chunky chicken salad

sometimes we splurge.

and by splurge I mean buy and de-bone chicken. and buy five dollars worth of fruit, including a tiny little portion of purple grapes.

then Holli makes her chunky chicken salad and we both rejoice in occasionally making things that take a little more time, effort and money here.

what you'll need:

-chicken. we used two chicken legs, boiled them, took off the meat and then finished cooking the meat on the stove (save the bones and skin for later!)
-sour cream
-honey
-grapes
-apples (we used crab apples because they're in season right now and cheap)
-nuts of your choice (we used peanuts- because they're the cheapest)

chop, de-seed and mix.

enjoy with toast or if you really lucky and have just received a package of goods from your parents, some Wheat Thins :-)

kitchen sink soup

What does one make with a bag full of garden-grown potatoes and carrots, some soaked and sprouting chickpeas and some onions?

Add in water, vegetable boullion cubes, bell peppers, pasta and some leftover chunks of frozen chicken and you've got yourself a mish-mash vegetable soup that is super easy to make and perfect for a chilly fall evening.

I was so lazy I didn't even peel the potatoes, just washed them really well and cubed them. Then I threw everything together (minus the pasta) and let it simmer for quite awhile. Once the vegetables were soft I added in the pasta and let it cook for a little while longer.


And you know every bowl of soup requires some delicious bread and jam on the side, not to mention some extra-special Wheat-Thins that arrived via my parents' wonderful fall package.


You can't beat soup for dinner when you live in a place where it's already snowed and it's only the beginning of October.

Everything but the sink- a la vegetable soup in our Mongolian kitchen.

comfort food

sometimes you need the good stuff.
and by good stuff I clearly mean chicken club sandwiches and french fries.
this is not a culinary feat but more of a using up of hoarded ingredients that are hard to find.

such as chicken and bacon...


we also cooked up some onions and sliced up some potatoes- tossing them with olive oil and seasoning.

and then we used up some lettuce and tomatoes (I am already mourning the end of summer and the relative cheapness of these veggies) and piled high our bread with the goodness.


the french fries got thrown in the oven until crispy and they were quite possibly my favorite part of the meal. Also baking was much easier than frying them. I think the key to potatoes not taking forever to cook is slicing them really, really thin.

what are some of your favorite comfort foods?

cabbage rolls

an end of summer abundance of cabbage meant the market ladies were selling heads of cabbage by the bag for ridiculously cheap.

we've discussed the possibility of cabbage rolls for several months but just finally attempted them a few weeks ago.

our resourcefulness was tested by the need for something to hold the cabbage rolls together- we didn't have any toothpicks, so we improvised and cut up some matches to use instead.

we also subbed tomato sauce for tomato soup and filled them with rice, ground beef and onions.

neither of us had ever had cabbage rolls before so I can't speak to whether or not they tasted like they should, but we liked them and it was a good way of using up a fairly significant portion of our head of cabbage.

any cabbage cooking suggestions? the top parts of the rolls crisped a bit too much in the oven but the matches did an excellent stand in job for holding them together.

soup as a second meal

Living in the coldest capital city in the world means we crave a lot of soup, and often.

It also means we frequently have soup leftovers sitting in our fridge, waiting to be re-heated or recreated into new things.

Which has brought the soup becoming casserole process into our kitchen.

It's an easy thing really:

Step One: Make some rice (Or pasta- we usually choose rice)

Step Two: Chop up some vegetables or other additional add-ins.

Step Three: Mix the rice (or pasta) and vegetables with the leftover soup.

Step Four: Stick in a casserole dish and sprinkle with cheese or crushed chips or whatever else you have laying around that sounds good.


Step Five: Enjoy your old/new dinner of leftovers :-)

fried green tomatoes

It took until Mongolia for me to have fried green tomatoes.

Hol spotted them at the market a few days ago and upon discussion, discovered I had never had them. Which then of course led to us having them for dinner a few nights after that.


And when you have extra batter? You should totally make homemade onion rings.


Not technically healthy food, however we did eat homemade hummus sandwiches prior to the fried onions and tomatoes. So really, it all evens out in the end.

ice cream cake

birthday cakes need to be special, ya'll. it's a requirement in the world of birthdays and it's doubly important when you're celebrating your birthday in Mongolia.

in the week that was Hol's birthday celebration, we had a lot of cake. Kind of a ridiculous amount in fact. But this was my favorite one to make (and I didn't make all of them, thank goodness).

I tried to keep it a secret, but I'm not a good secret keeper and Hol is a very good secret guesser. So with a combination like that, she had it figured out pretty early on that I was making an ice cream cake.

It was my first attempt at an ice cream cake, so I was a bit nervous. Thankfully it was actually super easy- I made a basic vanilla cake, sliced it and put ice cream in between the layers. Then I frosted it with chocolate icing and added crumbled cookies on top. I was originally going to put cookie in between the layers as well, but it didn't end up happening as I had already frozen the cake again.

The end result? Not quite DQ, but a good summer birthday cake if I do say so myself.

homemade granola

I've been intimidated at the idea of making granola for years- opting to buy it instead of make it. For whatever reason I was convinced that it would be complicated, hard or something that I would inevitably mess up.

