Curried Peas, and my little sweet pea

I don't often make peas because well, my husband finds most recipes with peas boring. Last night was Asian night in our house and I tried a curried peas and tomatoes recipe to go along with our main Indian dish. Oh, yum! My husband even had more than one serving. He said "this is actually an interesting dish" so I'll definitely be making them again. 

Oh, in case you're wondering about my Asian night comment. Now that I'm well in my second trimester (yes, I'm expecting my own little sweet pea this winter!) and not relying on giant crockpots full of doubled and tripled recipes to freeze in order to feed the family each night I'm back to cooking most days each week, which means back to making international food more often. How much more? Well, I'm experimenting with a new way to menu plan. Each day of the week minus one is assigned a continent. If I need to plan a meal for that day of the week I can think of recipes from that continent (or the oceans if you wanted to add a just fish night). 

Monday: North America
Tuesday: South America
Wednesday: Europe
Thursday: Asia
Friday: Oceania
One day on the Weekend: Africa

We'll see how this strategy goes. So far so good. It has certainly streamlined menu planning.

BlogThis!

Nigerian Adventure: A Delicious Dinner

We moved. Again. But things are slowly getting unpacked including most of my kitchen. I'll have to work off memory to tell you about our Nigerian culinary adventure. Oh, the memories are wonderful. In fact, sitting here typing this I'm wondering to myself, "why haven't you made it again yet?!" Yes, it was that good. We enjoyed a meat dish and a salad. The salad was made of layers. Much as an American seven layer salad is made. The ingredients were a little different though. Slivers of cabbage, cucumber, and carrot are mixed together. A can of peas (apparently fresh isn't an option here) is poured over, followed by a layer of canned (not fresh or frozen again) corn. This is topped with slices of hard cooked egg. So far not too odd. Here's where the salad really shows its foreign side. The last two steps are to sprinkle the salad with a can each of baked beans and tuna! How odd! The layers are repeated. After chilling it's served with salad cream. I'm not a huge meat eater. This particular meat was delectable. Stick meat. Beef is coated with spices like bouillon, garlic, curry, and adobo powder and allowed to sit and "sweat" a while. Water is added And the meat boiled for half an hour. You remove the meat, heat oil until it smokes and make the sauce. Then you bake the meat. So this meat gets boiled and baked. The meat is tossed with the sauce and eaten with toothpicks. So yummy!

Market Day: Nigeria

So, here are all the ingredients used to make a meat
and a side dish for our Nigerian adventure.
Dish 1 used: Adobo seasoning, oil, tomato, onion, garlic, peppers, curry powder, bouillon
Dish 2 used: Carrot, cucumber, peas, corn, eggs, tuna, baked beans, cabbage, and salad cream

So what did we enjoy? (And yes, we really enjoyed it!)

Avocadoes Stuffed with Fish & Eggs

This would make such a great summer lunch! 

It's a plate full of avocados stuffed with fish and egg. Sounds different, tastes yummy. If you like tuna salad stuffed in a tomato, you'll probably enjoy this.

When your eggs are cooked and cooled, remove the yolks and mash them up. Mix the yolks with sugar, lime, oils, milk. You want it to be smooth as a pudding.

Chop up the egg white and add i It's a pleasant and healthy meal. You can find the recipe here. 

Planning Day: Nigerian Culinary Adventure

If you're waiting on my final entry for Ghana, it's coming. I am looking forward to sharing our main dish with you. It's simple, easy to prepare, and perfect for warm weather. Very appropriate as the weather continues to warm! Right now I'm in overload concerning what I want to make for our Nigerian adventure. I'm very tempted to try a breakfast recipe. Crepes or a bean pancake with a custard on the side. Problem is finding custard powder, which is according to my brief web search slightly different from our instant pudding mix. Now that I live in a largish city I hope I can track some down...breakfast like that would be fun! Then there's the stews! Very meaty and several carry the warning "very spicy". It seems like everything is served with "white yam" or plantains too. Oh, and they have the most interesting salads. There's also a dish that reminds me of scotch eggs, one that reminds me of doughnuts...just so much from which to choose. As I said what's particularly tempting is embarking on more than one adventure here. We'll see. There are several African restaurants in town, if I want to try something cooked by someone who knows how after I'm done with this particular adventure!

Culinary adventure to Ghana! part 1: Plantains

For dessert I mixed pepper, onion, garlic, ginger, plantains, olive oil, and salt and made fried plantains! Now, this recipe certainly wasn't nearly as tasty as I'd had at a certain restaurant, but still they weren't bad. Next time though I think I'd try a different recipe.

This is what I dipped the plantains in. Nothing sweet at all about the dessert.

Market Day: Ghana

The ingredients for dessert. Plantains, garlic, ginger, onion, red pepper, olive oil, and salt. Yes, it did have a bit of a kick!

Eggs, for the main dish.

Other ingredients needed for the main dish included: Olive oil, milk, sugar, salt, vegetable oil, bell pepper, pimentos, lime juice, and avocados.