was okay with talking to us at first.  After we introduced ourselves he asked us about our jobs and lives.  We gave him hot chocolate and then Micah asked if he'd like us to pray with him.  Now I must say we were never very pushy about praying with people.  The idea was to be kind and get to know these people week after week to eventually build up a relationship with them.  Micah has already done this with several people.  Unfortunately the man was really not happy when Micah started asking about prayer.  He kept saying, "I pray with my life."  And he got really angry even though none of us was arguing about anything.  Then he told us it was the worst hot chocolate he'd ever tasted and threw it all over the sidewalk.  I wasn't offended by this.  After all, I'm sure this man has been through a lot, and I'd probably be very bitter about living on the streets.  But I feel sad that we probably made his day worse. 

Our other encounters with people were much more positive.  People were pretty friendly and happy to speak with us.  One man smiled a lot and was extremely positive.  He was a great encouragement to me and reminded me about having a positive attitude no matter what we're going through.  He said that it wasn't really that cold out compared to what it could be. 

I, on the other hand, thought it was extremely cold.  My hands started getting cold in the first 30 minutes of walking.  I wasn't that worried until they started going numb a while later and then I started experiencing stabbing pain in my hands.  I have really poor circulation, and even wearing gloves was not helping.  At that point I pretty much couldn't think anymore because I was so focused on my hands and how much pain they were in.  It was nearly time to meet back up with the whole group for a Bible study, and so I just kept walking straight to the meeting point (which was inside), ignoring everything else around me.  All I could think about was getting inside.  Here I was, unable to make it 2 hours in the cold, and yet these people we met were sleeping on the streets overnight.  I know that I would never be able to make it, and therefore I am humbled at how difficult life must be for them. 

The Bible study consisted of all the volunteers plus about 5-7 homeless men.  The message was about building a caring community and support system amongst each other.  I won't disclose the location where we met, but it was in a public place, and I'm quite impressed that no one minds all those people meeting there with thermoses and left over sandwiches and bags of clothes, etc.  It truly is a blessing to all get to come together in a warm place.

Let us be thankful tonight if we have warm houses to sleep in.  God is good my friends.

Here are the crafting pics:

Meat or Fruit?

It's never a good sign when your dessert dish looks like fried chicken.  I didn't think fried food could be messed up so easily.  Let me explain.  Today I ventured into trying to cook fried mango fritters, which are suppposedly from Tanzania according to the cookbook.  However, Kenyans, who don't live all that far from Tanzania, have never heard of this.  I think someone made it up.  That should have been my first warning sign.  Anyway, I retract my previous statement that all the recipes in the book are easy, especially now that I've been glancing through the Asian section.  I think I'm going to have to call for back up assistance with those dishes because they have lots of ingredients and require yeast...something that gives me trouble.  I tried making homemade bread a few weeks ago, and it would never rise correctly.  it was the most dense loaf of bread ever.  I told Aquila she wasn't allowed to offer it to any of our guests.

The mango recipe should have been easy though.  It's just breaded fruit.  How hard can it be?  I think something's wrong with the recipe because the batter was sticky and goupy.  I even tried it twice with no improvement.  It was all I could do to get a little breading to stick to the mango.  And after I fried them it looked like a plate of chicken fingers staring back at me.  I was ready to get out the honey mustard sauce.

The other significant problem is that I think it's nearly impossible to find a quality mango in this country.  They don't exist (except for one or two rare times I've bought them).  Mostly I've completely given up on trying to buy them.  There's something wrong when the fruit is soft and "ripe" and yet still green colored.  I didn't like mangoes at all until I went to Kenya, and that's because all the ones I had here were never ripe.  I actually initially thought they were kind of sour.  Isn't sad that in America I think the frozen mangoes taste better than fresh ones?  The ones I bought today I had to completely dissect to cut out some strange brown marks in the middle.  I thought it was rotten, but it didn't taste like it. 

The verdict: just eat a regular mango....in Kenya or another country that grows them.  And seriously, don't fry them. 