In Mongolia the only place that attitude gets you is missing favorite foods that you can't buy here.

Enter an easy stovetop granola recipe from AllRecipes and my determination to try it.

It took all of maybe 15 minutes and turned out way better than I had hoped. I doubled the recipe and added an extra tablespoon of honey or two...and it was incredibly easy to make.



I added cashews and raisins (no almonds or dried cranberries in these parts- not unless I want to pay an arm and a leg) and then enjoyed some with milk and then took the rest with me to Khonghor for our ger building festivities. My friends here had no idea what it was but they loved it just the same :-)

concoctions

My parents love chili. Growing up they'd frequently make a big pot of it for dinner and I'd make some alternate meal for myself. I didn't like beans, had never liked beans and so chili was not my meal of choice.

Then I moved to Texas, the land of Tex-Mex and black beans and I discovered that I do actually really like black beans. Which led to me discovering a recipe for vegetarian black bean and corn chili and falling in love with chili for the first time.

Black bean love led to liking other beans and now chili is one of my favorite recipes to experiment with. There aren't a lot of beans available here in Mongolia, but you can get cans of kidney beans and tomato sauce.

So when I was craving chili a few weeks ago, I took what was in our pantry/fridge and created perhaps one of the strangest versions of chili yet:

The original recipe calls for no beans, lots of beef, crushed tomatoes and red wine vinegar.

I used a can of kidney beans, a bunch of leftover lentils, a can of stewed tomatoes, a little bit of leftover ground beef, onions, garlic and balsamic vinaigrette instead of vinegar (we didn't have any).


It was admittedly a pretty bizarre combination and not particularly chili-like, but it ended up being exactly what my veggie-loving self was craving.

swirls

vanilla cake waiting for its swirly partner

adding the chocolate batter

all of the swirled deliciousness

there were some sprinkles and frosting eventually as well, but I didn't get a picture before the Naadam eating frenzy began:-)

this recipe is pretty basic, but Hol made an incredible version of marble cake a few weeks ago that included brown sugar cinnamon almond crumble topping. Best cake I've ever, ever eaten.

churros

Churros in all of their cinnamon goodness.

The recipe calls for a fancy piping thing and long thin churros, but this is Mongolia and we make do with what we have. Which means circular churros that went perfectly with our Mexican themed June birthday dinner.

Posting these pictures (way over a month after the fact) makes me want to make some more as soon as possible.

Cinnamon, sugar and fried dough. Yes, please.

fourth of july

our fourth of july menu:

main dish: homemade pizza with lots of veggies and some precious pepperoni that was sent to us
side dish: watermelon
and of course, for dessert there isn't anything more American than apple pie, right?

I had been wanting to try making my favorite (and super easy) apple pie recipe as little mini pies, so we did just that.

The only differences? It took a little bit longer to arrange the crusts since we had to do mini versions of the lattice crust. And we diced the apples instead of slicing them.

Perfect mini-apple pies. And no messy cutting a slice deal- just personal pies for everyone.

How's that for individualism, America?

countryside food

we've returned from our first ever trip to the much revered Mongolian countryside and it was absolutely beautiful and filled with fun and blessings.

and we of course ate all of the beloved Mongolian countryside food-

boiled goat insides- they loved this more than you could possibly imagine

roasted goat meat on a stick

goat meat sitting on a wooden board, waiting to be cooked and consumed

tsuivan- potatoes, carrots, onions and flour noodles

milk tea!

the boys slaughtering the second goat of the week

Hol bought popcorn and brought it with us, so we made big buckets of it and they devoured it:-)

Now, I have not suddenly become a large fan of boiled goat stomach, but I do generally really like Mongolian food. And being able to drink milk tea made with pails of fresh milk, eat bowls of homemade yogurt and have soup with goat meat was a delicious treat.

which just proves the myth that everything food wise really is better in the countryside.

rainbow cupcakes

"pleeeeeeeeeaaaaasssseeeee bachshaw!"

That's what I heard last week from my elementary students. They were desperate to make cake during English class.

And I, being a complete sucker for my students, baking and their pleas- promised that we could.

I even pinky promised Mongolian style.

And so we tackled cupcakes on Tuesday- measuring and stirring and dripping and cracking eggs.

To add to the fun I brought food coloring and let them stir the colors into the cupcakes.

Rainbow-colored fun was just what this English teacher ordered.




a happy class and colorful cupcakes to boot. An A+ in my non-existent grade book.

fried veggies

lightly fried collection of all sorts of vegetables- snap peas, corn, cucumbers and some onions that were supposed to be onion rings of sorts. Not quite so, but they still tasted oh so good anyway.

random delicious carbs

pita bread- a favorite that we used to put homemade veggie patties in (corn and bean variations)

everything bagels- with all sorts of good stuff baked inside and sprinkled on top. Then used to make egg, bacon and fried pepperoni breakfast sandwiches. Best bagel sandwich ever.



Carbs are good. All the time. Especially in the pita bread and bagel variations.