The Ultimate Comfort Drink

There is something about tea that puts me in a mild euphoria everytime. I’ve always had a soft spot for this ancient beverage and I’d prefer it to any other drink any day of the week, even alcoholic. Now that I’m married to a Muslim and drinking is no longer an option, I hold onto my teacup with an ever stronger zeal. I sometimes fancy myself a bit of a connoisseur even. I will occasionally drop into a tea shop simply to test my knowledge and walk out happily when I leave the shop owner puzzling over some bit of new information.I enjoy trying the national teas of the country I happen to be visiting. France doesn’t really happen to have a tea. Their comfort drink is vin chaud (hot or mulled wine). It is made very similarly to tea in that instead of hot water, spices are boiled together with wine. Some of the same warming spices are used as in my favorite tea: Chai Masala. Or, since I am incidentally from Oregon, you could call it Oregon Chai, I won’t mind.

Chai Masala

Use all those warm, fragrant spices you have

Ingedients:

• Thick slice ginger root
• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
• 6 or 7 whole cardomoms, shelled
• optional: 1 or 2 star anise, 3 or 4 black peppercorns, 3 or 4 cloves
• 1/2 liter whole milk
• 1/3 liter water
• 1-2 tsp. loose-leaf black tea, preferably something strong, simple and dusty like assam
• Sweetener. I usually use 1 tbsp brown sugar.

Method:

1. Start with cold water and the spices. Bring them to a boil together on medium high heat in an uncovered pan. Heat for around 7 minutes until about a third of the water has evaporated.
   

   A clay or ceramic cup is ideal. Glass or plastic is also common, but only recommended for the experienced!

2. Turn off and remove from heat. Stir and add the milk. Very gradually return to a sizzle. Remain watching the milk as it an boil over without warning! Don’t let it boil.
3. Once the milk and spices make a little mountain and raise, but not boil, turn off the heat.
4. Add the tea and sweetener, stir very briefly and cover the pot to let it steep for 4 to 5 minutes. Tea should never be boiled, but steeped.
5. Strain into a dainty cup. Enjoy!

Harira

Another delicacy from North Africa. This is one of the traditional dish that breaks the fast of Ramadan. All the credit for this recipe goes to my friend Hanan.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound cubed lamb meat
• 1 teaspoon ras al hanout or turmeric
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

• 2 tablespoons butter or margarine
• 3/4 cup chopped celery
• 1 yellow onion, chopped
• 1 red onion, chopped
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
• 1 (29 ounce) can diced tomatoes
• 7 cups water
• 3/4 cup lentils
• 1 (15 ounce) can garbanzo beans, drained
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1 lemon, juiced

Method:

1. Place the lamb, all spices, butter, celery, onion, and cilantro into a tagine or wide soup  pot over a low heat. Stir frequently for 5 minutes. Pour tomatoes (reserve juice) into the mixture and let simmer for 15 minutes.
2. Pour tomato juice, seven cups water, and the lentils into the pot. Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce the heat to simmer. Let soup simmer, covered, for two hours.
3. About 10 minutes before serving turn the heat to medium-high, place chickpeas into the soup, let cook about 10 minutes. Stir in lemon and eggs, let eggs cook one minute.

Enjoy with bread!

Sahara Sunset Soup

I chose the name for this soup because it’s kind of the color of the sahara desert. Or what I imagine it might look like around sunset. The Bedouins may eat this with chicken or lamb, but this version is totally vegetarian.

Ingredients:

• 2 potatoes, peeled and cut into wedges
• 1-2 cans of white beans
• 1/2 can of corn
• 2 tomatos, diced
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1-2 carrots, chopped
• 1 celery stalk, chopped
• 1 tsp. olive oil
• 1 pinch hot chili powder (or more depending on your taste)
• 1 tsp. cumin
• 1 tsp. Res Al Hanout Jaune powder (yellow north african spice mix)
• Salt and black pepper to taste

Method:

1. Heat the oil in a large soup pan or tagine. When butter melts, add the onions, garlic, carrots and celery and turn heat to low, cook for a few minutes, stirring occasionally.
2. Once  onions are soft, add the spices to the vegetables. Sauté them for a minute or two stirring continuously. Then, add 10 cups of water, cover and bring to a boil.
3. When boiling; add the tomato, beans and corn. Stir and cook on medium heat for about ten minutes. Then, add the potatoes and salt and cook for ten minutes or until the potatoes are just soft.

