For most of you, making your own food is like breathing, nothing special, just something you do every day. For us, not so much. It is quite an adventure.
Sure, before I moved to Taiwan I did make all my meals for myself, and did so quite fine if I remember correctly (though to be honest I do not quite remember what I could have made day-in-and-day-out as I seem to have lost all cooking skills that I may have at one time had).
As mentioned before, this whole inconvenience of not being able to just hop on a scooter and grab a meal - any meal any time of day - is taking some adjusting. But, it is great as well! We totally want to learn how to cook awesome food (Jamie Oliver is a cooking-hero of ours), and since we're blessed with all this free time being kind of stuck at home with nothing to do, that's basically all that we have on our agenda outside of hang out with Leona (well, Judge also has "Study English" and "Study Norwegian" and I have "Scour the internet for tempting job postings"). And I have to admit Judge has just totally taken off and taken over, thank goodness, as I have a foot good and stuck in the lazy camp.
In order to get some fresh air and not go stark raving mad, we also head to our local supermarket (ICA) and pillage the '50% off due to expiry date' shelves daily, to see what kind of special ingredient we will be adding to the day's dinner.
[Sign of daily savings]
Dinner has tended to consist of rice or root-mush, a protein (fish or meat-patties or chicken etc), steamed broccoli or cauliflower, sometimes a freshly baked bread (or baked fresh that morning at least), and a daily salad. Oh, and can't forget CAKE! Muahahahah. Mom always comes home in the middle of dinner-prep, and usually helps us with the fish especially. Can I say yum?!
Samples:
[A fish dish]
[Lettuce, avocado, tomato, celery, shredded carrot, apple and smoked trout, drizzled with oil]
[Love of my life: Norwegian Chocolate Cake - my birthday cake for the first 16 years of my life]
Now, the bread warrants some special attention. A few years ago my sister shared this amazing video with me, that totally blew my mind, but I couldn't try it out as Taiwan didn't have the right gear necessary - a full sized oven and an iron pot and lid.
Norway's a totally other story (happy dance!). I'm in charge of the bread-making, and have been experimenting with different flours (spelt (?), rye, barley, and then of course normal wheat flour). They all kind of taste the same delish to us.
The prep takes all of 2 or 3 minutes total. The baking takes 50 min total, and 'resting' takes 10-15 minutes...if we can take it. And, it's a success every time. No-kneed bread miracle:
[The dough waiting to be plopped in the piping-hot iron pot]
[The cute pig-cutting board...just because]
[Plopped]
[Done!]
[In all its glory]
Upcoming we will be having a crock-pot bonanza, as ours arrives in the coming week (fingers crossed, drool-catcher on the ready).
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Awesome. You are always such a wealth of information. Am goanna make me some bread, and that salad looks great too. Big Hug.
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