gimme dat camera!

Sibling love....

Pumpkin Pancakes!

Wow, I feel domestic. I've two blog posts about food in the last week. Anyway I sort of discovered something yummy this morning when I needed to make a second batch of pancakes. One recipe doesn't feed us anymore!! So, for the second batch I decided to add some freshly baked pumpkin and some cinnamon and nutmeg to the batter just for kicks - and guess what - it turned out great!! It was especially good with nutella - or the cheap nock-off version we get here that has both dark chocolate and white chocolate paste. Decidedly not healthy fare, but so yummy. I decided to shave a little chocolate that I got for my birthday on top of one of them as it was cooking. When Nik sat down to eat, I put some whipped cream and shaved chocolate on his, and it sort of looked pretty - in my mind's eye at least. It may have come out better if I wasn't stumbling over a little toddler clasping at my legs while I was doing it. ;) I love that toddler and who cares if things aren't pretty these days? The kids are way prettier than any of us!!

So, the recipe I will steal from another website that I like as I'm sure it will come out better than if I tried to write my non-recipe-lucky-it-turned-out way of cooking this morning. Try it if you have some pumpkin around. I bought 6 kilos of pumpkin (half a huge big one) yesterday and baked most of it up in the oven and reserved some for some thai red curry with pumpkin, chicken and red peppers tonight. I hope to be making pumpkin bread and pumpkin pie with the rest of the pumpkin pulp. I also baked the seeds to snack on.

Ok. Here's the link to the recipe at allrecipes: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Pumpkin-Pancakes/Detail.aspx

fun with collaging in picasa

Baba Ganoush

photo credit: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ellie-krieger/babaganoush-recipe/index.html

This turned out so well and it was the first I've made it ever or in a LONG while, so I wanted to encourage those of you out there that like lebanese or middle eastern food to give it a try. I've been trying my best to eat foods that are in season, and since eggplant is still a good deal in the market, I decided to try my hand at this. I was pretty sure it would be a disaster, but as it turned out well and was really easy, I thought I'd share the recipe. I'd love to hear from all of you what you do for lunch after church. In the past I have eaten out, but I don't like that because I wouldn't want one of my christian friends to have to be cooking my meal on his sabbath, so I prefer to find cook-ahead recipes, or things I can pull together with minimal fuss. This rich dip is good served with pita, or just whole-wheat bread, carrot and cucumber sticks, and we added some qoftas from the store (yeah, I felt bad about that one, but they did help round the meal out a little). Plus, it was a hit with the kids (1 and 3), surprisingly. The garlic and the fact that the base of this dish is eggplant didn't seem to phase them a bit!! Daniel (3) did mention that it is "spicy", but he kept eating. ;)

For the recipe, I used:

5 small (6 inch long) eggplants, pierced all over with a knife
1 small head of garlic
1/2 tsp salt
juice of one lemon (actually a little less as I had already used some of this lemon on aloo gobi I made the other day)
3 Tablespoons tahini paste (I made this myself some time back- super easy. Blend up a some toasted sesame seeds with a bit of vegetable oil - keeps in the fridge forever. I'll never buy it again.)

I baked the eggplants on the wire rack in the middle of the oven at 200 degrees celsius, or 400 degrees F for about 40 minutes - or until sort of charred and dark on the outside but squishy when touched (to be sure it's all cooked well on the inside). While the eggplants were baking, I peeled the garlic and threw them in the blender, along with the tahini, salt and lemon. Then when the eggplant was cooked, I cooled and then opened them to scoop out the flesh and added that to the blender. I blended it all till it was a paste. This can be put on a plate and served with a bit of olive oil and some sprinkles of paprika to make it pretty. This is something that can be made a couple of days before as the taste gets better over time - up to 5 days I read somewhere.

Don't forget to give me an idea or two of how you make Sunday lunch less work. By the way, next week I plan to do hummus.

It's raining... a lot

Thought I'd post a couple pictures illustrating what Abby got up to today as we were indoors most of the day. It has been nice that my mom has been off work this week and has stopped by more often and spent time with us. Both Daniel and Abby love rides in the basket. I couldn't resist taking a picture of Abby when she settled herself in under her high chair to work on her apple.

Abigail and the love of her life

This is my very brave mother. She is an inspiration to me and a blessing many times over. My mom and dad have been living and working here in Tirana for a year now. They've had a ROUGH year trying to eke out a living in a depression in a foreign country where English teachers just aren't as appreciated as they have been in other times and places. We've had a more restful summer of them house-sitting close by and we've been able to talk and spend time together and process the past year and we look forward to a new year that finds them more settled in and with (hopefully) more stable jobs. We know that God is in control and that He is always good and we thank him together for the easy as well as the hard times.

This is a funny name for a store don't you think?

Abby has been teething these past couple weeks (hence, the medicine bottle in her hand) and so not sleeping well, but otherwise pretty chilled out. I put these two pictures together because Abby is absolutely enamoured of her grandma Seefeldt. As soon as she hears our front door open she drops everything and starts toddling towards it gasping with glee and laughing just so excited that Grandma might be walking in. I'm so thankful for this bond I see developing. We'll miss seeing grandma so often because she'll be starting to teach next week, but I'm sure she'll be coming over as often as she can even so. These two are like very strong magnets to each other. :-)

Daniel loves the slide!

Far East

I have loved this little piece of East Asia in the heart of Tirana. It reminds me of some of the more serene getaways in the heart of Bangkok with the white painted rattan and the pools with carp and the bamboo and the tea! We love the pots of jasmine tea and on this occasion, a few months back, we decided to have a pot of tea just the three of us. In the morning this place is pretty empty (I think we may have been the only ones) which made it more comfortable for me balancing the needs of two little ones.

stuck sparrow

I had an unexpected answer to prayer today that I thought I'd blog about. Just a little thing, but I thought I'd share. Those of you who know me know my love of animals. Yesterday we discovered a beautiful but terribly neglected pit bull next door who my mom and I are feeding and trying to take care of in the absence of an owner. We can give him water and food through the bars on the door to the small shack he's been left alone in. It breaks my heart to see him left there and uncared for, but this is all we can do. Today another little animal challenge came our way as I (or rather our dog Kanchi) discovered a small sparrow wedged in a tight space on our back balcony. I couldn't figure out how to get the poor frightened bird out without moving a huge piece of furniture, and even then I wasn't sure if I would squish the poor thing, and I wasn't sure how injured it was and if it was even worth it to try to get it out alive. But, I know that God sees sparrows fall and cares for them, so I prayed to that God and he answered me. I decided to get some long chopsticks and with the blunt ends I managed to pull the sparrow out and it flew under a cupboard where it was safe from the dog. I kept peeking in on it as I was feeding my kids lunch to see if it had any life left, and eventually, much to my joy, I looked under the cupboard and it was no longer there so I assumed it had flown out one of the windows I'd opened. As I was shutting one of the windows, the bird flew down from somewhere high on the balcony, brushed by me and flew out the open window across the road and to another apartment building (we're on the 7th floor). So, I was thankful that God helped the bird get out and that it could still fly and my dog didn't finish it off in the process!

How to pray

Prayers are simple enough at Daniel's age, but they teach me something for sure. He has just begun to list all of the many things he's thankful for. Usually he says things like "wii", "balance board", "tennis" and "mario kart" (what idolatry we've already instilled in this young child!!), but he's really started to mention family and will name different ones he loves. He also surprised me today when he started thanking God for "blue, red, purple, pink..." and on and on. It strikes me as a worthy subject of thanksgiving. Isn't it amazing that God gave us color? Wouldn't the world be so boring if it were only black and white? Thank you Father for being beautiful and for creating and sustaining beauty.

Good times with Grandpa

My dad got a great shot of one of Abby's food faces...

Daniel shed some tears over something and I comforted him.

Dad returned some of the silly faces.

So thankful I'm there all day for these precious children.

Gardening on the balcony

This one is my favorite. It's called "American Flower" in Albanian but I call it "dragon flower". If anyone has a more precise name for this beautiful plant, please let me know. It has yummy nectar so maybe it's a honeysuckle of some sort?

Abby went right for the dirt and I didn't stop her.

Kanchi looking on. No, he's not crying.

Really, let's take apart this old plant and reuse the soil mom....

All things zucchini (or kungull)

So, summer seems to be here and I'm really loving the lower prices on spinach and tomatoes and cucumbers and zucchini. For some reason, I can't seem to go a day without making something with zucchini. I actually started to get sick of it at some point last week after like my third double batch of zucchini-carrot muffins and my second attempt at zucchini mucver and my second or third batch of zucchini sauce. Well, I'm almost ready to make more of the muffins as the last of them got eaten this afternoon. So, I thought I'd share a website with you that has inspired me a lot. Having experienced first hand the culinary traditions of Nepal, India, Thailand and Albania, as well as being influenced by the eclectic culinary traditions of the U.S., I have had the tendency to try to do everything well. This last year I decided to just focus on one cuisine and do it well. I chose the cuisine of Albania - sort of makes sense. So, I learned a couple dishes and just kept on making them till they were fairly consistent. Last summer when I started this trend, I made stuffed peppers and stuffed eggplant every week. This winter I've learned to make yummy beans - the way the Albanians do it and the way the Punjabis do (rajma) and good lentils and great dahl (we're trying to avoid meat) as well as cabbage with meat and burani (a spinach/rice dish). Anyway, I did digress some from the cuisine of this area but overall I'm trying to stay Mediterranean and cook with ingredients that are in season. So, the website I like is called "almost turkish" and what's great is that almost everything she makes has simple ingredients that I can find anywhere, and many of the dishes are also Albanian. The Turks spent a good deal of time here in Albania and seem to have made their mark on the cuisine. A couple dishes for summer I'd like to point out are the ones I mentioned at the beginning - zucchini sauce and baked mucver. These are both really good. The author of the site has great pictures and the recipes so I won't repeat. Please visit the almost turkish site.
Did I mention I love to cook??? Ha!

We love visitors

With Gjyshi!

This is our friend Lisian.

Things got a little crazy but we had fun!!

Some cute pictures

This bear is about the same length as Abby and is a great thing to put behind her in case she arches and falls over backward to cushion her fall. Daniel is really into bowling whether it's on Nik's iphone app or on the wii, or with play doh or with little plastic shapes - anything can be turned into a bowling experience!