Monday, January 29, 2007

Happy First Birthday Caleb!


For Caleb's first birthday we had a Luau, or at least a Luau Lima style. He slept through much of it, but he loves to be the center of attention so when he made his entrance, it was nothing short of grand. We now know that Caleb loves kalua pig, chicken long rice, and especially chocolate frosting. He loves his presents, of which there were oodles, and he was a fabulous guest of honor. We can't believe that Caleb has been with us for an entire year. We are so lucky and happy to be Caleb's parents.















Thursday, January 11, 2007

Me and My Rody

Uncle Loren and Auntie Tomoko sent Rody to Caleb for his birthday -- apparently, he is all the rage in Japan (Rody is supposed to be a horse, but we think he looks like a llama, maybe we have llamas on the brain?). Some of these pictures are a little blurry, but that is because the subject was pretty excited and I think the blurriness helps convey his delight!















Friday, January 05, 2007

Yummy, Yummy, Yummy

We tried some delectable new recipes this holiday season and I want you all to benefit from these finds.

Baked French Toast with Apples and Caramel Sauce (courtesy of our new friends Ryan and Heather and AllRecipes)
The consistency of the finished recipe will be similar to bread pudding. A glass baking pan will help prevent the toast from sticking. Makes 18 pieces (12 servings). This recipe must refrigerate overnight, so work that into your planning and prep time.

Ingredients

1 (1 pound) loaf French bread sliced
6 eggs
1 1/2 cups skim milk
1/3 cup white sugar
1 Tbsp. vanilla
6 apples (peeled, cored and sliced)
1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
2 Tbsp. white sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup margarine, melted
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tsp. vanilla

Directions

1) Cut bread into 1 1/2 inch thick slices and place in a lightly greased 9 X 13 inch baking pan. In a large bowl, beat eggs with 1 1/2 cup skim milk, 1/3 cup white sugar, and 1 Tbsp. vanilla. Pour egg mixture over bread slices.

2) Arrange apple slices on top of bread. Sprinkle cinnamon, nutmeg and 2 Tbsp. white sugar over apples. Cover and refrigerate overnight (yes, it takes awhile, but it is absolutely worth it!).

3) After mixture has refrigerated overnight, preheat overn to 350 degrees F or 175 degrees C.

4) Bake toast in preheated oven until golden brown, about 1 hour.

5) While toast is baking, prepare caramel sauce by combining 1/2 cup white sugar, flour and melted margarine in a small sauce pan. Stir in brown sugar, 1/2 cup skim milk and 2 tsp. vanilla. Cook until thick, stirring often.

Serve French toast hot with warm sauce...you will love it!

Sausage Stuffing
(we got this recipe from one of the church missionaries serving here in Lima - this is his Mom's recipe, and I know it is good, because despite the fact that many of the ingredients were unavailable here, it still was delicious!)

Ingredients
1 lb. pork sausage
1 cup diced onion
1 cup diced celery
1/2 cup butter, melted
16 oz. bag/box seasoned stuffing breadcrumbs
2-3 cup chicken or turkey broth
1 tsp. poultry seasoning
1-2 cup water
1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper (optional)

Directions
In large skillet brown sausage. Add onion and celery and saute until onion is translucent. Stir in melted butter and broth and bring to a boil. Remove from heat. Spread breadcrumbs in 9 x 13 pan and sprinkle with poultry seasoning and cayenne pepper. Pour broth mixture over breadcrumbs. Mixture should be moist, but not wet. If necessary, add water to achieve moist consistency. Bake at 350 degress for 30 minutes or until brown.

Sweet Potato Souffle

Ingredients

3 cups cooked Sweet Potatoes/Yams mashed
1 cup sugar
1 Tbsp. Vanilla
2 eggs
1/3 stick butter
½ cup milk
Beat all together

Topping Ingredients
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup pecans halved or coarsely chopped
1/3 cup butter, melted
1/3 cup flour
Mix well

Place the sweet potato mixture into a cooking dish. If you like a thin layer of sweet potatoes do a large dish, if you like a lot of the Sweey Potato taste do a smaller dish. I doubled this recipe and put it in a 9 x 13 pan. Sprinkle the topping over mixture and cook at 350 for 25 minutes. Enjoy, you will be a believer in Sweet Potatoes after this, we had this for Thanksgiving and Christmas and licked to dish!

