Thank you internet

Because of the internet, and the ridiculously low (comparative) cost of nuts in central Asia, I have started making cashew milk rather than worry about shipping in enough boxes of rice milk, and expiration dates, and nobody even likes it all that much anyway.

Because of cashew nut milk becoming a regular staple, and doing some experimenting with the recipe (more sweet vs. more savory), I have come up with a version of the milk that I decided would be a good cow's milk substitute for Alex's favorite, birthday-request dinner - that she hasn't tasted in two years.

It turned out delicious.  I have a very happy little girl who will scarf this down tomorrow night while the rest of us eat enchiladas smothered in cheese.

Dinnertime, foreign service style

Last night for dinner we had steaks, snow peas, and baked potato. Halfway through the meal Terry looked at me and said "You know, these peas cost more than the steaks."

Bless America!

One of the many blessings of annual trips home is we appreciate our country in ways that people who don't leave it for extended periods of time can't.  I don't think I will ever tire of an American grocery store even after we retire and spend decades in one place. So much stuff. So many choices. Thank you America, for having sugar snap peas, fresh green beans, endless sweet corn, steak, bacon (both piggy and turkey varieties), hot dogs, Turkey Hill All Natural ice cream, any kind of otherwise dairy food in a dairy free option (Alex has eaten her own weight in Tofutti Cuties). And when I go through the produce section, it is possible that I may not find even one rotting piece of fruit, even if I am looking for it. I think I gained 5lb in our first week. We've eaten Chinese, Thai, BBQ, Nepalese, real PA pizza, cheesesteaks (No, NOT with "whiz". The better, Lehigh Valley style with Provolone and tomato sauce).

It's mostly the food, but it is not just the food. I speak the language fluently. "Graduate school in this language" level of fluency, truth be told. It means I can communicate anything I want with anyone I want. Customer service? Ooooh. Nobody does customer service like good ol' USA - except the Japanese. But here, as aforementioned and how we can distinguish from Japan, I speak the language. And, for the most part, things just work properly here. This bears repeating. Things just work properly here. Until you live somewhere that things just don't work I don't know if you can have the same level of appreciation. Maybe you can. I didn't.

It's easy to watch the news and figure our country is going to hell in a handbasket. But the on-the-ground truth is that there just isn't anywhere quite like home.

Sheep

My dad knows a guy ... he's got some sheep. Well, he had about 700, then they all bear twins so now it's more like 1200 or something like that. The numbers are fuzzy. The lambs are fuzzy too.  While we were in England (yeah, the trip was practically a month ago) we got to visit a sheep and cattle farm. We had a blast!  The kids especially loved hand feeding a few baby lambs - normally the mama takes care of the babies but sometimes you get a bad mom, or something happens to her, so they hand feed.  Apparently sometimes they can convince a different mama to "adopt" a baby or two.  We also got a see a one day old calf. We also got to ask a lot of questions about their care and the operation of a sheep farm. Career #next?  

Ben Nevis

A long, long time ago Terry met a guy who introduced him to the Scotch of Ben Nevis distillery.  This stuff is rarely found outside Scotland. The first bottle was purchased in Edinburgh, if I remember correctly. The second bottle when we made the pilgrimage to the distillery itself.

The distilery won't ship outside the UK, and we can't receive liquids anyway.

In preparation for our trip to England we decided to try to order some Scotch and have it shipped to our hotel. But ... the web site doesn't have a place to enter a different ship to address than the bill to address.  When I tried calling I got a repeated busy signal.

And then I sent an email.  Through email, the manager? owner? really awesome guy who works there agreed to send it to the hotel where we will be staying and when we get there we can call him with our credit card information so he can be paid.  In the end I was able to work out with him a Paypal invoice that we could pay in advance, but in the meantime he had gone ahead and sent the Scotch so it would be sure to arrive while we were still in country.

And now the bottles sit proudly on our apartment waiting for the jet lag to subside so Terry can properly enjoy them.

Love good customer service.

Happy birthday darling

Today is something like Terry's birthday. Although he downplays these annual displays we do at least normally get ourselves some good grub.  Unfortunately, our plans for tonight had to go on quick reshuffle when Alex complained this morning that she didn't feel so good and a quick zap with the new fun ear thermometer revealed 104. (I doubted so whipped out the old glass-and-something-not-mercury-anymore but it was right).

