Here Comes the Parade

After three years of waiting, Matthew has finally made it high school and marching band! He had three days of band camp this week in preparation for yesterday’s parade. When Daniel did summer band they marched in multiple parades, but Matthew, who is in a different school, just did the one in our own little town. He had a great time and worked some different muscles. This little peek at marching has him very excited to get started in fall marching band which will start at the end of July.

Last night was also the annual fireworks show and family gathering with Kevin’s clan. I skipped out due to a week’s worth of headaches and late nights, but everyone else had fun. Malia was, as always, pleased as punch to spend some time with her girl cousins. Daniel and Matthew used the remaining daylight to play a little frisbee. Even Nathan was able to join in the festivities by calling to talk to Kev’s mom for a few minutes. With the current missionary contact rules, they are allowed to call for big family events as well as the major holidays and weekly calls, so it was all perfectly legal. I think everyone had a great time and while I would have liked to be there, I got some much need sleep.

We are a Two Missionary Family

Malia has a crafty streak. She gets creative with paper, glue, ribbons, fabric, paint, etc. Often her creations involve her toys and stuffed animals. For example, she had a few weeks where she was using jewelry wire and seed beads to make collars for her Littlest Pet Shop animals. The LPS have also been the motivation for making tiny books. Her stuffed animals have all benefited from the creation of polar fleece pillows and blankets. And Woody, her toy horse, is currently sporting horseshoes made of sticky back craft foam.

Toothless, her stuffed dragon of “How to Train Your Dragon” fame, was the recipient of her efforts today. She borrowed a shirt and tie from one of her dolls and then used some cardboard and two magnets to create a missionary tag. The tag reads “Totally Teaching Toothless Teddy Too.” To give you a little context, I started calling the smaller Toothless that Nathan took to Texas “Tiny Toothless.” When Tiny arrived in the field and acquired a cowboy hat, Malia dubbed him “Totally Texan Tiny Toothless.” Now the big version has joined the alliterative name game by becoming “Totally Teaching Toothless.” That moniker was Daniel’s contribution to the whole endeavor. And since Toothless carries a tiny teddy bear strapped to one of his wings, his tag includes his little friend. 

I love that Toothless and Tiny Toothless are a way that Nathan is connecting to Malia even though he is far away. It has been good for her. And fun for the rest of us!

International Eats-Romania

While Romania was not on our original list of countries whose food we wanted to explore, I came across a recipe while I was browsing for options that looked like one my family might like. Since I’m the boss of my kitchen, I decided to give the Romanian stuffed peppers (ardei umpluti) a try. They were remarkably simple to put together, had a long, slow bake time, and only incurred some silent cursing when the tomato sauce they bake in bubbled out all over my oven. I always hate when that happens and before I even tasted them, I was a little bit biased due to the soiling of my appliance. That’s how much I hate cleaning my oven. I’m willing to judge a dish before I ever taste it based simply on its potential to make a mess. 😂

Hard feelings aside, I decided to give the peppers an honest taste test. The filling was very moist, and the peppers were roasted until sweet and tender, but the overall flavor fell a bit flat. The peppers were served with some Romanian country bread (tara paine) to soak up the creamy tomato sauce. I have never made a yeast bread that uses cornmeal and trying new things is what this whole adventure is about, so I felt like using this more traditional bread rather than one of my tried and true bread recipes would be worth my time. I was very pleased with the texture of the bread, a spongy soft interior with a light crispy crust, but the flavor was definitely a bit different and had a bit less flavor than I expected. This was not a bread that I think I would choose to eat on its own. 

Most of my family agreed with me. The general consensus was that everything was a little bland, the pepper filling, the bread, the sauce. When it was all eaten together, the flavor was a bit better. But even then, we wanted more flavor. Kevin suggested that we just use our normal meatloaf mix and stuff that in the peppers. That actually sounded like a pretty good idea, so I think I’m going to try meshing the two recipes. Daniel (our guest food critic for this meal) and Matthew both agreed with Kevin and I. Malia, on the other hand, didn’t like the peppers at all. First of all, she doesn’t like peppers yet. Second, she doesn’t like dill and that was one of the main flavors in the meat. She did eat the bread dipped in the sauce though. 

Because I feel like the separate elements of this meal really needed each other to make it all work, I’ve opted to rate it as one, rather than two separate recipes. Malia gave only half a fork as she liked the bread but not the stuffed pepper. The rest of us gave the meal about three fourths of a fork apiece, deducting a bit for the overall blandness. But we will likely try it again and if the filling tastes less strongly of dill, I’ll bet Malia would be happier about eating that part.

And as a side note, I'm definitely going to have to clean the oven tomorrow. 😒

Romanian Stuffed Peppers and Country Bread Rating: 3 ½ forks (out of 5)

International Eats-Germany

Cory and Michelle, Kevin’s brother and sister-in-law, both served missions in Germany. As such, German food turns up from time to time at family gatherings. A few years ago, when their daughter, Sharlee, was preparing to leave on her mission to Germany, they shared one of their family’s favorite German desserts: Bienenstich, or Bee Sting Cake. The cake was nice and light, not too sweet, and filled with a lovely cream. But the thing that made this cake special was the crunchy topping. Of course, Matthew and Malia were unable to taste the cake, but I did a bit of research to see if making a safe version for them would be possible. To my delight, I discovered that what makes this cake special is almonds and honey, both of which are safe for my kiddos. With a few substitutions in the cake and the pastry cream filling, an allergen free version was completely doable. 

