Mary and Elliot: August 2008

Saturday, August 30, 2008

Vegetarian Dumplings from South Korea

The same day last week that we ate kimchi, Elliot and I made Vegetarian Dumplings. We found this South Korean recipe in a cookbook that we checked out from our local library. The dumplings are easy to make and the taste is not very complex. What I liked most about this recipe was making the little dumplings before we fried them. I've never used dumpling (wonton) wrappers before, and it's kind of fun!

Here is what the finished product of our labor looked like:

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Kimchi from Korea

Last week we made kimchi, a Korean snack/side dish that we are attributing to North Korea, although it is eaten in both the north and the south. We made it too salty-- it was our own fault for not being careful when we tried to make less than the original recipe called for. But despite our error, I can tell it would have been tasty.

I've had store-bought kimchi in the past and I really didn't like it because the taste was too strong. This homemade kimchi has a much milder taste, however. We only fermented ours for 2 days, and we made a vegetarian recipe that does not include fish paste. It was a better flavor, in my opinion.

I'd like to try to make this again, being more careful with the salt next time. I really think it will taste good when we prepare it properly.

Elliot with our first-ever jar of kimchi:

Monday, August 18, 2008

Complete Jollof Rice from Benin

Another success!

I cooked our second World Peas recipe tonight, a rice and vegetable dish from Benin called Complete Jollof Rice. It was a little bit spicy, but very good. Like the stew from Armenia, it was different than anything I've ever had before. Here's what the meal looked like when it was done cooking:

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Mobile, AL and the USS Alabama and USS Drum

This last weekend Mary and I decided we would go to Mobile, Alabama, stay at a bed and breakfast, and go see the Battleship, USS Alabama and anything else in the park where that ship is perma-docked.

Mary had visited before when she was younger and thought that I might like to visit. Boy was she right! We spent at least 4 hours there touring the the USS Alabama, the USS Drum and various military planes and tanks and things. The ship and the sub were so cool!

They have many things to see at this nice park, including not only a totally awesome battleship and submarine but many airplanes, helicopters, tanks and artillery. We looked at them all.
In the next post I will be showing you my favorite parts of each of the main tours.
Yeah, you get to climb aboard both the Alabama and the Drum and really see what it must have been like to live in very close quarters, on a seafaring Navy ship!

Also, the Air Force painted that helicopter to look like a caterpillar so that when people saw it in pictures taken from far away they would just think it was bug, close to the camera, or so I assume.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Ailazan from Armenia

Our first "World Peas" recipe! (See the post immediately below this one.)

Last night, Elliot prepared Ailazan (click here for a link to the recipe, posted on our other blog), which is a vegetable stew from Armenia. I must admit that we were skeptical at first. But then it started cooking and it smelled soooo good. It turned out to be quite yummy! The stew is a bit oily for what I'm used to, but we ate it with bread and that resolved the problem perfectly.

Here is a picture of Elliot chopping the vegetables:

The ingredients, right before we put the pot on the stove:

The finished product:

World Peas

Elliot and I both enjoy cooking. We have our old, trusty stand-by recipes, of course. But we try to cook lots of different types of recipes, inspired by different cultures and representative of many different regions of the world.

It was only a matter of time.

That's right. We have decided to cook (at least) one recipe from each country in the world!!!

Wikipedia currently recognizes 245 "political entities" and so that's what we've decided to use as our list of countries. It will take us years. But we will do it!!! I'm determined. (At least for now.) It might be hard to find native recipes for some of the countries, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Here are the rules: 1) the recipes must be vegetarian (of course); 2) we will strive to cook main dishes; 3) if we cant find vegetarian main dishes we will look for side dishes but desserts will be a last resort; 4) we will try to make the recipes as authentically as possible, so no meat substitutes (like fake chicken) unless it is otherwise hopeless without the switcheroo.

I will publish the recipes on my recipe blog, and give you hyperlinks to the recipes. This post will become "THE MASTER LIST OF RECIPES" and I'll make a link on the right-hand side of the blog so that you can always click to this post.

So far we've made recipes from 19 out of 245 countries.

Here is the country list, with links to the recipes we've made beneath the country: