Chadian Dinner

My kids are really starting to test my ability to find these foreign foods.  J only chose Chad because he thought it was funny that there was a country named after his uncle.  I searched and searched for recipes from Chad but had hardly any luck.  I finally settled on Baked Fish and a Salad that I found on another blog that is pretty much doing the same thing as me.  I thought my idea was unique and although I'm a little bummed that it's already been done, I was grateful that they had a recipe I could use.

The Baked Fish tasted pretty much the same as any American fish.  It just had a few simple seasonings on it and it was delicious.

The Salad was a very unique combination of rice, cucumbers, bananas, and raisins with lemon, honey coriander, cumin and cayenne pepper.  I was very hesitant to try it but although it's not our favorite, the flavors weren't bad together.  My kids even really liked it.

Nigerian Night

Oh boy, Nigerian cuisine was a bit difficult.  First, they eat TONS of beans and my kids don't really like beans.  Second, so many of their dishes called for chicken hearts and gizzards.  Again, I really would like a chance at getting my family to enjoy the meal.  And Third, I kept running into ingredients that I couldn't find locally and online they were SO SO expensive.

I finally settled on Suya (Nigerian Chicken Skewers) and Jollof Rice.

As we've found with most of our international meals, this one was also really good; albeit spicy.  My kids all ate without complaining and commented on how delicious it was.  It was very spicy, though, so they didn't eat very much.  The Suya recipe calls for 2 tablespoons of cayenne pepper!!!  I love spicy food but this made even me nervous so I only added 1/2 teaspoon.  Even with only using 1/4 of the cayenne it was still pleanty hot.  

The Jollof rice was also really good.  Kindof like Mexican rice but with it's own unque seasoning.  The recipe calls for cooking the rice over medium heat til dry.  Next time I will turn the heat to Med-Low because I ended up burning the rice to the bottom of the pan.  That didn't effect my rice at all; I just had to make sure I didn't scrape the bottom while serving it.

Peruvian Night

Peruvian Night has become one of my favorites.  I hadn't realized that it included a lot of beef and barbecue.  I found so many delicious looking recipes; I'm going to have to add some extra Peruvian dinners.

For this night's dinner we had Lomo Saltado with homemade fries and Aji Sauce and it was do good.

This is one of those rare meals that everyone in the family loved.  It reminded me of a fajita only the seasonings were a little different and it was served on fries instead of in a tortilla ... okay, so maybe not so similar to a fajita.

The only thing I did different from the recipe is that instead of tossing the fries with the meat, I served them seperate and just layered the meat over the fries.  The meat is really juicy and I think if I had tossed them, it would have made the fries really soggy.  

Next time I will also spread the cooked fries out onto a cook sheet rather than toss them in a bowl.  The fries that were in the bottom of the bowl came out of the pan crispy but as they sat while I cooked the rest of the fries, they steamed and became very soggy.

Mexican Night

My 7yr old chose Mexican for this weeks dinner.  Honestly, I considered just cooking one of the many Mexican dishes that I already make but I decided to find something new.

I decided to make a new recipe for Beef Enchiladas.  They turned out so delicious and all 3 of my very picky eaters asked me to make this again soon.

My Enchiladas didn't plate nearly as pretty as the ones in this picture but I think these one's had to have been cooked seperate from the main casserole dish full of enchiladas.  

We ate our enchiladas with restaurant style refried beans and mexican rice.  I also made Horchata for the drink.  I have never had Horchata before so I can't compare it to others but I liked this one.  I have heard many people complain that it's too sweet so I used the minimum sugar suggested in the recipe.  I also think next time I will use a little less cinnamon.

For dessert I made Sopapilla Cheesecake Bars.

These bars are so good and would make a great dessert to bring to a family party.  

English Night

I figured that English Night would be easy to find recipes for so I kept putting it off until the night before I went grocery shopping.

So about 8:00 that night, a storm rolls in and boy was it a storm.  I live is a valley surrounded by big, beautiful mountains.  These mountains usually help to break up the wind and we don't get things like tornados.  On this night, though, we had winds hit 125mph.  My full garbage cans spilled into the road and covered my neighborhood in freshly chopped down tree.  The neighbor's trampoline took a trip down the street and into a nearby clubhouse's windows.  Several large trees were uprooted.  My picnic table was blown over and shattered and really the neighborhood was in chaos.  Amongst all this, my fence was being destroyed.  The wind had blown out several panels and had snapped the heavy duty vinyl fence posts.  Our front fence was also starting to bend and was on it's way to snapping also so hubby and I were out in the storm dismantling the fence while trying to dodge the debris blowing around us.

By the time we got inside, we were exhausted and all I wanted to do was climb into bed but I had to do the grocery shopping which included finding some English recipes for that weekend.  As I was searching recipes, everything looked to complicated for didn't look tasty; I believe this was directly related to how tired I was.  So I was thrilled to find that a traditional English Sunday dinner was Pot Roast.

This recipe was very tasty although the garlic wasn't nearly as strong as I thought it would be.  The only alteration I made was that I cooked it in my crock pot rather than in the oven.  

I also made the Yorksire Pudding recipe from the same site.

It tasted good but sunk when I removed them from the oven so they were really flat.

For dessert I made Peach and Blackberry scones.  

These are now a new favorite in our home.  They were delicious straight out of the oven with warm glaze drizzled over top but they also tasted great cold.  You cold even pass them off as a breakfast "muffin".

NOTE: I did find the dough extremely sticky and even after adding an extra 1/2c flour I still couldn't fold it and just gave up.