A Nicaraguan Treat

So my street food cookbook has become popular, and now my roommate Aquila is into the idea of helping make some of the dishes.  I'm rather grateful because that means we get to eat twice as much great food.  Seriously, if you came into our house on any given night of the week, you'd think you weren't in America or that at least one of us was from another country.  I can't remember the last American thing I've cooked.  Wait, that's not totally true because on Sunday I made Skyline dip (a Cincinnati tradition) for a Super Bowl party.  Although I'd hardly count that as cooking because all you do is open cans and boxes and throw everything together.  I'm not really into that box kind of "cooking," but sometimes you need small reminders of home.

Anyway, Aquila made this Nicaraguan dish called Gallo Pinto.  We're all about improvising in this house, so she used chick peas instead of pinto beans.  But the results were still great.  It's mainly a rice dish with cilantro, chili powder, and garlic topped with tomatoes and sour cream.  I'm sold on the idea.  And it's easy, which is even better.  That seems to be the trend with this book that things only take a few ingredients and a few steps. 

I have an entire grocery list ready with ingredients just for recipes in this book.  I think I would be cooking something everyday if only I had a stocked refrigerator! 

Mandazi Pics

Here are the pictures from my mandazi making. 

Mandazi!!

It's amazing how a little cooking can be so completely relaxing for me (thank you Jesus that cooking is enjoyable to me!).  It has been a bit of a hectic day...one can always tell the state of my life by examining my purse.  When everything is organized and in it's place, one can assume that I'm balancing my time quite well and feeling good.  And then there's days like today, when the state of my purse goes beyond even Mary Poppins' carpet bag.  My friend Kelsey was trying to help me find my camera in my purse, but she became overwhelmed by the amount of stuff she was looking through.  She pulled out a few items before politely suggesting that maybe I should wash the flour off my hands and attempt to dig through everything to find it.  I literally dumped everything out and looked multiple times before retrieving it.  But I am now totally calm and at peace after my adventure preparing recipe #2 from the street food extravaganza book.  I chose to make mandazi, which is a familiar favorite from Kenya.  I first learned about mandazi back in 2008 from my friend Lyonne, who would prepare batches of it at the house where I was staying in Nairobi.  While I learned the Lyonne version, I never mastered the actual street vendor mandazi taste because the recipes were slightly different.  Clearly I've spent 4 years completely missing out on the true mandazi experience--until now. 

Mandazi is basically just fried dough: flour, sugar, baking powder, and a few spices, mixed together, rolled out and cut into triangles.  Then you fry them up in good old oil, and WaLa... you have mandazi.  It's less sweet than our sugary American donuts and funnel cakes but good just the same for it's simplicity.  There's no extra icing or powdered sugar involved.  One time I made the Lyonne version for my church during a presentation I gave about Kenya.  Much to my dismay, my mom insisted on dumping cinnamon and sugar all over the top of them to give them more taste.  Meanwhile I nearly had a meltdown as I complained that she was ruining their authenticness.  (By the way I love my mom dearly, and I'm basically a hypocrite because I've come to love smearing jam all over my chapati...not exactly the way Kenyans eat them!). 

The whole endeavor was short and sweet.  I got all excited and started jumping up and down as the mandazi fried in the pan.  They turned out pretty much like the real thing, I think.  The only slight difference is that we're on a bit of a health kick at our house, so we're using white whole wheat flour these days (I figure Kenyans are practical and use what they have, so I cannot bother myself with making a trip to the store for white flour).  So they were very brown looking mandazi but nice and fluffy and delicious all the same.  It takes me right back to those Sunday mornings last summer when Rachel and I would leave our apartment early in the morning to spend time doing devotions with the boys from the juvenile.  We never made time for breakfast at home, so we'd grab some mandazi from the street vendor near Kibera before jumping on the bus.  I can perfectly picture the lady cooking the mandazi, flipping each one as the oil sizzled.  Ahhh, yes...

I will post pictures of my mandazi goodness soon because at the present moment I have left my camera cord in the computer at work--typical.  So in the meantime, perhaps I should go clean out my purse!