Food Friday: Broccoli Risotto

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Expat Alien

So I just got back from a school reunion where my old friend Angelo kept going on an on about the fabulous Risotto that he makes and if we all go to visit him in Switzerland he will make it for us every day. After thinking about it all weekend, I decided I had to have some. So here goes.

Ingredients

1/4 cup olive oil

1 garlic clove, chopped

2 cups broccoli florets

2/3 cup dry white wine or chicken broth

Salt and pepper to taste

Heat 2 tablespoons oil. Saute garlic and broccoli until garlic is soft, about 3 minutes. Add 1/3 cup chicken broth, and salt and paper to taste. Simmer, uncovered, until broccoli is tender, about 6 minutes. Set aside.

1/2 small onion, chopped

3/4 cup uncooked Italian Arborio rice

2-1/3 cups chicken broth

Heat remaining oil in a large saucepan. Cook onion until tender. Add rice and stir until rice is coated. Add wine or broth; cook stirring constantly.

Heat remaining broth and keep warm. Stir 2/3 cup warm broth into rice mixture. Cook, uncovered, over medium-low heat until all of the liquid is absorbed, stirring constantly. Add remaining broth, 1/3 cup at a time, stirring constantly. Allow the liquid to absorb between additions. Rice will be creamy and grains tender when done. (Total cooking time is about 25 minutes.)

1 tablespoon lemon juice

2 tablespoons butter

1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese, or more

Stir in the lemon juice, butter, ¼ cup Parmesan cheese and broccoli.

Sprinkle with Parmesan.

Serve immediately.

Yield: 4-6 servings.

Four Days in Miami

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Expat Alien

I went to Miami for a high school reunion of sorts. A bunch of us went to boarding school together and we still like each other so we gather every few years for a weekend of fun. We don’t all know each other but we are all from the same era so we can relate to each other. Plus we have the common bond of having been to boarding school in a foreign country and many of us are third culture kids. We click right away whether we met before or not.

Day One – Arrival

Dined at Doraku Sushi. Japanese Restaurant. Crowded and loud. Arrived 9 pm, had to wait for a table. Good food, good music, good vibe.

Walked down Lincoln Road. Lots of shops, restaurants, people.

Cool window display.

Drove alone Ocean Drive. Hotel after hotel after hotel. Bar blasting music filled with people after bar blasting music filled with people. Dancing girls with go go boots and little else on. Just starting to hop at midnight.

Day Two

Breakfast at The Front Porch right on Ocean Drive. Packed, had to wait in line. Nice hearty breakfast. Apparently “the thing to do” in South Beach.

Walked along the beach. Cloudy and windy. No swimming or sunning.

Sat around the hotel and greeted old friends as they arrived.

Cocktail reception followed by a two hour ride around Miami on a bus with no windows and music blaring.

Day Three

Piled onto a bus at 10 am and headed for the water. Boarded a catamaran for a two and a half hour ride off Miami.

Had fresh orange juice delivered by jet ski.

Saw how the other half live….

Where they filmed Serpico

Al Capone’s lookout tower

Don Johnson’s Miami Vice house

Give me a break… I was in a moving boat….

Five million dollar landscape job…

Afternoon nap.

Dinner at Barcelonaeta Restaurant

One of our friends has a daughter who owns this restaurant so it was special for all of us. We would have enjoyed it no matter what it was like but take my word for it, it was good!! We had a wide variety of tapas that just kept coming and the wine was flowing. Some of the dishes I remember – fried potatoes, seared calamari so it had a crusty outside – delicious, salmon carpaccio, sweetbreads, sliced tomato with onion, eggplant and tomato, chorizo on a pizza like bread, escargot with pastry puff. Plus the ones I can’t remember. If you ever get to Miami, check it out!

