Week 46 - Seeds

I wasn't thrilled when I saw that the Week 46 challenge was seeds, because a lot of seeds are still choking hazards for little kids. But after reading some discussion about it and learning that beans are in fact seeds, I decided to try a new recipe for a bean-based salad from Once Upon a Chef.

The seeds part of the challenge was met with kidney beans, black beans, and chickpeas. I also topped the salad with some avocado. Although not using the seed itself, it does have a very large seed in the middle, so somewhat on theme!

Even though it was fall, I'm often looking for salads to lighten things up, and this one definitely worked for that. I would make this again!

Week 44 - Native American/Indigenous American

We've finished the Alaska section of the AtWCC (although, of course, I haven't written any of it here yet, since we still have to post all of Afghanistan and Alabama), but this was not the post I wanted to write to kick off the series. This dish was technically the last thing I made for the Alaska part of the AtWCC and also the last thing we tried from the 2021 cooking challenge, but it was a bit of a disastrous experiment and did not end either on a high note!

One of the things that I was most intrigued by for our Alaska exploration was a dish called akutaq, sort of like a Native Alaskan ice cream. In Alaskan tradition (more on Wikipedia), it seems like this was made with whipped fat (like from moose or walruses) mixed with meat (like dried fish) and berries, making it a very hearty meal, and was also sometimes made with fresh snow. These days, the fat is often substituted with vegetable shortening or Crisco, making it more accessible for those of us not in Alaska and also those of us who might not want to work with actual animal fat. Even with that change, I'll admit that I was a little nervous about making this and just ingesting that much pure fat, which is probably why I kept procrastinating and it ended up being the last thing we made for Alaska.

I followed the recipe from Spoon University, and it sounded so easy. Liquify the shortening (but don't let it get too hot), dissolve the sugar, add water to thicken it up, fold in the berries, and then put it into a container to freeze. I didn't think any of the steps would take too long, so the first thing I did was to take out a bag of frozen berries and chop them up a little bit. I didn't want whole frozen berries in case they were too hard for B to eat, so I thought that smaller pieces would work better and still contribute the same flavors.

Next up was taking out the shortening and then dissolving the sugar. Except... the sugar didn't dissolve, and the internet seems divided on whether it actually should dissolve in pure fat if you're doing something other than creaming it (which this was too liquid to do). I don't know all the science behind it, but what I do know is that ours did not dissolve whatsoever. I resigned myself to having crunchier sugar parts, which wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, and moved on to the water step, which didn't really thicken up anything.

I kept trying and trying to make it act the way the recipe said it should, but it didn't, so I eventually gave up and decided to fold in the berries and hoped it would just freeze in some form or another. Except... the berries by that point, since it had taken so long to try to dissolve the sugar and thicken up the mixture, were all melted and full of fruit juice, and then for some reason, adding the cold berries into the mixture took it from somewhat creamy and smooth to weird and curdle-like. I just threw the whole thing into a container hoping the freezer would sort it out, knowing it could be more icy than creamy with the higher liquid content. Even though it looked like berry quinoa once I got it into the container, I thought maybe, just maybe, it would be fine.

We put it in the freezer, and we were supposed to eat it later that day, but we were full. Then we were supposed to eat it the next day, but never got around to it. Were we just afraid of how it might taste and subconsciously finding every excuse possible? Maybe. We finally tried it the next day, and let's just say the freezer did not fix it. Those clumps that looked like quinoa? They were like little lumps of fat sweetened by berries, and although the overall taste wasn't awful, the texture was just too hard for us to get past to eat more than a few bites. Even A, who pretty much eats everything and has far less textural aversions than I do, just couldn't do it, and while I hate throwing food out, this was just not going to work.

We'd had a pretty great experience on our Alaska journey to that point, so it was kind of disappointing to end on such a low note, but I had to remind myself that not all cooking experiments work. I think lately I've just been going into it expecting to add everything to our family cookbook, forgetting that we do encounter quite a few failures. Often, I'll try again (my attempt to bake mozzarella sticks over and over again, for example), but I think we might just let this one go this time.

Week 36 - Yeasted

Oops, fell behind on these recaps again. Where did February go?!

Anyway, back to challenge week 36, yeasted. I made a lot of bread in 2020. I'd say, thanks to some cooking classes, it was the year I actually learned how to make bread versus following a recipe. When this challenge rolled around, it had been a while since I last made bread, so I hoped that it was like riding a bike and I'd remember what to do.

I decided on a garlic parmesan herb bread from The Stay at Home Chef, and started off by setting up the yeast. Only... not much happened. Our yeast had been in the fridge for a while, since we bought a giant bag instead of packets (it was all we could get at the time since everyone was making bread at that stage of the pandemic), so it was definitely possible that the yeast was dead. Or maybe the water was too hot. I tried again with a packet that was definitely not expired. It was better, but I was still worried that it wasn't going to turn out right, since the yeast still didn't feel as "responsive" as in the past.

In the end, the bread turned out fine. I still don't know if anything will top how I felt after the sage bread I made back in 2020 where I was shocked that I actually pulled that off. This one made two small loaves, but it didn't rise quite as much as I thought it would. Still tasty though, and it went well with our roasted asparagus, zucchini, and clam strips. Maybe I just need to bake more bread to remember what to do!

Week 35 - Kenyan

I love the challenge weeks that focus on different countries or regions of the world, because they can really push me out of my comfort zone to try something new (sort of like the whole AtWCC). I had zero familiarity with Kenyan food when this challenge came around other than a tilapia dish I made in a cooking class, so I blindly searched around until I found something that sounded both doable and delicious. I decided to try something called irio, following a recipe from Eat Well Abi. The site notes that the word irio means food and originates from the Kikuyu and Meru tribes in Kenya, and that the same dish of mashed food is sometimes called mukimo.

Irio is basically potatoes mashed with corn and green beans, and this recipe also added caramelized onions (instead of fried), which I love. It was pretty straightforward to make. We ate it along with some chicken tenders and grape tomatoes. I'm sure that's not traditional, but we always try to make sure we have some familiar foods on the plate for B when we try something new.

This was a really hearty and filling dish, and I think I would make this again, maybe next time alongside some other Kenyan dishes. I don't know how long it's going to take to get to Kenya since we're still doing countries starting with A, but someday!

Week 34 - Peaches

Peaches sounds like an easy challenge, but I had a tough time with this one. I didn't want to buy actual peaches, because I sometimes get a contact allergy to the skin, so I wasn't sure of the best way to go. Peach jam? Canned peaches? Honestly, I just wasn't feeling very inspired when it came time to plan this one. Eventually I settled on using the peach fruit cups we already had, because why buy something new for a challenge you don't even really want to do?

I ended up making a peach salsa with the peach fruit cups, some Roma tomatoes, a big green pepper, half a red onion, a big pile of cilantro, and some lime juice. Fair amount of prep, but easy to do. We ate it with some cheeseburgers and bagels (I know, not the combination you were expecting), and it worked for a summer dinner.

The salsa itself was fine. It didn't have much peach flavor, but they weren't fresh peaches and there wasn't that much peach compared to some of the other flavors. I probably wouldn't make it again (at least, not like this).