At least we'll still have pie.

Barcelona: Montjuic Castle

One thing to know about travelling to Barcelona in February: a lot of stuff is closed. No magic fountain, no cable cars, no Tibidabo. In some ways it makes things easier, not quite so much to decide between in our few short days.  On Tuesday we decided to see what we could find in Montjuic Park, which appeared from our map to host about a dozen museums and tourist sites.

We chose Montjuic Castle for the first (and as it turned out only) stop.  It is mostly a ruin, just the walls really, but the views are stunning.  Looking out over the sea one direction and what seemed to be all of Barcelona city the other direction, one could easily see why a fortress was placed here.  When we got to the top the kids commandeered a turret and happily played with their toys while I soaked up some sunshine and Terry took photos.

When we tired of the views we decided to wander the park and see what else there was to see.  When cutting through some greenery we saw this

Why don't more people take advantage of hills by building a slide right into it?  It is the shortest and safest way to get a kid from point A (high) to point B (low).  They had a blast going up and down, and when it was time to continue on Terry and I also popped on for the ride down.  And of course a few short meters along the path we came to a playground with a cafe next to it. Sadly, the cafe was not open or we could have sipped cappuccino and nibbled on something and been very refined while the kids acted like wild savages.

We could have continued on, but with the cafe closed and us not having enough snacks in our bags and being a no-nap day we were all getting grumpy so we cut it short and headed back.  There's a mall by the metro so we jumped in for some late touristy lunch, then decided to see if the mall had a grocery store (common in Europe. Why don't we do this in the U.S.?)  Yup, so we got a few things we needed then noticed a "bio store" (bio = organic).  I found my beloved Oatly milk that I discovered in Malta and grabbed some soy milk yogurt - what a treat! Should have gotten more as Alex ate hers then half of mine.  On the way home from the metro we stopped in the little grocery store/tourist goods store right by the metro and picked up a few bottles of wine. We did not buy the 1 Euro wine but seriously considered it.

What we packed

Just got home from an amazing week in Barcelona.  Fresh air we could breathe! Sunshine! Beautiful sights, beaches, food! We'll be updating the blog with the full report in due time  ... for now, this is what we packed in our suitcases coming home:

• a melon
• 3 bottles of wine, none costing more than $6.00
• 2 bottles of olive oil, ditto on the prices
• 2 mangoes
• a bunch of clementines
• 2 blocks of Parmesan cheese
• several packs of piggy of various varieties (primarily jamon)
• 2 bunches of asparagus
• a kilo of green beans
• 2 parsnips
• a kilo of sweet potatoes
• a box of Oatly oat milk (expiration date November!)
• a box of rice-coconut milk (expiration date 2016!)

In addition, while in country we gorged on strawberries and cherries, tender beef, fish (for some), pig of various types (for others), cheap tasty wine, eggs with orange yolks, fresh baked bread from the local bakery (some days we visited them twice), and one day for a treat Terry and I shared a pint of Haagen Dasz mint chocolate chip.  Oh and we discovered a "bio" store where I bought a two pack of soy yogurt for Alex and me. She ate hers and half of mine.  We should have bought more. Even the tiny little markets near the apartment had soy, rice and coconut milks available, and some had several brands of each.

TEEESE!

Not a typo.  The other important delivery last week was non-dairy cheese (Mozzarella flavor), called Teese, that proclaims itself to be shelf stable. Yup, shelf stable!  I am not going to think about the processing that goes into that, because what it means is this:  We. Can. Make. Pizza.  Because of course, only a jerk makes pizza for dinner when one member of the family can't eat it yet wants to eat it.  We tasted it straight from the package and I thought it was disgusting, but kept my opinion to myself because really only Alex needs to like it and I was not interested in influencing that decision. After shredding it and putting it on top of homemade pizza dough and sauce, it was actually tasty and I was happy to share the non-dairy pizza with her.

We will be ordering it again. And the Cheddar flavor, to try it out.  Next up, when we have a chance to try it, will be a report back on the nondairy box mac n cheese we got.