Day Four

Departure. Miami airport was crowded with long lines. The only other time I had ever been to Miami, I was just at the airport for a connecting flight to Bogota. I almost missed the flight because since I was in transit I thought I would get my boarding pass at the gate. They called my plane, I went to the gate, and they told me I had to go back to the main terminal to get my boarding pass. Luckily the airport wasn’t as big as it is now, but it was big enough. I ran all the way there and back and barely made it! I was 14 years old.

No traumatic experiences this time.

I had a wonderful time with old friends and new friends.

Food Friday: Easter Kulich

Posted on April 5, 2013 by Expat Alien

The first time I saw a Kulich was in Boston. My boyfriend’s mother was a Byelorussian who had grown up in Paris and emigrated to the USA as a teenager. Her mother still lived in New York but would come to visit from time to time. She only spoke French and Russian. Nobody could communicate with her except her daughter. One of her visits she brought a Kulich she had made. I was interested in it and would have loved to taste it but I never got the chance. I didn’t even know it as a Kulich because I couldn’t talk to the woman.

Ten years later I hooked up with another Russian American, this time from Milwaukee who kept raving about Kulich. His mother would send it to him at Easter and he would savor every bite. He would heat it and spread butter on it. I wasn’t that impressed with it. I thought it was dry and kind of bland.

Ten years later I was living in Moscow, Russia, and submerged into the people and the culture. I discovered Russian bakeries and the variety of Kulich available. It had grown on me. I now looked forward to Easter and picking out the best Kulich I could find. I loved to bake and cook but I never had the courage to make a Kulich. It seemed to me it should be produced by a grandmother in order for it to be really good.

Back in the USA, I toyed with the idea of making Kulich. I missed it. And then I discovered a Russian store in the area. In the beginning they sold the cakes made by local grandmothers. Now they sell mass produced packaged Kulich made in Brooklyn. It’s not quite the same.

This year Russian Orthodox Easter falls on Sunday, May 5. They still go by the old Julian calendar so everything is later. You have plenty of time to make your Kulich!

Kulich is a cross between a bread and a cake. It has a lot of eggs and usually some raisins and can have other dried fruit in it. It is always round and should be placed upright on the table. It is sliced in rounds, across the cake, the top being taken off to be saved and then put back, like a lid, on the part that remains. Some of the fancier ones have a glaze frosting on top that drips down the sides.

People in the US can use old coffee tins to bake in or any round tin with an open top and closed bottom will do. You can use regular cake pans but you should try to somehow build up the sides so it has some height.

KULICH

2 cups scalded milk

¼ cup sugar

2 packages yeast

3 cups flour

Cool milk to lukewarm. Dissolve yeast and sugar in milk. Add flour and beat well. Set covered bowl in warm place until bubbly and very light (about 1 hr).

3 eggs

½ cup melted butter, cooled

2 ½ cups flour

1 cup raisins

½ cup sugar

1 teaspoon salt

Beat the eggs well with the sugar and salt. Add to the sponge which has been rising. Add flour and knead well. Knead in raisins. Let rise until light.

Knead down and shape into loaves. If you are using coffee cans, be careful not to use too much dough. Let it rise again. This makes 2 large (larger than a coffee can) loaves, although the size depends on how much you let it rise.

Brush top with glaze of 1 egg yolk beaten with 1 ½ tablespoons water (optional).

Bake in 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes. Tap and listen for hollow sound to test for readiness.

Cool 5 minutes on rack then remove rom pan and continue cooling on rack.

To glaze: Mix confectioner’s sugar with water until it is a paste and pour it over the top, letting it drizzle down the sides. Sprinkle slivered almonds or candy sprinkles over the glaze.

African Marriage Proposals

Posted on March 31, 2013 by Expat Alien

Ibadan

One summer I was living in Ibadan, Nigeria, working for my father at an agricultural research institute. Ibadan was the largest village in Africa and sprawled across the countryside without any particular order. There were a few hotels and “proper” restaurants but not many and we rarely went to them.