Bismillah!

Tofu Radna

This is my own take on a thai dish I sampled while living in northern Thailand for five months. Chok dee (Good Luck or enjoy!)

• Ingredients:
• 8 oz. pack of tofu, cubed
• 100 g. chantaboon rice stick (Flat rice noodles from Thailand)
• 1 tbsp. peanut oil
• mound of fresh ginger root, peeled
• 3 garlic cloves
• 1 tbsp. fish oil
• 1/4 of a large lemon, squeezed
• fresh coriander leaves
• 1/2 tsp. ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp. ground paprika
• 1/8 tsp. hot chili powder
• 1 tsp. curry powder
• 1 onion, cubed
• 1 tomato, cubed
• 1/2 packet of coconut cream powder

Method:

1. Fry the tofu in a pan stirring occasional for about 10 minutes or until hard and slightly brown. Stir in the chili powder, paprika and cumin during the last 1-2 minutes of frying. Set aside.
2. Boil water in a pan and soak the noodles for about 10 minutes in the boiled water until thoroughly soft.
3. Meanwhile heat the peanut oil in a pan. Smash the ginger and mince the garlic. Fry them on a medium high heat along with the onion in the oil for a few minutes, stirring, until just before brown. Add the tomatoes and fry for another minute. Add the noodles and fry for a minute, add the fish oil and the squeezed lemon and curry powder, fry another minute.
4. Add 1 cup of water and cover, turning the heat down to medium. Once boiling, add the coconut powder and cook uncovered another five minutes or until sauce thickens.
5. Add the coriander leaves and serve.

 

Simple French Yogurt Cake

Now that I am an ordained homemaker, I will be transitioning this blog in that direction, largely focusing on one of my greatest passions: food.

Let us start with perhaps my most used recipe. I learned this one when I was living in Chartres, France. I’ve made this on almost all my birthdays since, including our monthly celebrations of our daughter’s. It is extremely easy and not too sweet so it can be enjoyed with tea or coffee the next morning.

Ingredients:

3 eggs

1 container of flour

1 container of sugar

1/2 container of melted butter or oil

1 tsp baking soda (or 1/2 a sachet of levure chimique)

1 tsp vanilla extract (or 1 sachet of sucre vanille)

1 container of yogurt (plain or your choice of flavor)

Shredded coconut and/or chopped almonds (optional)

The great thing about this recipe is that the yogurt container becomes your measuring vessel.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Then, empty the contents of the container and set it aside. Wash the yogurt container. In a large bowl sift together the flour, sugar, and baking soda. Beat the eggs in a separate cup and combine them with the dry mixture. Then, mix im the butter or oil and finally the yogurt.

Pour batter into a greased baking pan. Top with coconuts or almonds if desired.

Bake at 350° for 20-30 minutes depending on how moist you want your cake.  Check on it continually to make sure.

Chai Masala Variation:

Heat the butter and oil with the same spices you use to make a cup of spiced chai tea.

For example:

1  tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp ginger

1/4 tsp ground cardamom

1/8 tsp nutmeg

Heat the spices for 2-4 minutes until the kitchen is brimming with fragrance. Then, add to the rest of the ingredients.

This recipe is NOT set in stone. It welcomes endless variations for the adventurous.

Womanhood

Homemaker is an underrated job. Cooking, cleaning, raising children has a higher learning curve than ever before. Except perhaps in the Victorian age when someone else did the nursing, etc even now house husbands start out just as adept as their female counterparts.