CHEEEEEESE

I have lived overseas many times, even prior to the foreign service. Some of those times, I lived in places without access to cheeses normally found in the USA. Somehow, at those times, it never bothered me (perhaps because I was never in charge of cooking during those times, i.e. student days when my meals came from a canteen and I didn't have to worry about figuring recipes that strayed from what I knew and were comprised only of local ingredients?)  In any case, the lack of cheddar cheese has been affecting my family more strongly than we ever would have guessed.

And then we learned that cheddar can actually be shipped safely. It does not need to maintain refrigerated temperature (if you don't believe me, check out this scholarly tome from the University of Wisconsin. These are people who know cheese)!

After five months without a decent cheese, we learned that some ship cheddar through regular pouch. When it arrives, it is normally 100% fine.  We tried it with a 2lb block purchased off Amazon.  It arrived this week. Those of us who could have cheese gorged.  The next morning Zoltan asked for cheese and crackers for breakfast.  Oh, how did we manage before now?

Cashew Milk

The foreign service provides an amazing benefit to people posted in countries where many American products are not available - the Consumables shipment - that allows us to ship bulk quantities of items that get consumed (so of course food, but also paper products like tissue paper, napkins and the American glory, soft toilet paper!). The downside is we must make our last Consumables shipment before our last year at post begins. Many food items have a shorter shelf life than a year, so you're just out of luck those last months. Rice milk, specifically, starts to taste funky within a month of its expiration date, and that date is never a full year out.

In my infinite quest to ensure that Alex and I can continue to find dairy substitutes I have started testing out homemade recipes.  First up was rice milk.  The milk smelled funny but tasted fine, and I will probably play with it in the future.  However, at post nuts are plentiful, so we decided to try this cashew milk recipe.

Oh. My world is transformed.

The Ninja ground the nuts so fine even a mesh sieve didn't catch all the bits.  However, the milk settles nicely in the fridge and when I pour off from the top it is smooth, creamy, and just waiting for a chocolate chip cookie for dunking.

Good and Cheap

Leanne Brown is a food-studies scholar who wrote a book, Good and Cheap, that enables people on very tight budgets (think food stamps) to eat healthfully and deliciously for approximately $4 per day. It is a free .pdf available on her web site, and a second run of paper books will happen some day - soon, we hope.  Terry somehow found out about this book and we downloaded the .pdf to try it out.

Here's the thing.  The very basic, staple food items that are affordable to those on a tight budget are also staple items that can either be found overseas or ship well.  Also, the recipes use basic spices and simple pots, pans and casserole dishes - this should appeal to an audience who must carefully weigh (literally and figuratively) every kitchen appliance they want to have on hand.  People like us.  We have made three of the recipes so far - two have been completely delicious and one we plan to tinker with. Highly recommended.

(Belated) Merry Christmas to all

The waffles were made and eaten, as well as the homemade breakfast sausages (Note to husband, there is no such thing as too much maple. Thank you for the beef sausages).  A LOT of presents opened and then played with, batteries charged so other toys can be played with. New movies watched. Alex has not yet taken off the winter hat given to her by my in-laws, she loves it so much.  I had to break our resolve not to change out of pj's all day because we needed eggs - chocolate chip cookies can't be made without them.  Fresh bread, an apple pie in the oven and chocolate chip cookies the kids made - with minimal supervision - queued up.

Some highlights: Alex saying this was the best Christmas ever primarily because we got to wear pajamas all day, even when we went outside to play in the snow (thank you snowpants).  Alex excitedly running out to tell Terry about one of the kitchen science experiments we did this morning and telling him "It's all fizzing over like beer!" Zoltan making tunnels and mountains out of his own body as the new electric train runs around the track.  Terry got the VPN working so Target no longer scorns me when I try to access its web site.

And, for the first time ever, thanks to living in a Muslim country ...... when Terry cooks up his traditional Christmas ham for dinner there was a ham just for me made from beef!  Merry Christmas indeed!

Settling in

We have books on the shelves.  The children have toy storage furniture in their rooms and the toys to fill them.  The awesome two story UAB box fort is just a pile of recycled cardboard and I think I am the only person who mourned its passing. Four boxes and two suitcases of clothes, books and housewares to donate to the nuns.  Snow tires on the car. More shelving requested from GSO and all balconies are full. We finally reached critical urgency in getting Alex new ice skates as the rest of the family's skates have arrived and skating is once again on the family activity list (spoiler alert: we got skates this morning and hit the rink this afternoon).  Beer is brewing.

We have spices, sauces and seasonings. Terry doesn't even normally like Mexican food and we've eaten enchiladas, tacos and tortilla soup all in one week.  Turns out what I suspected is true ... I don't need much in the way of clothes, toys, games, gadgets. But I must have my kitchen/pantry in shape or I'm a big grump.  

Epic Thanksgiving Post

The problem with being married to someone with artistic and design experience is that it is difficult to argue convincingly with them about layout and design issues. Of course, the family also knows not to argue with mommy about spelling or grammar, we all have our strengths. Why am I writing about this on Thanksgiving? Because I want several photos included in this post and the only way Terry will agree is if I write enough to make the pictures look nice spread among the text.

When you don't have your stuff, a lovely chilled bottle of white wine makes an acceptable rolling pin for the pie dough.  A tiny baby medicine dropper is a better-than-nothing baster. The borrowed roasting pan is too small so you use a tray meant to fit into the Mickey Mouse oven we used before getting our hands on the full sized American one, with the cooling rack sitting atop (and you hope the cooling rack is actually safe to use at high temps).  You lose a lot of turkey juice goodness because the tray is shallow and any movement makes the liquid slosh over.  There's a lot of talk between Terry and me of how things will be different next year.  The good news is that even with all that, everything looks delicious - which is why I wanted so many photos!  Notice the tray the turkey is sitting on - it's our new Uzbek pottery platter that we bought when we had a local craft bazaar at the embassy a few weeks ago. I am so completely thrilled with our purchases.

This year we're doing Thanksgiving at home, with only one dinner guest.  I am pretty sure this is the very first turkey we have ever cooked - we've always had somewhere else to go for Thanksgiving.  I am amazed at how relaxed this day is.  I made cranberry sauce this weekend and apple pie this morning. Terry made an overnight bread (started last night, baked it today).  We made dressing this afternoon while the turkey cooked, and cut veggies for the raw veggie tray.  Terry made gravy and mashed potatoes while I managed to get our car washed - it is so pretty! Such a deep dark red!  We got to the produce stand near the house and ran a couple of other errands.  We even had time to watch Frozen as a family (only our 4th time) and the kids got naps.  Our guest brought roasted beets and pumpkin pie. We managed to hit pretty much every mandatory Thanksgiving day food item without having to freak out about timing.  Maybe setting dinnertime for 5:00pm has a little something to do with it?

We also got a surprise visit from the owners of this apartment, with sweets and happy Thanksgiving wishes.  So lovely!

cooking up a storm

Today the kids went to Sunday rugby.  Beforehand Terry made a full breakfast and I started bread.  After we came back:  pumpkin puree, pumpkin bread, applesauce, bread, oatmeal cookies, and homemade dinner.  It was quite a day.

We have friends with now-adult children. When we met them their youngest was a teenager.  They used to tell us to get the kids in the kitchen as young as possible. Part of the reason today's kitchen-fest was possible was that the kids helped and - as importantly - didn't need supervision so that it was help, not "help".

We still haven't convinced ourselves to work on their knife skills, though.  

Bringing home the bacon

This week I had my first business trip, to Almaty.  Part of my job is meeting with people doing work in different parts of Kazakhstan. It was a good trip, productive professionally and a good time personally to see another part of this enormous country.  Our hotel's dining room was on the top floor so when I walked in for breakfast yesterday I gawked like a country yokel at the stunning mountains that overlook the city. If Terry helps me I will upload the photos from my phone.

There was no time for sightseeing but I did manage to eat Indian and Vietnamese food so I was pretty happy. I also had an expedition to the grocery store. It is well known among the Astana embassy crowd that when in Almaty one must pick up some food items that are not sold in Astana. Sadly, the cheddar cheese was completely sold out - Philly cream cheese took up its old space on the shelf (one of the store workers brought me to exactly where the cheddar was).

I did, however, manager to snag a few pounds of bacon. My original intent was to fill the insulated lunch bag I'd brought for the purpose, then when I saw the price tag ($15) I decided Terry could savor the occasional strip.  I got the bacon into the hotel minibar fridge. The next morning I had to request ice from the hotel, then fill a Ziplock I'd brought for that purpose in an attempt to keep the bacon cold throughout a day of meetings and flight back to Astana.