My British and American friends, Simon, Ed, David, Francis, and a couple of others decided to have a night on the town. We went to a rooftop Lebanese restaurant for a filling dinner of kabob and hummus and then on to a proper Nigerian nightclub. It had a fence around it and a large grass roof and a dirt floor but no walls. There was a very loud band playing at one end of the room and an area to dance. We took over a table at the other end of the room and ordered beer all around.

Francis was being very protective of me and it kind of made it look like we were “together”. Francis was married with five children. A Nigerian came over to our table and asked Francis if he could dance with me. Francis, quite embarrassed, told him he would have to ask me himself. Of course he came right over asked me to dance. I had been in Nigeria long enough to know that this could only lead to trouble. I was getting ready to say no, thank you very much, when Simon started kicking me under the table and making gestures like I should really go have a dance. Simon, of course, was a trouble maker himself, but I got up and danced with the guy. Keeping in form with most of my other white American girl/ black African boy experiences, by the end of the dance he had asked me to marry him.

About half way through the evening I really had to go to the toilet. Everybody said I should just forget about it. I said, “no really, I gotta go”. So David escorted me to the ladies’ toilet. We went through a beaded doorway where women were just hanging around and inside there were two stalls with holes in the floor. There were no doors to the stalls. I went in and squatted and David stood guard. It wasn’t that terrible, partly I’m sure because I was a little tipsy by this time, but it was interesting. The women were obviously just waiting for business. I didn’t get a chance to look around but I assume there were other rooms in the back for other activities. David seemed very nervous about the whole thing and said I was not allowed to drink any more beer. I think David might have been back there before.

Back at the table my dance partner had re-appeared, apparently not finding any other takers for his marriage proposal. I was the only white girl in the place. He insisted that he would be a good husband and would have no problem accompanying me back to the United States. When we got up to go home, he said he could come with us. He had no plans for the night and was happy to stay with us. He followed us all the way out to the car and the guys acted like they were going to let him in. I was totally appalled. How could they be so mean? Finally they got tired of him and kicked him out.

Friendly me

Later that summer I had a stalker show up at my office. He knew who I was and all about me and said he worked in the building. I asked around but nobody seemed to know him. For a couple of weeks he was standing at my door at the end of the day and wanted to walk me home. I never led him on or agreed to anything. He kept asking to take me for a drink or to walk me home. Finally I said I would have a drink with him.

He said he wanted to marry me and he had it all planned out. We would be married and he would return to the United States with me and he would go to school with me and we would always be together. I told him politely all the reasons why it was just not possible, the least of which was that we did not know each other at all and I was leaving the country shortly. And he had a counter proposal for every one of my reasons. Finally I just became quite rude and told him to leave me alone.

I was sad to see the summer end but I was very happy to leave that situation behind when I returned to college in the fall. Nigerian women were very blunt and straight forward. They didn’t care if they hurt men’s feelings, they gave it to them like it was. I think Western women had difficulty being so cold about it and in turn perhaps were more approachable. On my next trip to Africa, I was much more Nigerian than Western when dealing with African men. Its all about adapting to new cultures.

Food Friday: Tacos Verdes

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Expat Alien

It’s all about the sauce. Salsa Verde is made with tomatillos, the small green Mexican tomatoes. A taco includes a corn tortilla, some meat or beans, some avocado, a little cheese, and Salsa. It can be red or green Salsa. It can be hot or mild. But hot is good!

Green Salsa

Use about 5 tomatillos Take the outer husk off and simmer in water for about 15-20 minutes. Cool.

Then throw the tomatillos and the following ingredients into a food processor and blend.

2 Serrano chiles

a large handful of fresh cilantro

½ tsp salt

1-2 cloves garlic, peeled

1/3 chopped onion

½ ripe avocado

I cooked up some pork loin chops and cut into strips. You could use chicken, beef, lamb, or beans.

Heat your tortillas

Assemble

I put a little queso fresco on top. If you can’t find queso fresco, a creamy feta would work.

Eat!

My Day at the FIGT Conference

Posted on March 24, 2013 by Expat Alien

Downtown Silver Spring, Maryland

Yesterday I went to the FIGT (Families in Global Transition) Conference. I had been looking forward to it for a while. It is a support group for expat families and third culture kids and they have a conference every year where people come together to share their work and ideas and provide information on resources available.