And finally, in response to our experience with the Panettone, my sister told me that Rachael Ray makes bread pudding with leftover Panettone, interesting. In spite of the fact that bread pudding is one of my absolute favorite things, I resisted the urge to buy still more Panettone and make this recipe. Sounds delicious though, if a little involved. Please note, once upon a time I made bread pudding using leftover brownies and hamburger buns -- it was scrumptious. My point being that if you find yourself with an abundance of Panettone (or just about any bread or cake like product) in the future and you are not a fan of nog homemade or otherwise, know that any bread pudding recipe will work and wow your guests and loved ones alike.

Eggnog-Panettone Bread Pudding

Ingredients
1 loaf Panettone, available in Italian specialty stores, cut in half (enough for about 5 cups, diced)
3 whole eggs
3 egg yolks
3/4 cups sugar
2 cups half-and-half
1/4 cup rum
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
Vegetable cooking spray

Directions
Preheat oven to 475 degrees F.
Place a tea-kettle of water on to boil for a water bath. With a serrated knife, remove the side crusts from the half piece of the Panettone. Cut into 3/4 to 1-inch dice. You should have 5 cups. Reserve the cubed Panettone in a large mixing bowl.

For the eggnog custard, in another bowl thoroughly whisk together the eggs, yolks, sugar, half and half, rum, vanilla extract, and a healthy grating of fresh nutmeg. Pour this over the bread cubes.

Spray a 12 hole muffin tin with vegetable cooking spray. Ladle the bread/eggnog mixture gently and evenly into the muffin tins. The big cubes sticking up look nice. Place the filled muffin tin in a tall sided cookie sheet or roasting pan. Transfer to the preheated oven and carefully pour the hot water from kettle onto sheet pan, creating a water bath for the muffin tin to sit in.

Bake 15 to 20 minutes until the tops are nicely browned, and a toothpick comes clean from the center.

Bread pudding may be served warm or cold. Vanilla Ice cream or whipped cream would be great accompaniments.

Alternately place the muffin tin in a roasting pan on the stove. Pour in up to 1-inch of boiling water. Cover and cook over medium-high heat for 15 to 20 minutes. The puddings will puff and a toothpick will come out clean from the center. The tops won't brown with this method. Perhaps a sprinkle of cinnamon sugar at serving time would be nice.

Happy Eating!

Monday, January 01, 2007

Hi, I'm Here For My Panetone

Since Peruvians don't celebrate Thanksgiving (or Halloween really), around mid-October Christmas was definitely in the air in Lima. Decorations went up in stores and offices, Christmas trees and other paraphernalia went on sale, Christmas themed commercials hit the airwaves and the phenomenon that is the Panetone slowly started to creep into our periphery. The Panetone is a not as tasty incarnation of the fruit cake...I know what you're thinking, "not quite a good as a fruit cake! how is this possible?" Okay, I know some of you out there like fruit cake (admittedly, I had some this year for the first time in a long time and it was definitely better than I remember), but I am using the fruit cake reference to demonstrate where on the scale of delicious desserts the Panetone falls, i.e. near the bottom. The Panetone is about 10 inches tall, 10 inches across and usually weighs 1 kilo (2.2 lbs.). It is not as dense as a fruit cake and comes in several varieties, chocolate chip, almond, orange flavored, but the most common has pieces of red and green candied fruit and raisins. The first time I remember being really aware of the Panetone was while watching a commercial about a little boy who helps his mother slice the family Panetone. He insists they slice it into 9 pieces. She looks around the room and takes a mental count of everyone present (8 people) and confused by his request asks him why nine? He starts counting all the people who need a piece (I remember the commercial vividly partially because we saw it many, many times and partially because I have mastered my numbers in Spanish so I could follow along). He counts the 8 people in the room and then points to the "watchiman" standing outside the window as the ninth. She smiles, happy music plays, the end. Let me digress here and take some space to dicuss the watchiman.

A watchiman (and yes, that is the correct spelling in English and Spanish) is a person, usually male, who is something like a security guard. I say 'something like', because many standard in need of security places like apartment buildings, banks, stores, embassies etc. have actual security guards. The watchiman is something entirely different and they are everywhere, literally. For example, you decide to go to a restaurant or a bakery or a mercado or a deserted beach or basically anywhere, you pull into the parking lot and out of nowhere appears a person often with a brightly colored rag in hand to guide you into the parking lot (because it might be your first time) and to, as you get out of the car, point, with the first two fingers on his hand first to his eyes and then to your car, a gesture which means, I'm sure, "don't worry, should the hoodlums that we both know are everywhere in this city decide to break into your car tonight, I will be here to protect it, after all, I am the watchiman!" Secure in the knowledge that you are safely in the hands of the watchiman, you go on about your business. And, all the watchiman asks in response for this samaritanesque service is one nuevo sol (roughly 32 cents), really not a bad trade. We have a watchiman on our block as well, his name is Alberto and he is employed by the neighborhood to, well, watch. He is always out there, on the corner, looking not so fierce, but apparently fierce enough to keep danger at bay.

Now that we have dispensed with one Peruvian phenomenon, let us return to the story of the Panetone. A couple of weeks after we started seeing the watchiman Panetone commerical, we got our weekly newsletter from the Embassy containing a section dedicated to bonuses for household staff. Our regular followers will recall that we have a maid, and we have since added a gardener, Julio, who comes once a week to tend our rather small yard. So, with them in mind we carefully read the section on what to do about Christmas bonuses and discovered the following. By law (why it can still be called a bonus since it is legally mandated I don't know, but then, this is a country where it is illegal not to vote, so sometimes we just don't ask questions), maids must receive half of one month's pay as a Christmas bonus and the same again in July. However, if the maid has not worked for you for at least a year, you don't have to give them anything. The same applies to vacation time. They get all holidays off, but they cannot take time off until they have been employed for a year. We opted to give a bonus in spite of the law. After the laws about bonuses were explained, there was a final sentence which said, "Panetones should be given to maids, gardeners, drivers, nannies, etc." So, foolish person that I am, I thought, we have a maid and a gardener, we'll buy two Panetones and that will be that. Off I went to the store to purchase our two Panetones not at all prepared for the over 20 varieties available for purchase. This 3 block from the house errand took me nearly an hour as I stood in the grocery store staring at the different colored boxes wondering which were good or bad, which they would be happy with and which would be the source of an anecdote about the crazy foreign Senora, why some cost 20 soles and others 70 soles and on and on and on. I finally decided on a red one and a blue one (I am of course referring to the color of the boxes, I felt very much like I do when I make my picks for March Madness -- everyone knows that red and blue uniformed teams always fare better than pansy green or yellow ones!). I came home, gave the gardener his Panetone and put the maid's away until Christmas, mission accomplished...or not! The next day, the maid informed me that the bottled water delivery men had come to bring new water and on their way out asked where their Panetones were? What, the water guys? That wasn't in the newsletter! The following day she informed me that the neighborhood watchiman stopped by and said, "Hi, I'm here for my Panetone." I can only imagine her embarrassment having to explain to these men that we didn't have any Panettones for them and that, being the crazy Americans that we are, this was unlikely to change. So, I asked her, would others be by? Would there be more instances of "Hi, I'm here for my Panetone?" I could tell she didn't know what to say, but after some coaxing she finally admitted that yes, the street sweeper would be expecting one and the garbagemen, and potentially the mailman and really we should just go buy a case of them because that was how it was done and Christmas was just a few days away. A case of Panetones?!?!? But, what choice did we have, I mean, "Hi, I'm here for my Panetone", a statement like that was either unbelievably brazen or utterly commonplace and it was becoming increasingly clear that it was the latter and that we were the brazen ones. So we dutifully went to the store (3 days before Christmas, something we try never to do) and bought a case of Panetones. We stood in line to check out surrounded by other shoppers confidently and wisely stocking up on Panetones. We looked around the store mesmerized by the towers, the walls, the rows of Panetones. We took pictures of the mountains of Panetones (the pictures really cannot convey the volume of Panetones on display, every aisle had Panetones on the ends, in the middle, on the top stretching up to the ceiling, it was astonishing!). We stared open-mounthed at the people loading their carts with multiple cases, that's right CASES of these things. And slowly but surely we watched as thousands of Panetones all over the city were purchased and distributed to maids, car washers, teachers, party hosts, gardeners, nannies, friends, neighbors and the ubiquitous watchiman. Hi, I'm here for my Panetone indeed.
 

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