When Malia told me she wanted to try some food from Germany, the bee sting cake immediately came to mind. I want to try some other recipes as well, but the cake was first up. Traditionally, this is a yeast raised cake. As I was looking at recipes, there were quite a few that took a shortcut and used a baking powder cake batter instead. While that definitely makes the cake much faster to create, I wanted to be as authentic as possible, so I selected a yeast raised version. 

Ironically, my nod to authenticity was what ended up shooting us in the foot. The cake looked spectacular, but most of us were a bit off put by the strong, yeasty taste of the cake. Don't get me wrong. We love bread and the wonderful flavor that yeast brings. But it was so strong that it overpowered the rest of the flavors. The vegan pastry cream turned out well, if a bit heavier than a standard one, the texture of the cake was nice and light, and the honeyed almonds on the top were a delight, but Kev, Matthew and I would have preferred the flavor of a standard cake. Malia, on the other hand, loved it as is. If I decide to try it again, which I might because I really wanted to love this cake, I will try a standard cake mixture. I have a feeling the bakery produced version we ate at Cory’s house used a standard cake recipe as well based on the flavor of the cake.

So did we love this cake? Nope. Did we like it? Sort of, some more than others. Would we try it again with some alterations? Probably. Did it look spectacular? Absolutely. 

Bee Sting Cake Rating: 3 forks

International Eats: Norway

 After the great success of last summer’s Pancakes Around the World, I decided this summer needed a similar venture. It was so much fun, and we found a bunch of types of pancakes that we really liked. Rather than sticking to one specific food this time, I decided to branch out and experiment with a larger variety of foods. We will be sampling dishes from a variety of different countries selected by my family. Matthew is interested in trying foods from Norway and Sweden. Malia wants to try some German foods, and Kev suggested we taste some traditional recipes from Spain. There will be a few other countries scattered in as well as I come across recipes I think my family will enjoy.

Our culinary globe-trotting has been somewhat delayed by the whole refrigerator debacle, but this evening we had our first international meal. Our Norwegian salmon with dill sauce was accompanied by some lovely Norwegian oatmeal molasses bread. The salmon was a hit all the way around. And while the sauce was tasty, we all felt like the salmon didn’t need it. The flavor of the fish alone was delightful. But we really like salmon, so a little salt, pepper, and lemon juice flavored the fish perfectly. The bread was also very good. Matthew, Malia and I really liked it. It was a lovely, soft loaf with a slightly crisp crust and a lovely flavor. The taste of the molasses was weird to Kev though. He associates the flavor of molasses with cookies and having it in the wrong form was a bit off putting for him. Buttering the bread downplayed the taste of molasses though, so Kev at it that way while the rest of us ate it plain.

Overall, our first taste testing of the summer was a great success. Stay tuned. There is more to come!

Norwegian Salmon with Dill Sauce: 4 forks (out of 4)

Norwegian Oatmeal Molasses Bread: 3.5 forks 

Fingers Crossed

The refrigerator repairman was here again this afternoon with the correct compressor in hand. I’m so grateful Ivan was willing to come out on a weekend. He got the compressor installed and the fridge is currently making its way towards cool. Here’s hoping that it both cools appropriately and keeps working. We need to let it do its thing for about twenty-four hours before things will stabilize but being able to actually use the fridge for its intended purpose rather than having a giant, super expensive magnet board taking up real estate in my kitchen would be nice. 

(Rolls Eyes Dramatically)

I saw a t-shirt once that read “I rolled my eyes so hard I saw my brain.” I wish I had purchased that shirt, because today would be a great day to wear it. It would perfectly describe my feelings about the continuing saga of our fridge. 

When last I posted, the replacement parts for the repair of our brand-new fridge were on order. They arrived in due time and the repairman was scheduled to complete the repair today. Ivan, our repair guy, showed up right on time and proceeded to get started. He pulled out the faulty compressor, unpacked the new one to replace it, and discovered that it was the wrong part. It was a compressor, but the wrong revision and would not work. So he contacted his office, was told that there was another compressor in the right revision in the shop, and drove over to get it. An hour later he showed back up at our door and five minutes after that he discovered that the second compressor did not work either. It was significantly bigger than the original which meant it wouldn’t fit. Poor Ivan. He was so frustrated that I suspect if there were not actual customers involved, he might have started cussing in his thick, eastern European accent. He is only as good as the information he is given and when all the spec sheets show that a part fits when it really doesn’t, he is the one in the line of fire. He contacted the office again and they contacted the fridge manufacturer directly. The correct part was identified, and we were informed that it can be here in another 3ish days. 

What that means is that our fridge, which was not working well before but was at least keeping our food adequately cool is no longer functioning at all. It is compressor-less, unplugged, and acting like a hugely expensive stainless-steel paperweight. So once again we are pulling out the ice chests and transferring food. At least we still have the mini fridge that was lent to us to keep the dairy products cold. We are going to owe our friends a steak dinner after all this.

And poor Ivan. He was so worried about leaving us with no fridge. I hope they at least pay him well.

(Sigh)

So you know when your fridge dies and you have to buy a new one but when the new one arrives you realize you hate it because it is too small, so you buy a different one, but when that one arrives you discover within the first twenty-four hours that it is not working correctly because the fridge is not quite cool enough and the freezer is way too cold, so you call the store and they say to call the manufacturer, which you do,  and then when you have had the fridge for three days a repairman arrives on your doorstep and tells you that the compressor isn’t working right and the fan in the freezer isn’t working at all and it will be three to four business days until the parts can be here, after which they will need to schedule another appointment to come back for the repair and hope that it fixes the problem?

Yeah, that has been the past two weeks of my life. At least the cool laser thermometer the repairman had confirmed that the $6 fridge/freezer thermometers we purchased from Amazon are spot on, thereby justifying our claims that things are definitely not working right.