pizza night

Grayson and Bowen love to help do stuff in the kitchen. We usually make a pretty big mess and baking takes me twice as long, but I love them helping! Making pizza the other night was a hit! It was nice not to give them any rules or "measurements" and let them just have at it. And they both did a good job!

the boys thought it was funny that "chef Miller" came to announce the pizza was ready :) 

chick-fil-a

There is a little food stall right around the corner from our apartment called Chick-n-Serve. While we love Chick-n-Serve, it is definitely nothing like Chick-fil-A, even though it looks a little familiar. It even  says "eat more chicken".

We love Chick-fil-A, so I decided to try to bring a little to our home for dinner. I found all of these recipes online and while it wasn't exactly the same, it was still yummy :) 

And don't worry, as I handed Chad his plate, I made sure to say "my pleasure".

I used this recipe for the nuggets and the Chick-fil-A sauce. 

This recipe for the carrot and raisin salad.

For the fries, I just cut up potatoes, added a little oil, salt and pepper and baked them. (I couldn't get my hands on a waffle fry cutter)

And this simple recipe for the cookies & cream milkshake.

It was a great little dinner date night at home. 

scratch

One of the major adjustments for us (as I mentioned here) has been food stuff. You can't just go to the store and get whatever you need like we were use to. As I said before, I am not creative in the kitchen and so this has really stretched me! We have made things from scratch that I would have never even thought to try to make! It is so easy to buy hummus, salsa, pancake mix, cream of chicken soup, canned pumpkin... why make it from scratch?! BUT when you can't just buy it and the only way to eat it is to start from the beginning, it motivates us a lot more.

Have I tried a lot of things that have failed? YES

Have I gotten frustrated? Definitely

Am I learning a lot and hopefully getting better? I hope so

Have I enjoyed it? I really have!

I have really missed crafts and having projects to do. There isn't a Michaels (oh I miss the scrapbook paper aisle!) and crafty resources are limited (although I am finding some things to do). Baking and cooking and trying new recipes has been sort of a creative outlet for me. 

Here are a couple of the things we make here that we never made this way in the states...

We buy garbanzo beans, soak them overnight, pressure cook them and then make hummus. I had never made hummus before. 

One of the things I was super excited about was that they have pumpkins here. I guess I assumed they didn't. I was missing fall and Brandy made us some pumpkin syrup so that we could make our own pumpkin spice lattes (not even knowing I was missing fall). So sweet! Our teammates also told us how to cook pumpkin and encouraged me to try (it intimidated me!)  

 You can't buy brown sugar here, but you can make it! You just buy jaggery and melt it and mix it with regular sugar. 

One day we made brown sugar in order to make barbecue sauce in order to have a barbecue chicken braid for dinner. crazy!

 I tried several granola bar recipes in the past few months, because that is one of my favorite snacks and I really missed having bars to eat on the run or for breakfast. But lately one of the grocery stores here has had these nature valley ones. It made me SO excited to find them for sale here in our city... I stocked up!

We've really been surprised at how we haven't missed certain food things as much as we thought we would. 

Would we love to have a chick-fil-a sandwich or a reese's right now? Sure 

Do we wish we could just go to a Mexican restaurant? Sometimes 

...especially Los Tres Magueyes with the Moores :)

Are we excited to eat red meat in Thailand? Of course (41 days!)

Are we learning to be content with what we have? Trying to :)