the little travelers * travel notes

desperate times call for desperate measures

Ok, so I know opening a bunch of packages does not constitute cooking!  I know.  However, I'm in the midst of packing up 3 of us for the next 3 months covering two countries during that time and this is my version of fast food.  And I'm still counting it for one of our 52 meals for 52 weeks!  

Here's our (well, Trader Joe's) fast-food version of Indian chicken tika masala with naan.  We ate this with a salad.  And it took less than 5 minutes to prepare.   Sometimes we all have to give ourselves a break... though I got to tell you - the amount of packaging pictured here gives me a stomach ache!  At least it can be recycled, right?

They strategy now is to go for the big countries to fill in the map faster.  I'm seeing borsht coming in our near future... and I think I'm behind a week with no access to a kitchen in the coming week...  We'll just do our best to keep up. 

52 meals from 52 countries, week 4

In celebration of Chinese New Year we made wonton soup this week.  But we used the Dragon Moon Potsticker recipe from February's Book of Days, (which we are loving!) instead of the wonton recipe from the soup.  But we boiled them in a pot of water instead of frying them.  The meat we used inside was ground  turkey.

I'm a Nourishing Traditions kind of gal so I start my soups with bones!  

And two days later we're ready to start our soup!  It's time consuming, but worth it.

Here is the recommended shape.

And here is the shape that they thought 'looked better.'  I am one of those parents that is a firm believer that words do not teach, experience does.  And the ol' cliche about whenever we teach a child something we deprive them of discovering it for themselves.  My mother thinks I'm just lazy and don't know how to do my job properly.  It's all perspective.  But unless something is going to explore or pose a real threat in some way I let experiments play out.  I see my job as parent not to teach them everything but simply to provide the life experiences that will do the teaching.

While eating the soup it became quite clear that the Chinese knew what they were doing with the shape of their wontons as the tight little packages were quite doughy and not nearly as tasty as the other ones.  I love nothing better than sitting back and listen to the conversation at dinner go something like, "The envelopes are kind of gooey, but the ones like the directions are perfect.  We should do them all the right way next time."  I said nothing at all on the subject except, "I agree."  

The soup was a success and they are already planning on when to make it again and what changes to make to it.

Udon 52 meals week 3

Japanese Udon was this weeks pick.  This is the little sister's favorite meal in the whole world so this was not a surprise that this one came out early.  This one was a slam dunk and not at all a new recipe in our house.  

Our map is starting to fill in...

Swedish meatballs

I'm a bit behind for week 2, but the girls were away last week with grandma in Cali so we're playing catch-up a bit.  They choose Swedish meatballs this week.  They were really into the American Girl Kirsten last year, who is a Swedish immigrant.  They have her cookbook with all sorts of Swedish delights, but they choose the meatballs, red potatoes and bread with lingonberry jelly, which we picked up at IKEA.  And I lost the pictures!  I've gone through my files many times now and can't find them anywhere.  They must have gotten deleted before downloaded or something.  The lighting is horrible in this kitchen anyway and the photos were less than glorious, oh, well.

I'm not being too fussy about authenticity - so when the girls said they had to have rosemary on the potatoes I let it be.  There is a bush somewhere on the block here and they go pick it fresh.  I haven't actually checked if it's from someone's garden or what, but they bring home fresh rosemary quite frequently after playing outside.