Lamb Curry

Since I grew up in an Indian neighborhood in Fiji, curry makes a frequent appearance at our dinner table. My husband is extremely fond of curried lamb, which, while quite expensive in the States is actually not bad here. I bought lamb necks in town this month for K16/kg, which translates to about $3.50/lb.

I have a basic curry "recipe" (which is really just rough estimates, like most of my regular cooking) that I adjust to fit whatever item I happen to be currying. This one works well for most meats -- lamb, chicken, goat, whatever. 

Lamb Curry (print recipe)

Ingredients
5 lamb necks
4 potatoes, cubed
3 onions, sliced

4 garlic cloves
1 green onion
1 tsp salt

2T curry powder
2T garam masala
1T cumin
1 tsp coriander
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp paprika

4T vegetable oil
1/2 c coconut milk
water


Cut as much meat off of the lamb necks as you can, in small pieces, and set aside along with the lamb bones and potatoes.

Smash the garlic, green onion, and salt together to make a paste.
Mix the spices together in a bowl.

Coat the bottom of a deep pot with the vegetable oil, and fry the sliced onions on medium heat until they begin to become slightly translucent. Add the garlic paste and spice blend with just enough water to make a runny paste (so that it doesn't stick to the pan), and stir until it becomes fragrant.

Add the lamb and potatoes, stir until the lamb is slightly seared.
Add the coconut milk and just enough water to nearly cover the meat and potatoes. Stir, and then cover and bring to a boil.

Reduce heat and allow to simmer until dinner time. 1-2 hours is best. Serve with rice and rotis.

My Toddler Has a Swearing Problem

Toddlers are interesting creatures.
They are very similar to monkeys and parrots and lemmings.
What they see, hear, or watch someone else do,
that they too shall do. Or say.

This issue has come up before... such as when, upon Theron's discovery of the Temper Tantrum, my husband used to tell him, "You are not dying. Calm down."
Now, when Theron throws a tantrum, he accompanies it with shrieks of
"DYING! DYYYYYIIIIINNNGGG!"
We just give thanks for understanding neighbors who have children of their own.

However, we have never had a problem with Theron swearing. I mean, we usually watch our language pretty well. We are missionaries, after all, and are held to certain standards of conduct.

But this week, I was talking with his babysitter. Evidently, as her nice little family was busy just minding their own business and being productive and behaving, my Sweet Toddler suddenly burst out with the endearing term, DUMB-A**!!
And not just once.
Over and over.
And over. 
Because once is obviously not enough for such language.

Her husband was, understandably, somewhat taken aback by this turn of events, and probably not a little concerned about (a) my son's home environment, (b) his son's understanding of "ok words." (their son is a month younger than Theron).

Rachel, though, being the kind, understanding woman she is, decided to give us the benefit of the doubt. Wasn't that nice of her? Especially with her husband expressing concern and my toddler continuing to happily express himself with Less Than Desirable Words in the background.

My dear friend Rachel assured her husband that she did not think Theron's parents regularly would use the term he was so enthusiastically applying to all of his surroundings. She wasn't sure, but possibly they were misunderstanding what he was saying and surely they could find another explanation.

She then proceeded to try to figure out what, if anything, else Theron might be saying.
She finally realized that he was pointing to a character in a book while expressing his opinions....
A book on Thomas the Tank Engine.

She explained to her relieved husband that she believed Theron was, in actual fact, saying "THOMAS! THOMAS!", not... anything else.

I assured her, during our conversation, that we did not, in fact, regularly use such language at home, and that Theron was, in fact, saying "Thomas." He confirmed the fact by repeating loudly "THOMAS! THOMAS!" Since we were obviously discussing the annoying little tank engine, and he wanted to weigh in with his opinion. Sure enough, if you didn't know what he was saying, it did indeed sound like "dumb-a**"

On the positive side, now when he asks repeatedly over and over to watch "Thomas," which he does by just repeating "Thomas! Thomas! Thomas!" over and over like a scratched record, we now are infinitely amused rather than just extremely annoyed.
Because... well... we're immature.
And it's really funny. 

Through the Mud

Meet Eeyore.
He is Theron's favorite stuffed animal.
He gets carried/drug everywhere.

He gets sat on
hugged
snuggled with
chewed on
laid on.

