Making a comeback!

It's been a while. Oddly enough, I've been kind of busy. Who knew a baby would take up so much time? He's a pretty cute distraction from the blog, though.

Our food adventuring ground to a halt before and after Luke arrived, and I've just regained the energy to play around in the kitchen again. I've got itchy feet, but since we won't be travelling anywhere soon, I'm planning to continue exploring the world of food from my kitchen and neighborhood.

This blog started in January 2009, when I was an antsy, vaguely unmotivated grad student. I got the idea to set a cooking challenge for myself, selected 20-odd dishes to learn how to make, and muddled my way through fun dishes such as tamales, mole, dolmades, and potstickers. It was fun, and overall (I think) a success- I learned a lot of new techniques and more importantly- I gained a lot of confidence in the kitchen. I was enthusiastic about food before, but I think learning how to make seemingly complicated dishes has heightened my appreciation of various cuisines.

Then, we moved. To rural Kenya. It was a challenge to cook fancy and familiar foods there, but I enjoyed having something to do while Nathan worked and I job-searched. Then I got pregnant and my enjoyment of food disintegrated into a sad, dismal heap. It took a while to regain my tastebuds and a stable stomach, but in the mean time, I enjoyed blogging about horrible train rides, Kenyan weddings, and hyenas.

But now! I'm back! I'm hungry, I'm slightly less sleep-deprived, and I have a baby who is about to start eating solid foods! Not only that, but I'm living in a house with a gloriously huge kitchen complete with a 6-burner gas stove. Six burners! Imagine!

Needless to say, I'm inspired, and I'm looking forward to lots more food explorations in 2012. I've been concocting a plan for the next year's worth of culinary adventures and I'm excited to learn more kitchen-y tricks this next year.

Did you notice a difference in the blog? It's pretty, yes?! I gave Nathan free reign over the design of the blog and he cooked up this beautiful design. I love it, and the new look makes me look forward to more blogging. (Unfortunately my photo quality probably won't get better anytime soon, since my best and most convenient camera is my iPhone.)

I'll be back soon to share my personal food challenge for 2012- I'm looking forward to exploring food from a range of experiences: from my stovetop to restaurant visits, from the farm to my kitchen, and exploring new (to me) cultures, food-related books, and some ethical food dilemmas as well!

Catching up: recent food adventures

On a lighter note, since my last blog entry was more serious...

... I thought I'd briefly post some pictures of recent meals.

I've been food-blog-crushing on Joy the Baker for a while, and when she posted this recipe for Hasselback potatoes I had to try it. Truly revolutionary- and how pretty and fancy do those potatoes look? I pretty much ignored her pesto recipe because we found huge bunches of basil for about $0.25 each in Nairobi, so we've been making massive batches of super-cheap pesto (basil+lemon zest+ lemon juice+pepper+salt+olive oil+local macadamia nuts). But the potato part? Dead on. So yummy. We highly recommend. It's pretty simple (and simpler if you use store-bought pesto but not *quite* as yummy) and looks gorgeous on a plate! 

Remember when I made mole? I brought some chipotle and pasilla chiles with us to Kenya, and have made several giant batches of sauce recently. Nathan recently learned how to make chapatti (which are a common food item here) and quickly altered the recipe to be less oily and made with more whole wheat flour, resulting in: tortillas! Hooray! We've been having lots of chicken, mole sauce, black beans, sukuma wiki, and avocado soft tacos. I'm trying to up my protein intake, ya know, for the baby, and the mole totally does the trick! 

Pumpkin pie. From scratch. I roasted a pumpkin, Nathan magically found condensed milk at a store in Nairobi, and of course I had all the necessary spices. Nathan also contributed by making the crust, since I lack the patience to make pie crust. We made one pie for a Thanksgiving celebration and immediately made another a few days later- and yup, that's real whipped cream! 

Also from Thanksgiving- we hosted one of Nathan's bosses and several of his PhD students and Kenyan co-workers for their first Thanksgiving celebration- we rotisseried a chicken, I made the aforementioned pie, mashed potatoes, mushroom gravy (so good!), and a rice pilaf thing with butternut squash, sukuma wiki (the world's most versatile veggie!), carmelized onions, cranberries (sent from the states!) and balsamic reduction. It was tasty, too. 

