Food

17 October 2008

Shari and the Apple Pies

You need to understand the difference. Baked goods are a big deal here in Mexico. Sweet bread, cakes, doughnuts, buns – and if you go to a few birthday parties you’ll see cakes baked and decorated beyond belief.

Baking, on the other hand, is not big in Mexico. You go to the store for the baked goods, you don’t pull them out of your oven. In fact, some people store dishes in their oven.

So a bunch of the ladies of the church got together at Tania’s house to learn how to make apple pies. And boy did they have fun.

Crystal brought her Mamita’s super-duper-home-baked recipe from the USA. They managed to round up a few rolling pins from who knows where. Shari brought some mini-cookie cutters to make the crust fancy. And Tania invited some ladies from her neighbourhood.

They chopped up the apples. Crystal made sure they got the filling right. Shari got everyone making the perfect flaky crusts (in most cases!).

Crystal with
a completed apple pie

Some of the ladies were introduced to Jesus for the first time. And everyone made new friends.

Now they’re thinking of doing an encore performance – with some of the ladies who were running things and didn’t get to see all the “pie making secrets”. So the story may not be over yet!

As a side note, it looks like there will be some other baking going on here next week. Two months or so ago, Hannah and a girl from our neighbourhood were around the house, and I offered them some apple dumplings. Ever since that day, the girl has been bugging her Mom to make her some "apple pie" like she had at Hannah’s house. So her Mom knocked on our door and talked to Shari about coming over for an apple pie/dumpling lesson.

In my opinion, there’s nothing like making friends with food involved. And if I’m not doing it myself, I’ll be hoping to catch some of the leftovers!

18 June 2008

Hand made tortillas (video)

Jim Food, Mexico, Misc, Other missionary blogs 0

There’s nothing like hand made tortillas, fresh and hot! Well, that and something in them – a little meat, chilli, onion, lime…. but I digress.

Our friends the McManus family took a video of some ladies making tortillas at a wedding. It’s a very familiar sight, so I thought I’d share the video with you here.

The McManus family lives waaaaay up north in San Juan del Rio, Mexico. Their blog is called Knowing Your ABCDs.

And here’s a follow-up – machine made tortillas (also a very common sight):

25 April 2008

Nathanael had a cooking class (video)

Nathanael Family, Food, Video Blogs 2

Here he is – Nathanael reporting on his cooking class.

18 January 2008

What the World Eats

Jim Food, Mexico 3

What kinds of foods do people eat around the world? How much does it typically cost? These are questions that TIME Magazine tackles in an online feature entitled What the World Eats

In a slideshow, you can see various families from around the world posing with presumably a week’s worth of groceries. You can find out what their favourite foods are, and how much it all typically costs. Fascinating! Apparently this is from the new book Hungry Planet by Peter Menzel.

I mention this because not only is Mexico included, our home city is in there – Cuernavaca! Watch for it. Not the different types of food (amount of vegetables, breads, milk, etc), and the cost compared to other countries.

via: Our Mission

3 October 2007

From Salsa to Pears to Pumpkin

Jim Food, Just for fun, Mexico 2

Today I made salsa. It was so easy, it begs the question – why didn’t I do it before? Well, it won’t be the last time. It was yummy.

Two of the ingredients were from our very own garden – limes and chillies. We have great little chillies – I made this big container of salsa and only three tiny chillies, and it was nice and hot (actually, some was quite hot and some not at all – I should have ground them up a little more!).

So for our mid-afternoon meal (comida) I made some chicken quesadillas and we were all set.

And get this. I discovered more food growing in our garden. We have pears. Big ones.

Pears and soursop
I know, it’s been over 10 months and I’m still discovering more things in our garden? I guess I’m no William Carey.

This afternoon, though, we did something a bit more Canadian. We happened to discover some pumpkins (very expensive pumpkins) that had been brought in for Hallowe’en. Since we can’t buy canned pumpkin here, we bought some small pumpkins in order to make pumpkin pie.

My mouth is watering – we haven’t made pumpkin pie from scratch (ie not canned pumpkin) since early in our marriage when we had a garden. Boy, those were good pies.

Anyway, we cooked (just finishing up now) the pumpkin and washed the seeds to eat later.

This coming weekend we’re having some friends over for Thanksgiving dinner, so we thought it would be a good time to splurge. If they don’t like pumpkin pie, no problem – I know someone who can eat it for them…

See? Chillies, pumpkin, pears – lots to be thankful for!

29 August 2007

Passion in the garden

Jim Food, Just for fun, Mexico 0

I’m still making discoveries in our garden. I’m still finding plants that I didn’t know were there (see some of the plants in our garden in this ever-expanding photo album). Fortunately, every once in a while our landlords come over and give me some tips.

This week I discovered a couple more things that were there all along. Better yet, Lisandro and Lupita (our landlords) gave me some tips on how to use some of these things. For example, this fruit to the right. Do you know what it is?

Well, I didn’t know until today. I wrote down the name of it on my hand, then promptly washed my hands and lost it (let that be a lesson to you all). But now I know – it’s maracuyá, otherwise known as passion fruit. It grows on a vine, and I can be excused for not noticing it because I can only reach the fruit from our roof.

So here’s what you do. First, you cut it open – it’s orange with lots of black seeds.

Great. Now, scoop them out and stick it seeds and all into the blender. Whizzzz whizzzz whirrrr whirrrrr, add some water, whizzzz whizzzzz whirrrrr whirrrrrrrr…. then strain it into a pitcher. This time I added about 1.5L (about .4 US Gallons) of water, and a touch of honey, and there you are. Fresh passion fruit juice!

It’s an old vine, so apparently it’s not producing a lot of fruit. Still, we have enough for a few pitchers here.

Did you know that the word "passion" here refers to Christ’s passion? Learn more about how the passion flower got its name here.

I also found out that we have a soursop tree. I knew we had the tree (I nursed it carefully during dry season), I just didn’t know what it was. It seems to be producing now.

Anyway, there’s lots of food in our garden – I just have to figure out ways to use it!

Lupita also gave me a recipe for salsa, so I’m ready to make some – in the blender, again. Yum – just what we need around here. Those are pretty hot little chilies – should make a good fresh salsa. Feel free to stop by and share!

*****

Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord his God,
who made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them,
who keeps faith forever;
who executes justice for the oppressed,
who gives food to the hungry.
Psa 146:5-7

A few of our chilies

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