Pomegranates

There are times when living abroad is a chore.  Especially with the two kids, on really rough days I can't help but think it would all be easier if we were back home . . . wherever home actually is for the two of us.

There are other days, like today, when it is just such a joy to live abroad.  Today's joy was brought on by the simple pleasure of making this tasty dish.  We invited our Pastor and his family over and the last time they were over, ages and ages ago, we had a nice meal - but Alister was upset because it was something they could have made themselves.  So today I decided to have fun and try something new, and warned Alister ahead of time that if it didn't turn out, he was to blame for me not playing it safe :-) (I had told him, after all that my alternate career path would have been a culinary institute had I not gone the four-year- college route - so he should have known that telling me my dinner was boring could be a bit of a dangerous challenge).

The reason the pomegranate chicken gave me particular joy, was that I was able to find the key ingredient, pomegranate molasses, in the nuts and fruit section of the market by our house.  Some things are impossible to find here - corn syrup, peanut butter, rice crispie style cereal - and then sometimes you run across something that you think - wow - what is that doing here? And so, after reading through the recipe for Pomegranate chicken, I was buying nuts from my fruit and nut guy and I look over and  see what appears to be a bottle of Pomegranate molasses.  Now, I know Walla Walla has moved up in the world since I was a wee lass, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to find Pomegranate Molasses there or anywhere outside of Seattle.  And so with the greatest of ease, I was able to pull off a tasty and unusual meal.  I did make apple pie for desert - just in case it was all a bust - but it wasn't, we all enjoyed it.  I have just enough molasses left to make this other recipe - which I nixed for tonight because of the chili content.  If I had a had a bit more time I would have done a whole pomegranate theme and served these sprouts as a side and had panna cotta ala pomegranate for dessert.  Maybe when you come to dinner?

Cranberry Vodka cookies

This is not a food blog.  There will be no fancy pictures making you drool.  No step-by step instructions.  Just a recipe and the fact that these are so yummy I had to share.
In Ukraine, vodka is cheap.  You can buy a liter for $2.  Gin, Whiskey, Bailey's - WAY more expensive.
So when I decided to look for a recipe for an odd cocktail - I found this Cranberry Vodka Tonic.
I made it - and in all honesty, it is so so  BUT while I was making it and straining and smashing out all the cranberries through the sieve - I discovered that the cranberries still had lots of cranberry flavour and I thought it was a waste to throw them away.  I decided to whip up my mom's 5-Way Holiday cookies (which are good if you want 5 varieties - but not good if you plan to give all five varieties away.  I just double the Orange Pecan addition by 5 and make a huge batch of it)  And add the remains of the cranberry vodka sludge to it.  WOW!  The cookies were super moist, super vanilla-y, with a lovely tart flavour from the cranberries and a deepening in flavour from the addition of the vodka.
The only draw back is that the cookies will be gone LONG before the batch of vodka.  May just have to figure out how to make the cranberry sludge without the Cocktail mixer.
The sludge left from the recipe (originally 1 lb of cranberries) was enough to mix nicely with 1/2 a batch of the Holiday cookies.

Sleds as transport

Our first years here in Ukraine, I watched with amusement as every winter people pulled out their wooden sleds with metal runners and started trotting about the icy streets with their kids in tow.  Didn't they know that the plastic sleds are faster?  That with the disks or even the toboggan rolls you could really get some speed?  Why were they bundling up their children and pulling them along the unevenly icy/ slushy / and bare walks that make up a neighbourhood.  Tsk tsk.  You would think that in the northlands, they would know how to use a sled.

Now, with a toddler and a baby - I understand much better.  The sled is transport before it is рецреатионал (which I guess explains why thе аverage cost is about $50 for a sled on runners.)  I guess when Saphira was wee, we had a more mild winter, and with a baby, if you choose not to go out, you don't go out.  No Problem.  With a baby AND a toddler, if you don't go out - there will be no nap time, and on a very unfortunate day bed time may also be delayed to a point where it is no longer productive for you to do anything after the child is in bed and you merely wave the white flag of defeat and crawl into bed after them.

And let me be very clear.  You cannot push a stroller one handed through snow and slush two feet deep at a curb while holding onto your toddler's hand. Pushing it with two hands is also a stretch.  Picking it up, hefting it through the mush while scrambling for your footing and hoping your toddler made it up the curb by herself in one piece and isn't currently howling, complaining of cold and wet, or deciding that the slush in the middle of the road is the perfect material for making a snowman- yep, that's about right.  And if there are any purchases - you know, the ACTUAL reason you decided to go through the half hour ordeal putting on everyone's snow suits, hats, gloves, and scarves (with more tears playing loudly during the exercises as we take turns being overheated and while I shout  - DO NOT TAKE THAT HAT OFF AGAIN, We are leaving, really we are leaving now.  We are leaving . . ..)  And passing past the door keeper once again in tears (What must they think?) to arrive, hot, and exhausted with the tears freezing on cheeks in front of our building -hoping that we can buy bread, eggs, milk and anything else we need before the whine of discontent begins again.  Thank goodness we can get most things through grocery delivery.

So today we bought a sled.  I have not tried it, but Alister says that it flies.  I have not worked out the full logistics of baby and toddler on the sled, or toddler pushing said baby on sled, or mother still slipping and sliding with said baby in ERGO.  We will let the drama and complications work themselves out as they come - for now, we have a sled as transport

Dr. Pepper

Did you know that Dr. Pepper is fruit flavoured?

I discovered this for the first time this year in the UK while reading a can of Dr. P.
Dr. Pepper, like pumpkin pie and chocolate chip cookies is purely American and isn't really exported much.  This catapults it to luxury item status  when you are away from home.  In general, I don't really drink soda, but when It is available (like when I'm back home in the US) - I drink Dr. Pepper.  Oddly, rootbeer isn't readily available either and it used to be my favorite beverage when I was little - but now I go for Dr. Pepper.

Anyway - Dr. Pepper has appeared in MY local grocery store for $1.10 per can.  Wow. Not sure those 23 fruit flavors are really worth that.  Still, when a friend offered to buy some from the US Embassy store for us -for the amazing US price of  55 cents - I couldn't resist - esp knowing that it costs so much in a local store.

So this winter, it's not about eggnog and cider - we'll be cracking open our Dr.Peppers and saying Happy Holidays to all.

Done

So in early October I posted my to do list.

Here is how that went:

Apple Sauce - 15 liters made and canned solely because a friend came and helped and pushed through with the boiling and mashing while I ran after and fed kids.

Beet chips: after 3 batches in the dehydrator and two in the oven failing to produce a lovely terra chip crisp snack - I decided to stop messing around with beets until I REALLY have time to mess around with beets.  And am ready to eat multiple kilos of them since Alister and Saphira both declined my experiments.

Carrot chips - didn't happen - but I did make a lovely ginger carrot soup.

Apple chips - lots.  Thanks mom for buying me the apple slicer for my birthday! It was a hit with Saphira too.

I also did about 4 kilos of peppers that I chopped up and froze.  I never got to the tomatoes before the prices went up (out of season) so they can wait for another year or two before I attempt it.

Pears: two batches - also extra tasty and hope to do more of them next year

Watermelons (2)- figured while I was at it - Picture something the consistency and sweetness of a starburst - but totally natural.  I actually prefer the dehydrated version to the real melon and Saphira eats them like candy (esp since we don't give her candy . . . . ).  The only depressing thing about watermelons is that you spend 18 - 20 hours cutting and drying the thing and to show for it you have 1 pint - that's right - a 1 pint jar of watermelon pieces.

I also managed to do the apple chutney and the mince pie filling.  Both were a bit more time consuming than in the past since I didn't have a food processor.  The food processor was one of the furnishing with the other apartment and while we have money set aside for one, I just haven't gotten around to doin ghte research and buying one.  So this year, the mince piece might not be so evenly minced - but I still reckon they'll be tasty.

Cranberries - you can't find the dried ones here and so I am experimenting with a tray of them now - burst and sweetened they taste almost like  craisens - though I think in the future the easiest thing to do would be to pureee it and then chop finely for fruit bites rather than try to preserve the integrity of individual berries.

I did stock up on lots of meat - but have done no grinding.  After various inquiries we learned that we would need to buy an electric meat grinder as the manual ones aren't good quality here anymore and its hit or miss to get one to grind.  We decided the cost of a new appliance didn't balance out the cost of saving on meat by grinding it ourselves (and then having all the clean up too).

Broccoli and cauliflower - This finally did happen, but only because a friend came and helped twice- getting the veggies cleaned and blanched and the kids looked after.  Until she came I kept buying huge amount of of cauliflower at the market only to eat it frantically throughout the week.  There were two weeks where the only vegetable we ate was cauliflower.

Zuchini - Did several batches of these because Saphira can actually help with it and I figured it would be good for quickbreads and muffins

Pumpkin - Froze one but didn't quite get to it before it started to spoil on me, so lost about half of it.

Besides my friend coming and helping out several days, the only reason I was able to do much of what I did was because Alister took a 10 day teaching trip to Siberia.  Now, Alister is a great help with the kids, and I really don't know how single moms manage - but still, I didn't really have to cook or clean much while he was gone, which leaves you a surprising amount of time for big projects.

Water

I wrote awhile ago about buying water.  Well the Kyiv Post ran a series on Kyiv water and have clarified the rumors of why we don't drink the water. (links to all articles in the series at the bottom of the article).  The winner . . . It was the chlorine.

We also discovered that the water we used to buy had a very high bacteria content.  Oops, maybe should have mixed it with the high chlorine tap water :-)  Well - we didn't order it too often as we mostly walked to the kiosk  and either way we switched companies (not one if the tested ones) when we came back in order to get a higher flouride content every once in awhile.

For the most part though - we are fetching our water from a kiosk - I guess though we should pay more attention to the Dept of Health review in the window or run our own test - apparently a violation in drinking water quality only carries a $100 fine.

To Do

It's Fall and time to get the food preservation on to save money (but not time) for the year

Here's (my hope I get it done) list of how I'm preparing for winter:

Canning apple sauce
freeze peppers
Dehydrate beet chips
Dehydrate apple chips
Dehydrate carrot chips (guess who got a dehydrator!)
Make apple chutney
Make mince pie filling
Buy Beef at the Harvest market and make ground beef
Buy potatoes
Buy, blanch, and freeze broccoli and cauliflower
buy tomatoes and make and freeze/can pasta sauce

Finding that my time with the two kids  - even with  lower expectations - is seriously inhibited and that what I can accomplish on my lists is frustratingly meager.

Still - here's hoping.