When I got to our apartment tonight, some of the ice was indeed still solid, and the meat was still cool enough that I felt safe keeping it.

There is now absolutely no doubt who in this household brings home the bacon!!

Ribeye

There's a gourmet food store in town that people talk about because they sometimes get in bacon. When Terry went to check it out last week, they were out of bacon but told him they would have ribeye later in the week if he wanted to get some. Mmmmm ribeye. We knew it would be a treat and would definitely cost more than it would at home. We were prepared to pay up to double the usual cost because, you know, we're overseas.

I went to the store today and asked about the ribeye. Yes they have it, here it is. How much does it cost?  "Sixteen [and change]".  "Sixteen thousand?"  "Yes."

Friends, we declined to buy the $90.00 per kilogram ribeye.

Cashew milk

Astana is a consumables, Pouch-only post. There are few non-dairy milks to be found around town and the only ones I have heard of so far are ones I don't drink.  What does this mean? Any non-dairy milk I drink must be procured within the year after my arrival, and too bad that expiration dates don't quite take me all the way to the end of the tour. So, we will be experimenting with the home-grown variety.

On our super-productive trip to the rinok this weekend we found the nuts and dried fruit vendor and got a small volume of cashews to work with for our first experiment. We'd heard it was a super easy nut to milk and if the blender/food processor is good enough you don't even need to strain anything.

First off, we don't have our ship freight so we don't have the awesome Ninja blender. We have the tiny food processor that attaches to the 220v stick blender motor. Second off, ignore the first off. With our inadequate equipment and the need to strain the liquid I still managed to make something I wouldn't mind drinking with a chocolate chip cookie, PLUS a small batch of homemade cashew butter.  Cashew butter is relatively tasteless, or perhaps something is missing from the recipe?

Adventures in fresh produce

We love us some farmers markets, rinok, produce stands, whatever you want to call them. Although we had a major packout fail this time and didn't pack spices in air freight, when you have fresh produce you don't need much additional flavor. Plus, we like to do some "putting up", and made sure to put canning supplies in air freight.

All this leads to ... the weekend farmer's market running in Astana through the fall, wherein farmers from some nearby areas bring in their produce every weekend at low, low prices. We decided Saturday that it was a good use of our time to figure out the bus schedule and route and pile everyone out to the "сельскохозяйственная ярмарка" (agricultural fair). 

Unfortunately, by the time we got out of the house and the bus got through traffic, it was mid-day. The hoardes of people (yes, I used that word intentionally and ironically) meant that any stop at a stall to try to buy some of the food we came to buy would take longer than our patience and hunger levels could tolerate. For example when the kids and I went to the honey stand, a woman in line was calling out another woman for just walking up to the front and told her they had already been waiting 1/2 hour.

Conveniently, the mall next to the fair held Burger King, so it was lunch and back home for us. Getting what value we could from the experience, we silenced the whining Alex by telling her that when you try something new, sometimes it is wonderful and sometimes it doesn't quite work out.  The kids got 2 bus rides out of it, so they should have been pretty happy. 

We were wary, but in need of ingredients for various culinary projects so Sunday we headed out again. This time we got out earlier in the day, made the kids take backpacks with toys and snacks to keep them entertained while they waited for us to hunt and gather, and went to Evrazia.  The best way I can describe it is that it is as close to Sennaya Ploschad as anything I have found here so far. There's inside and outside vendors, selling all kinds of meats, farm fresh eggs, dairy products and fruit and veggies. Oh and honey too!

We got tomatoes, peppers and onions for salsa. We got three different varieties of apples for sauce, apple chips, and pie (one variety was pretty fresh/sour). The strawberries should have been passed over, but we ended up incorporating them into apple-strawberry sauce. I can't wait to make scrambled eggs from the 10 (they don't sell by the dozen here) that Terry chided me into buying - I was sure they would all break all over everything on the bus ride home. Can you tell which egg in the photo is store bought vs. market? And of course the honey! It is so good that offering the children bread and honey for treat elicits squeals, not groans.  We'll be back often.