He has water poured on him
mud smeared on him
rocks thrown at him
things piled on him.

He gets carried to the stroller to join in on the walk,
then dropped in the dirt
and rolled over
and picked back up
and handed back to outstretched toddler arms
to repeat the process again.

Because the love of a toddler is a little traumatic for the object of love.

Eeyore gets washed much less frequently than he should,
because there is no time to wash and dry him between naps
and heaven forbid a nap happen without Eeyore.

Eeyore gets thrown out of the crib in a fit of anti-nap fervor
and then post-Eeyore-throwing remorse immediately sets in
and we hear a mournful wail from the nursery
EEEEYYYYOOOOOORRRREEEEE!!!!
and we have to go and hand Eeyore back, if the nap is going to proceed.

Eeyore gets drug through the mud
and his bedraggled, muddy state,
like that of the Velveteen Rabbit,
bears witness to how much he is loved by a little boy.

The other day, I noted this to my husband, as Eeyore underwent yet another traumatic event in his stuffed life.
"I don't know whether to feel sorry for Eeyore that he is so mistreated, or be happy for him because he is so loved!"
And my wise husband responded,
"Just remember that thought when you feel like you have been drug through the mud -- it is because you are so loved!"

Because the love of a toddler is a little traumatic for the object of love.
But us who are loved by the toddler
wouldn't change it for the world.

Because Eeyores and Mommies are just a little different from regular humans.
Eeyores and Mommies try to see you,
not what you say when you are mad. 

Eeyores and Mommies will snuggle you
when you are covered with snot
and dirt
and who knows what other Toddler Cooties.

Eeyores and Mommies will love you
at your worst.

Even when you drag them through the mud.

I'm so glad that God
is a little bit like Eeyores and Mommies
when I act like a toddler
and my love is a little traumatic.

Going Vegetarian(er) - Part 2

In my last post, I talked about some of the reasons why I (and others) might want to move toward having a little less meat in our diets. I also talked about some of the "thought-process" reasons that keep a lot of people from doing so. In this post, I'd like to share some more practical tips about how to actually go about reducing the amount of meat in your diet without ending up with endless meals of salad. My mom loves salad, so this was never an issue for her. I, however, get tired of lettuce, and my husband firmly believes that lettuce should mostly go toward feeding rabbits. And then we should eat the rabbits.
There are, however, several rather easy methods to ease yourself into a "less meat" diet, without becoming a rabbit-like lettuce eater. Here are some of them!

1. Reduce/ eliminate meat content in dishes you already eat. This is probably the least "system-shocking" method, and the one most likely to sneak its way past a spouse who is still firmly in the carnivore category. Take dishes that you already eat which are "meat-and-something-else" and just reduce the meat content and up the veggie content. You can do this a little at a time, until you have very little to no meat in the dish. Now, choose your dishes carefully: this works far better with spaghetti than it does with roast and potatoes. Your spouse might notice if you served Nugget of Roast with Pile of Potatoes.

For example:
Spaghetti: reduce meat, increase tomato sauce and onions. You can make spaghetti sauce with no meat (gasp), or you can use a little meat for flavor (my preferred method)
Lasagna: same thing. More cheese or veggies (squash goes well in lasagna), less meat.
Other Pasta: Many cheesy pastas don't need any meat at all, or very little. Chicken fettucine alfredo does not need much, if any, chicken. Manicotti can be stuffed with just herbed ricotta. Pasta and pesto is a great no-meat meal.
Soups: Broccoli-cheese-ham soup can have very little ham. Tomato soup and grilled cheese doesn't need any meat. Beans and ham can be done with only Hint of Ham for flavor.
Pizza: Try Hawaiian with very little to no ham (more onions and pineapple), or Mexican with very little ground beef (more beans and corn and cheese), or pepperoni that leans more cheese-ward. Or be adventurous and do a veggie pizza! (green peppers, onions, fresh basil, olives, mushrooms, tomatoes, etc.)

Tropical Pizza toppings

Tropical Pizza

2. Learn to base a meal around a vegetable rather than a meat. If you are anything like I was, when you go to make a meal, you first decide what meat you have to use, and then decide what you are going to do with it. Chicken? Chicken salad, chicken alfredo, fried chicken, etc. Beef? Roast and potatoes, chop suey beef, tacos, etc. My biggest challenge was learning not to start with a meat when planning my meals. What really helped me was learning several good, hearty vegetables that can serve as a "base" for many different meals. For example, pumpkin makes a wonderful "meal base" vegetable. You can make pumpkin soup, pumpkin gnocchi, pumpkin pasta, pumpkin hummus and pitas, curried pumpkin, etc. Look up pumpkin recipes on blogs and recipe websites, especially vegetarian blogs. Do the same with other vegetables: zucchini, sweet potatoes (kaukau), and other squash all make excellent "meal bases."

Pumpkin Curry

3. Make a "side" into a "meal." I knew plenty of recipes that didn't have meat in them -- but they were "side dishes" not "meals." Getting over this distinction in my mind really helped, so that I could take a "side dish" and turn it into the focal point for a real meal! For example, a simple soup becomes a meal if you add a loaf of french bread. Same for a no-meat pasta dish, if you add a salad and a bread. Add side dishes and you suddenly have a complete meal!

Kaukau (Sweet Potato) Soup with French Bread

Creamy Tomato-Roasted Garlic Soup

4. Research and branch into new recipes! I did a LOT of reading vegetarian blogs. They often have ideas for meals I would have never thought of on my own, and the pictures often make me eager to try something new and different, and when you are trying a completely new and different recipe, often the fact that it does not have meat in it is not so noticeable (making it so that you do not have to mention this fact to your significant other). Flavor combinations that I never thought to try before (such as a savory vegetable 'pie' with mustard sauce) and beautiful examples went a long way toward inspiring me to try my hand at "less meat" meals.

Cabbage-stuffed Sweet Potato Steam Buns (Bao)

Some blogs I have found particularly helpful are:

Green Kitchen Stories
My New Roots
Thank Your Body
Naturally Ella

Also, Pinterest has whole vegetarian sections or boards which can lead you to recipes as well as other good blogs to read.

For those living in areas where internet is expensive, you might be encouraged to hear that I have found blogs like this seem to not eat up as large an amount of internet as I was expecting. Not as much as, say, Facebook. Also, try getting new ideas and recipes from other people you know or vegetarian cookbooks if you really don't want to spend the time online. Often e-cookbooks are available on Barnes and Noble.com or Amazon for quite good prices, and you can then read them on your computer or iPad or tablet or eReader.

Mostly, just don't be afraid to try something new! You won't die from a week or two of no/little meat, or a terrible vegetarian recipe. I've made quite a few things that sounded so good on the blog and were so not good on my plate! Hopefully you have a forgiving family --- or perhaps you should try new recipes in small quantities when you are alone in the kitchen! I really enjoyed learning to cook vegetarian recipes because I found that it challenged me to learn new things in cooking rather than sticking with the same old basic recipes. I think that, as a result, I have a much wider range of possibilities when I'm thinking up my meal plan for the week. Don't give up right away because you don't know where to begin or because one meal was a flop. Keep experimenting, and eventually you will become comfortable cooking with different ingredients, and hopefully your grocery budget/ health/ conscience will be better for it!

Pitas, Humus, Pineapple Salsa, and Roasted Cabbage

Going Vegetarian(er) - Part 1

 First off, I am not a vegetarian. I probably never will be. I really, really love steak. A lot.

Ok, now that that is out of the way, I will say that in my house we really only eat meat once or twice a week, and that is usually chicken. We eat a lot of "vegetarian" meals, for a couple of reasons. First, meat is really expensive. This is true in the states, as well as here in Papua New Guinea. Vegetables, if you do not buy them in the exotic, out of season, and organic sections of the grocery store (we don't have those sections at the market across the road), are quite a bit cheaper than meat, and therefore eating semi-vegetarian is a wonderful boon to the grocery budget.

Pastry-Wrapped Asparagus

Second, I just really don't think we need that much meat in a healthy diet. There are quite a few studies indicating that a vegetarian, semi-vegetarian, or otherwise lowish-in-meat diet is quite good for you, especially if you don't go replacing the meat with all kinds of high-carb or highly processed foods like tones of pasta or "tofurkey." Tofurkey, to me, sounds more like something I might give my toddler to play with than something I might actually put in my stomach. Maybe I'm prejudiced.

Anyway, for whatever reason, my family does not eat copious amounts of meat, and we do, quite often, have meals which have never mooed, clucked, quacked, oinked, or bleated. I have recently had several conversations with friends of mine who, for some reason or another, would like to reduce the amount of meat that they consume, but aren't really sure how to do so. I totally understand! A couple of years ago, when I went to make dinner I always would start with a meat and then decide what to do with it. I didn't really know how to even start thinking of a "vegetarian" meal. What would that consist of? Salad? Yuck. Buttered noodles? With… spinach? But over the last couple of years I have gotten to where I am quite comfortable coming up with and eating a meal with no meat in it, and, wonder of wonders, my husband is too! So I thought I would try to share a few tips with those who would like to move in the direction of cooking and eating less meat. In this post, I will suggest some "motivation" tips, and in the next post I will suggest some "practical" tips. (And I'll share some photos of delicious vegetarian meals. For your enjoyment and inspiration.)

First, I would decide why you want to reduce the amount of meat in your diet. Budget? Health? Moral issues? Ease of cooking? Lack of freezer space? Once you nail down exactly why you are wanting to move this direction, then you can better decide how to proceed. For example, if budget or health is your reason, then you might be just as happy cooking meals with just a little meat in them rather than no meat. If ease of cooking is your reason, then putting in just a little meat is probably going to be just as hard as quite a bit of meat, and you may want to actually try completely vegetarian meals. And obviously, if moral issues with eating meat has you wanting to go vegetarian, then you would probably want to cut out meat altogether.

Broccoli-Peanut Pesto with Button Noodles

Second, I would try to determine and deal with any issues that are keeping you from trying to reduce meat in your diet. Is your significant other resistant to the idea?  Are you worried that you might wither away to nothing or get horribly malnourished without the proper "protein" in your diet? Do you just have no idea where to start?

When I started considering a "less meat" diet, I was a little worried that I was going to have problems being properly nourished (I was pregnant at the time with my first child) and that I was going to have SERIOUS problems keeping my extremely active, high-metabolism husband properly fed. I had the idea that, although it is possible to get all your nutrients from a vegetarian diet, it required an in-depth knowledge of the exact nutrient value of each veggie that you consume and careful planning to make sure that you constructed the proper proteins from several different veggies.

Veggie-Cheese Omelet with Avocado and Toddler

 While this may be true for someone going completely vegan, or even perhaps completely vegetarian (I don't know for sure, I've never tried that), it is most certainly not true for a simple reduction of the amount of meat that you are eating. Studies (which I have not the time or inclination to cite here, but you are welcome to go research) have actually shown that the Standard American Diet has way too much meat in it. More traditional societies, as we see here in PNG, eat far less meat. And while I'm certainly not denying the necessity of protein (even meat protein) in our diets, I would argue that we certainly don't need it every meal, or even every day. Again, you are welcome to research this on your own… I have, and although I do not remember all the references I used, I can tell you that this is the conclusion I came to after quite a bit of research, and not just internet blogs. =]

Watermelon-Strawberry Koldskaal

For my husband, I think the penny dropped that he might not require so much meat to be healthy when he met Kulong and Yandu, the two Papua New Guinean guys that he works with. They are quite healthy, rather large, muscular guys, who could probably outwork most American guys with one arm tied behind their backs. These guys eat a rather traditional New Guinean diet, which consist mostly of vegetables. The occasional meat in a traditional diet would be a treat, eaten at a feast or special day, because animals that are eaten are either hunted or grown, not bought at the grocery store and grown in a feed lot. Morgan reported wonderingly to me that Kulong had told him that he ate meat probably once every two or three weeks. From then on, Morgan has been much less worried about making sure he had "enough meat." (we probably eat two or three "meat meals" a week)

Creamy Tomato Penne with Asparagus

All this to say, if the idea that meat is necessary at every meal is what is keeping either you or your significant other from trying to go "less meat," even though you would like to for other reasons, then a little research should help the issue. And if it does not convince your significant other, there is always the "sneak in a vegetarian meal and don't mention the fact that it doesn't have meat and hope they don't notice" method! I used that method for a long time. If, however, you simply don't know where to start in preparing meals without meat, I have some tips to help you get started which I shall share in my next post (because this one is getting a little long).