This is Nathan's doing. I believe it was in the midst of my first trimester anti-food period, and Nathan took up the slack and did a lot of the cooking. He made potato cakes with (you guessed it) sukuma wiki, cheese, and seasonings, served with a side of lime-and-chili-roasted broccoli. It was amazing and probably the healthiest thing I'd eaten in a month. (Seriously.) 

Somewhat less food-related, but still fun- we celebrated Geemi's birthday on New Years Eve out at Fisi Camp, and I made him his first birthday cake. As far as I can tell, many Kenyans aren't big on sweets, but the cake was a huge hit with at least the American researchers. It was my first layer cake, too... chocolate with raspberry filling and chocolate buttercream frosting. It was incredibly rich and perhaps too dense but the flavors were great. I went through a brief chocolate cupcake phase and I've discovered that adding cinnamon to any basic chocolate batter recipe makes the end result that much better. 

For Geemi's birthday gift, we surprised him with a bee suit- he loves honey and frequently assists people with honey collecting. Until the bee suit, he did it entirely unprotected (by which I mean... he often just wore his skivvies so that he wouldn't get bees trapped under his clothes.) We're hoping the bee suit will prevent some stings!

The other night Nathan roasted potatoes, carrots, and green beans in balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and herbs d'Provence. Totally delicious. I'd never thought of roasting veggies in balsamic vinegar as well as olive oil until we were recently served it at Fisi Camp, and it's delicious. It adds a sweet, earthy, tangy touch. 

One of Nathan's bosses briefly visited a few weeks ago and brought us two giant jars of totally mind-blowingly good Dutch peanut butter. I immediately turned the peanut butter into dessert by dipping it in dark chocolate. We call these creations "Safari Poops" which only makes sense if you know what gazelle and zebra poos look like:

I don't know exactly what animals made all the poops- but the smallest on the right are tiny dikdik poos, and the large ones are zebra poos. The others are assorted ungulate poos, like impala, thomson's gazelle, and grant's gazelle. 

Yes. That's fondue. We made fondue! In Narok! We were pretty excited. We found semi-decent gruyere at the Nakumatt in Nairobi, and some ok sharp-ish cheddar cheese at a dairy in Eldoret. (Long story short: the trucking town of Eldoret in Western Kenya has a dairy which makes cheese, yogurt and ice cream. The cheese ranged from awful (the blue cheese) to ok, and we accidentally (language barrier) bought 2 kilograms (that's 4.4 lbs) of cheddar and Derbyshire cheese.) Anyhow! I turned some of this into a fondue and we gorged. So yummy! In retrospect, I should have burned the alcohol of the white wine off a little better because it was potent. Altogether though, the fondue was a total treat! 

And, who can resist a picture of a cute tiny black backed jackal? They really are surprisingly small- maybe 15-20 lbs or so. This little guy was gnawing on a snack (dead bird, I think?) just off the road and couldn't be interrupted from his meal to run away, so we stopped and watch him munch for a while. 

Catching up: Tanzania

We went to Tanzania a few weeks before Christmas. I'm of mixed feelings over the whole experience, in part because, at the time, I was about 11-12 weeks pregnant and feeling like death warmed over. In retrospect, this was probably not the ideal time for a week long journey (for Nathan's work) into rural northwestern Tanzania.

However, I am glad to have seen Tanzania, and been able to compare it a bit to the area of Kenya that we live in. We were shocked to see how much cleaner most of the villages were- in Kenya many communities are surrounded by trash, strewn about and blowing in the wind. Most communities that we saw in Tanzania were very tidy, in contrast. I'm not sure if this is a relative poverty thing- if those Tanzanian communities were unable to afford to buy items that eventually became rubbish (plastic bags, soda bottles, etc.) or if there is a cultural difference (and these particular Tanzanian communities value tidiness more). Regardless, most villages were pleasant and tidy looking- the countryside is really beautiful.

