What's Cookin?

I love to try new recipes here because if I don't, I'll easily get tired of the food we have available.  Last month I tried my hand at making mozzarella from powdered milk since we don't have access to fresh milk.  We can only buy long life milk or powdered milk in the stores.  Those of you who have read our Fruitfulness Newsletter may have been wondering how the mozzarella would turn out.  (If you don't subscribe to our ministry blog at www.heartsforharvest.com, you may have missed our annual newsletter called Fruitfulness.  Click the link to read it here:  Fruitfulness Newsletter 2011.)  Here are some photos of my first attempt at homemade mozzarella made from powdered milk...

Left photo:  I carefully followed all of the instructions-even used my handy dandy thermometer to get the mozzarella heated to just the right temperature!

Right photo:  The finished product...it ended up more like ricotta cheese, so I made lasagna instead of pizza!   

While trying to find ways to use my sourdough starter, I stumbled upon a recipe for Sourdough Potato bread.  It turned out to be pretty good...sorry, we ate it up before I thought about taking photos of it.  But, I did take some photos of the Sourdough English muffins that I've made for breakfast the past 2 mornings.  This morning, I even added some cinnamon and Craisins to the dough!  Yum!

Last week, Tyren decided to buy some beef from the market.  This isn't the kind of beef you're used to.  It was very fresh beef.  Here, when you buy meat from the market, you buy it by the kilo (~2.2 lbs.) and it's just all cut up into unidentified chunks of meat, fat and bones.  I decided to try to make it stretch for a few meals, so I added some of it to a pot of beans which lasted two meals.  Then I used the rest of it in another new recipe which I altered slightly.  My recipe was inspired by an Amish recipe for Chicken Stoltfuz which is a chicken stew served over a pie crust baked crisp like crackers.  Instead of chicken stew, I made a beef stew and baked up some of my homemade pie crust until it was crisp like crackers.  It was pretty good!  My kids loved the pie crust baked like crackers and have been asking me to make it again as a snack.  That meal also lasted for two meals.  (Whenever we eat meat, which is not as often as I'd like :), I try to use it in ways that will last for more than one meal.)

The last new recipe idea I tried recently was Eggplant Parmesan-without the cheese, using my homemade breadcrumbs.  Tyren found one huge eggplant in the market and that one eggplant served us with Eggplant Parmesan sans cheese for 2 meals!

Oh, I almost forgot about my homemade vanilla!  Last year, a visitor gave us a gift of real vanilla beans from Madagascar!  I looked online to see what I needed to do to make my own vanilla extract, and to my surprise, found out I would probably need to make a trip to the local bar.  Well, being a missionary, that wouldn't look very well here.  Fortunately, I was able to purchase a bottle of vodka from a grocery store in Blantyre on one of our trips to Malawi late last year.  Last week, I dropped the vanilla beans into the vodka bottle and 3 months from now, we will have our own homemade vanilla.  It's as easy as that!

 



















Well, until next blog...

God bless!
Tiffany

Welcome 2012!

Let the New Year begin with reflections on the past year...

I had a new blog topic just about every week, but never had time to enter them in, so here's a quick synopsis of some of the blogs that I wanted to type from July through December:

Yay!  I got blessed with a Kindle as a birthday/Christmas gift!  I love to read, but being in Mozambique, it's kind of hard to have a huge collection of books or access to a good public library.  Now that I have a Kindle, I can carry a huge collection of books with me wherever I go!  So far, I've downloaded some free books, mostly cookbooks and classics, some free games, borrowed a library book from the public library in CT.,  and purchased the Kindle version of my Spirit Filled Life bible.  It's great!   

I came up with a few new recipes and recipe ideas:
*Chicken pot pie-Since we don't buy meat often because of the expense, I sometimes try to make the meat stretch for more than one meal...we can usually get at least 2 meals out of this one!
*Tiffany's Own Bran and Fruit bars-These I made with some bran that a missionary found in bulk in Malawi and shared with all the Lichinga missionaries for free.  I hardly ever baked with white flour when we lived in the U.S. so a little bran in all of my recipes helps me to feel a little bit healthier!  (These bars I created as a healthy snack alternative when I was pregnant and hungry!  Sorry, I lost the photo that I took of these.)
*Sourdough Pizza crust-Whenever we happen to have pepperoni from the U.S., Lichinga happens to have cheese in town, and we happen to have the money to buy it-all these conditions occuring at the same time-I usually try to make pizza.  I tried a sourdough version for the crust, since I've been experimenting with sourdough, but I decided to stick to my regular yeasted crust recipes!  In my opinion, sourdough is not for pizza!

His Grace is Enough:
Reflecting back on my pregnant days with Berasia, I realized that the grace I thought I didn't have during those times of lack of sleep, lack of comfort, and sometimes lack of just being able to walk normally towards the end, was actually there all along!  Through His grace, He enabled me to homeschool my children, teach at the bible school, host visitors to our center, pray and intercede regularly for my family and Iris Lichinga, invent new ways to enjoy normally mundane food (smile!), and a host of other things!  Only during times when I trusted in my own strength, did I feel weak and inadequate while doing the things God has called me to do.  I'm still learning that when I do the things God wants me to do, His grace is enough!

Christmas with Jesus:
When someone asked me, "How was your Christmas?", I responded, "Great!"  I didn't give any detail, but I'd like to share about how my Christmas turned out to be so great.  It started some weeks before Christmas when I usually like to prepare our home with festive decorations that remind me of this special holiday.  We also usually sing Christmas/Advent songs every night until Christmas day.  Since we've been in Lichinga in our own house, we usually decorate a small fake tree every year.  Well, none of these things happened according to plan this year. 

Then, the Wednesday before Christmas, we found out that some people we know here were involved in a horrible car accident after attending a Youth Conference in another province.  One of them actually died in the accident.  That night we (our family and others here at our center) spent hours together praying and interceding, hoping that God would raise the dead!  It didn't happen. 

On Christmas day, the parents in a new family that just joined us at Iris Lichinga were sick and mostly confined to their beds all day.  We babysat their 2 boys during the day so that they could try to rest and heal.  Tyren spent time during the day driving people to and from church services because there was no other available car.  By the time we got to sit down as a family together, it was around 7 or 8 at night.  Yet, strangely enough, at the end of the day, I realized that it was all good!  Through it all, God allowed me to see and partake of His goodness. 

None of these circumstances turned out the way I (along with others) would have preferred, but God allowed me to see that His will was done and that's all that mattered.  Yes, I've still left out lots of the details, but His love was shown and His love prevails.  Once I realized that everything worked out according to His perfect will allowing His love to prevail, I was satisfied, and I can honestly say in all truth that I had a great Christmas! 

May God bless you much this year as we walk in His grace and the revelation of His love!

Tiffany

Amelia Bedelia Comes for a Visit

How many of you remember Amelia Bedelia books?  I used to love reading about all of Amelia's funny accidents and bloopers!  She was able to turn very simple activities or jobs into disastrous mishaps that usually destroyed or wasted other people's property.  I always wondered why she was ever hired again by anyone as a housekeeper or babysitter after the word got out about what had happened at her last job!  But in the end, everything miraculously ended up being fixed up and everyone was happy.

Amerel loves to bake.  She was given a children's cookbook by my younger sister the last time we were in the U.S.  She loves to look at all of the recipes and decide which one she's going to try next.  In the beginning, I would usually be around to help guide her as to how to interpret the ingredient measurements, recipe directions, etc., but now she has gained the confidence to start using the cookbook on her own.  Normally, she does a great job making pancakes, muffins and cakes out of her cookbook.  But the last two times she made recipes on her own, without parental guidance, somehow things just flopped!  Even though these were recipes she has made before, she somehow misread the ingredient measurements and ended up putting way too much of some ingredients and too little of others.  In the end, the recipe was nothing like it was supposed to be.  She ended up being very discouraged in her ability to bake.

This last time, she was trying to make pancakes out of her cookbook, which she has successfully made multiple times with and without my help.  They ended up with way too much sugar and too little of some other ingredients.  I tried to doctor it up so that we could still have pancakes, but it didn't work.  They just kept burning!  I prayed about how to salvage the "pancake batter" and decided to try to make it into two cakes.  I had to add some other key ingredients to try to make it work. 

This particular morning, I had lots of personal agendas that I wanted to get done and now I had no time to do them because I had to spend most of my morning fixing up Amerel's recipe.  I was not very happy that I had to put all of my planned activities aside and had a bit of an attitude.  After spending some time moping, I realized that I needed to stop moping and figure out how to encourage my daughter.  I began to pray and ask the Lord if there was anything that could be learned from these two seemingly disastrous recipe mishaps.  I realized that this could be something the enemy could use to try to steal away the joy that my daughter has had over baking and cause her to feel as if she couldn't bake anymore.  I felt that he might probably try to turn these last two mishaps into something that could end up discouraging her and making her feel down on herself in lots of other areas of her life, also.  So, after the first pancake turned vanilla cake came out of the oven perfectly beautiful and delicious, I called Amerel over and began to share with her what I felt the enemy might try to do if she continued to dwell on the mistakes of the last two recipes.  Afterwards, she felt very encouraged and prayed that she wouldn't allow the enemy to discourage her and take away her joy of baking.  She also prayed that she would be confident to continue baking in the future.  Isaiah then prayed words of encouragement over her.

 

Now we have two beautiful cakes to eat and share, even though we started out expecting a wonderful pancake breakfast.  Just like in the Amelia Bedelia books, we ended up with something good and everyone was happy!  When we choose to stop moping and allowing discouragement to set in over our failures, we can allow God to turn our failures into successes and into something beautiful that can be useful in our own lives and also in the lives of others!

Blessings!

Tiffany