Gone is the age when girls graduated from school and went directly into the field they’d been trained for, that they were naturally inclined to- the domain of the house- which is only as alluring as one makes it. I don’t mean to sound anti-feminis. However, if we continue going back to work just a few short months after the new twig arrives in order to wear the pants; if the delicacy of a woman’s touch is absent at home; meals are no longer served on china; a woman becomes coarse and there is no way of telling the sexes apart.

Everything relies on the differences.

Lets have some Christmas Pork..I think Not!

I was wondering the other day why it is that we Christians are the only monotheistic peoples to still eat ham. Muslims shun it as a dirty creature that will eat anything and thus we better not eat it and Jews also know from their holy texts that it is a forbidden food by God. Therefore, why, especially during our most sacred of holidays, the birth of Jesus on December 25th, do we consume our Christmas Ham?

My family as many other families throughout America and on other continents enjoy ham on Christmas and for some reason even as a kid I always despised it and preferred the chicken instead. However, I would never refuse one of my grandparent’s juicy pork chops thus my hands are not clean even as a vegetarian I would “take a break” when I went to their house. It is just too hard to resist. So I thought it would be no big deal to go the rest of my life without devouring this particular animal when I married a Muslim man. But, as the season rolls around I find myself reminiscing about this oh so traditional of holiday fare and I wonder why on earth if it is really as bad as they say it is on Christmas it remains a token item. I even remember fondly a Christmas we spent on the Hawaiian island of Maui in a lu'au where a whole pig was eaten having been cooked in an underground pit with wood and imu stones. So how did a ham on Christmas start?

According to Wikipedia:

The tradition is suggested to have begun among the Germanic peoples as a tribute to Freyr, a god in Germanic Paganism associated with boars, harvest and fertility. It was later popularized by the Catholic Church as a test of truthful conversion.

The Christmas ham is also called the Yule Ham coming from Yule-tide, the traditional nordic pagan winter festival that was absorbed into Christmas. They say a bull’s head on a platter was served at the banquet to ask the god Freyr, one of the most important pagan gods, to ring in a happy new year. Interesting. So eating Ham at Christmas has absolutely nothing to do with Jesus or even the Christmas holiday, it simply continued from a much older tradition and unless you are of Nordic, Celtic or Russian descent really is not a part of your cultural heritage at all.

Okay, so my family does have Germanic roots, specifically Norwegian and German, so perhaps it is a family thing. But everyone virtually eats this food: there are over three million recipes for the Christmas version alone on google. So, what gives?

Again, according to Wiki there is in fact one Christian sect, the Seventh-day Adventists who forbid pork consumption along with the dietary laws of Jews (kashrut) and Muslims (halal). I am currently eating halal but I don’t believe it differs from the restrictions for the Jews so the food is interchangeable.

From the Hebrew or Old Testament Bible it says:

Leviticus 11:7-8
And the swine, though he divide the hoof, and be clovenfooted, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you. Of their flesh shall ye not eat, and their carcass shall ye not touch; they are unclean to you.

From the Quran it says:

Surah 2:173
He hath only forbidden you dead meat, and blood, and the flesh of swine, and that on which any other name hath been invoked besides that of Allah..

Also, pigs, like humans are omnivores and will eat indiscriminately. According to “The Genesis Diet” they can commonly carry up to 200 diseases and 18 species of parasites and worms, which cannot be detected. One of these is trichinosis, which mimics arthritis, rheumatism and typhoid fever. Approximately 10-20 percent of Americans suffer from trichinosis at some time and in which worms inbed themselves in the digestive tract and larvae and other parasites in the muscle tissue that cause a host of unexplained symptoms ranging from unexplained fatigue or muscle pains. These problems occur very seldom among Muslims and Jews. So why is pork not expressly forbidden in the Christian New Testament Bible?