Another really interesting difference was the number of bicyclists. We've since discovered that there are many towns near Lake Victoria in Kenya that have a lot of bikers, too- but this was our first time noticing a large number of people getting around by bike. Most bikes serve a dual purpose- to carry additional passengers, or to carry various bags/bushes/loads/dead animals/live animals. Most of these areas are pretty flat, making a bike a great way to get around- and it seemed there were tiny bike mechanic shops on every corner in every village. I think more Americans would bike if there were inexpensive repair shops every few hundred meters. (And if it were flat and warm and sunny all the time, but that's another issue.)

Look closely. Yup. Cow legs. 

An impressive walking load. 

I also saw Lake Victoria for the first time. The lake is hugely polluted from the major cities on it, and also has been taken over by invasive hyacinth plants, but is still an impressive sight. There are apparently a ton of tiny fish in it, as evidenced by this market in Musoma (a town on the lake)- a huge swath of unidentified tiny fish drying in the sun. We didn't get a chance to try them- and the lake is so polluted that I'm not sure it would be wise?

Gazillions of tiny dried fish, with Lake Victoria in the background

Market stalls in Musoma, most selling large scoops of tiny dried fish.

The main purpose of the trip was to visit a CARE project site in very rural Mugumu, after attending a meeting in Musoma. Nathan visited a ton of communities that have water projects funded (in part) by his organization. I believe the visit part went well, but we were extremely 'challenged' by the hotel that we stayed at in Mugumu- The Giraffe Hotel (which we do NOT recommend) is the only option for a relatively safe place to stay. Aside from lack of power/water for a large part of the day (not really a big deal), and confusingly muddled service (also expected) the food situation was extremely difficult... and puzzling. Have a look at their menu.

In particular, note our favorite, "Critmas clomourpud cake". Even after asking multiple staff/cooks, we were unable to ascertain what, exactly, this delicacy is. At one point a cook described it as a 'pudding cake with large... you know.. coming up, and sparkling'. Um. Unfortunately, though their written menu was extensive we found after two nights that they only really had goat, ugali, rice, french fries, tea, and noodles served with carrots and green pepper. You can guess what we ordered. (And then waited 2-3 hours for.) (I didn't get a picture, but their menu even offered bagels and bialys. I did ask for them but, shockingly, they were 'out'.)

The biggest mystery is how they wrote their menu- and where they got the idea for 'beatroot' and asparagus with goat cheese. We're fairly certain none of those items has ever been within 200 kilometers of Mugumu. 

WARNING, GRAPHIC: The final challenging part to the whole trip was that it is the time of year when the Kuria tribe, who largely live in the areas we were visiting, conduct their traditional circumcisions. Or, in the case of the females, female genital mutilation (FGM). Boys and girls of around 14 years old undergo this right of passage annually, even though it is illegal in both Kenya and Tanzania. While the boys lose just a bit of flesh (I believe it's a pretty typical 'trimming'), the girls lose a very large part of their genitalia. Without getting too graphic (though I do encourage you to educate yourself), most of these women will have to have their vaginas 're-opened' (with a razor) after they are married to facilitate sex, and then opened further just before birth to allow the passage of a baby. Tanzania, especially this area, has a very high rate of HIV/AIDS, in large part due to FGM and circumcisions, as they often re-use the razors on multiple teenagers. 

As we travelled back from Mugumu to the border, we witnessed countless parades of young men and women and their families, celebrating post-procedure. (We did get a few discreet pictures of the parades but I don't think it's appropriate to share them in this venue.) The boys might be pale and slightly staggering along, but the girls... many seemed as if they could barely walk, with blood soaking their skirts. It was horrible to see. While I do appreciate that the tribe sees these events as a celebration of coming-of-age, marking the teenagers belonging in the community, it is unfortunate that it spreads disease, and causes such pain (and sometimes death) now and in the future. I hope that this matter is something that the Tanzanian and Kenyan governments take a stronger stance on in the future. 

So, as you can tell- our time in Tanzania was both good and really hard. I'm glad for the experience.