Around the World in 4 Days

My kitchen has taken an adventure around the world the past few days. It started on Friday with a trip to Malaysia to discover what happens when one puts a bunch of seemingly random ingredients together in a salad. I steamed potatoes and carrots, boiled cabbage, bean sprouts and cucumbers, hard-boiled eggs, stir-fried tofu, chopped up spring onions and mixed together with a peanut sauce. And voila - Gado-Gado, a Malaysian salad. Very yummy! The cabbage added a nice colour to the salad. Actually, because of all the ingredients, the salad was very diverse in colour and flavour.

The Boiled ingredients

The salad before the peanut sauce was added.

Then tonight we headed to Senegal in Africa for a hearty vegetarian stew. This stew had potatoes, carrots, turnip, squash, cabbage, onions, leafy greens, tomato paste and peanut butter. Delicious! I am still full from this wonderful stew.

Senegalian Vegetarian Stew

C'Mon, Let's Roll!

Squash Cloverleaf Buns

I am enjoying my new project of bread baking in honour and memory of my grandmother. There is something satisfying, relaxing and wholesome about kneading some dough, letting it rise and having it baked in the oven. Fresh bread smells and tastes better as the steam rises above a freshly cut piece. With my book of 300 recipes, I am quite pleased with a project that will carry me all my days. I'm trying not to buy bread at all. I made an amazing wild rice and molasses bread. The rice added a nutty flavour to the bread as well as a heartiness that plain old white and whole wheat breads lack. I have been enjoying breadbaking so much that I have started to pun at every opportunity (much to A's dismay who has gotten quite the rise out of my jokes). Alas, in a world gone a-rye, is a pun every now and then so bad? Sometimes life is just down and out crumb-y and a little pun now and then makes one laugh (or groan). Come now - it's all about the flour power!

Wild Rice Molasses Bread

Then this week for Bible study snack, I made a special snack :) Last week L. brought a homebaked and decorated cake with a Hallowe'en theme (L. has been dubbed the Queen of Desserts in our Bible study group) and the week before J. brought amazing cheesecake. To say the least, if I continued the trend of sweet snacks, I had a tough act to follow. So alas, I decided to do something completely different and I baked Squash Cloverleaf Buns (recipe from The Bread Bible: 300 Favorite Recipes)

These are actually made with squash. Yes, a yeast bread made with squash! The design is called "cloverleaf" which is made of 3 round balls of dough, stuck into a muffin tin. the three pieces remain distinct, yet one (I feel a theological reflection coming on....)

Right now I kneed in my need to grieve and remember. But perhaps out of this kneading, a bread baker will arise in me.