It’s a good question. The Bible does forbid it in the Old Testament but Jesus doesn’t discuss it so it is okay? Would Jesus be alright with us celebrating him with it when it was once offered up to an idol on the same day? Would God who strictly said in the Old Testament that Pork is unclean change his mind? Here are a few verses that may help:

For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving.
Timothy 4:4

But whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.
Romans 14:23

So I suppose we each have to look within our own consciousness on this one.

Here today: thoughts on motherhood

My little girl is almost three months old now. It still feels not quite real that my role my life and purpose has changed so drastically. Being a first-time mom leaves you wavering between elation and exasperation a million times in one day and wondering how you made it through another day without your heart exploding. Okay, it’s not so bad it is most of the time incredible but also very hard.

Unlike some women I had a breeze of a pregnancy: no sickness really or fatigue, just felt a little full but in a nice way. The birth however was an experience I would rather forget but I feel really blessed to have my husband guiding me through it and my mom and stepdad staying with us in france offering limitless support and comfort for a month and a half.

Now my daughter lies sleeping at my side and life is a sweet and magical thing. For the moment until she wakes up distressed and all hell breaks loose. So we live from moment to moment, snatching at them before they get away like stray threads in a carefully crocheted blanket to dream about a sweet hereafter.

baby coming

I know it is a bit late, but I suppose it’s time to get it out there. I am expecting a baby. A little girl in about 6-1/2 weeks time. There it is! My life within the past few months has been a crazy whirlwind.

After managing to pass all my classes, even the hard one: computational hydraulics and even keeping the knowledge concealed from the vast majority of my classmates, I flew down to see my fiancé in France. I was planning on spending the summer in Switzerland doing geographical surveys of local lakes as well as bathing in them during the long summer months and continuing my sojourn as a student. But, things rapidly changed when I realized that my man would not be able to join me there and I would be doing everything solo, not to mention missing out on the best and most important months together. So I made a sudden decision to stay in Lyon for the summer and canceled, or rather postponed the internship.

Now my life involves hospital visits and hectic unintelligible calls to local agencies to get myself organized into the matrix of this impossibly chaotic and archaic country’s social services system, as well as walks along the river with my SO and lots of eating and sleeping. Also, planning an online baby shower if anyone is interested in attending…Everything else is smooth as a breeze and I feel completely blessed in this pregnancy which has been so discreet I hardly even noticed it.

To Dine or Not to Dine..?

The other day I was invited to a dinner at my housemate’s classmate’s house. I was enticed by the obvious fact that it would be very traditional. Just an intimate setting in the house of a Libyan and his wife and little baby. I must say, perched upon my little pillow on a sheet that had been laid out on the carpet in the living room, being served a cornucopia of exquisite dishes: lamb, chicken, kus kus, some little dumplings and salad I felt like a queen. The only problem was the woman whose house I was a guest in was the servant. And not by choice.

I could not believe that the woman who had prepared all of this for everyone was forced to sit alone in the kitchen watching TV hidden behind a black shawl while the men and I had a lavish conversation and dinner. I don’t want to judge this, but I was so surprised and disturbed by this facet of arabic culture.

After dinner, where I admit I was scrutinized and instructed in the correct order and manner to eat each dish (hey, I lived in Spain so this is nothing new) and my hands were washed before and after for me, which I had never experienced, we then had some tea poured in the same style as one of my favourites, mint tea, a strangely black tea with that familiar overwhelming sting of sugar, which when met my mouth I was happy again.

We had successive cups of tea in tiny glass cups and a flavourful conversation about religion, our host taking the side of an open-minded moderate. But, your wife is locked up…We were not allowed to leave until nearly midnight with bursting tummies, and I bid farewell to the little 8 month-old daughter I already loved and I alone said goodbye to the wife as my housemate, was not allowed to even lay his eyes on her. Is this a form of flattery…Well, my mind was confused about these customs, but I suppose it’s not for my mind to grasp since there is nothing I can do to change things, or is there? I was grateful for this experience and for all of their hospitality, but left with a bittersweet taste I still can’t quite wash off.