Anyway, I woke up very early because I had about a 45 minute drive and it started at 8 am. I felt awful. I had a scratchy throat, I was achy, I was spaced out. How could this be? A cold? I hadn’t been sick in years. Great! Well, that wasn’t going to stop me. I dragged myself out of bed, dosed myself up with pain killers and hit the road.

The conference was non stop, session to session, from 8 am to 5:30 pm. By the time I got out of there I was exhausted. I left right after the last session and while trying to maneuver downtown Silver Spring, Maryland, I must have take a wrong turn or not taken a turn or something because I was totally lost. I don’t have a GPS in my car but I do have an iPhone. I pulled over and tried to figure out where I was. For some reason I couldn’t get it to find my location. I must have been in a bad area because the maps were loading really slowly and I was not getting results.

So in a panic I called my son. Help! Luckily he was home and guided me to a place I recognized and I made it home an hour later. Needless to say, I went to bed early.

In spike of my set backs and panic attacks, I did have a great day. I met interesting people, attended sessions where I learned new things, and had that warm fuzzy feeling I always get when I’m around my fellow TCK’s.

Here are a few highlights.

The first session I attended was called:

Living Whilst Surviving – an Anatomy of Hope and of What Kept Them Going

Presented by Eva Laszlo-Herbert

This was a story of a family who faced great adversity during war in Europe, were separated, deported, jailed, sent to camps, and yet they had great resilience and managed to keep going during all of it, finding small things to make them happy. “They did not forget, they forgave. They did not say ‘Why me?’, they said ‘What can I do’?” They found ways to make things better.

She transitioned this to her current life as an expat in the Netherlands. The take away I got from this session was about the children. She commented on the expat children in The Hague. They are privileged, with nannies, good schools, all kinds of gadgets – iPods, iPhones, they have drivers, and travel the world. Yet, many of them feel isolated and unhappy. In some cases their mother is unhappy with her situation, living abroad, feeling isolated. This transfers to the children. Often her coping mechanism is to keep the children busy and away from her.

There should be more of a support group for both the wives and the children but nobody wants to talk about it. They feel guilty because they know they are privileged and don’t really have anything to complain about.

A friend of mine refers to these problems as “first world problems”. And she is right.

One thing Eva emphasized more than once was how damaging it is to over book a child. They are constantly busy with dance lessons, soccer practice, piano lessons, French lessons. They don’t have time to themselves. Time to think. Time to dream. Time to imagine. Time to just be.

I wanted to tell her about my son. Many years ago he took a pen that didn’t work and it became his weapon, his gun, his rocket launcher, his airplane, his truck. And all these years, he has spent hours with that pen. It is a joke now because if he loses his pen, we all have to panic and look for it. But it really doesn’t matter, because we can always find another pen that doesn’t work. He has had several.

Let them just be.

The second session I went to was:

In Search of Identity: Awakening your Authentic Self

Presented by John Grant Hill

This was about communication and specifically Neuro Linguistic Programming. Something I had never heard of. What I got out of it was that most of the things we do, we do out of habit. But we can choose to do things differently. So if we look at two different types of people who are trying to communicate with each other, oftentimes there is conflict because they are not communicating on an equal level.

For example, one person is “introverted” and one is “extroverted”. The introvert takes his cues internally. He is very sure of himself and knows what he likes and wants and doesn’t need a lot of external input – i.e. advice, terms of endearment, hugs. While the extrovert takes his cues from the outside and needs a lot of input in order to make a decision or feel good about himself.

If people understand these differences, they can learn to communicate with each other in different ways that reduce conflict.

A very interesting topic but it would take a while to fully understand it (in my opinion).

The third session was:

Unpacking Our Global Baggage for Creative Expression: Writing your TCK Memoir, Solo Show, or Essay

Presented by Elizabeth Liang

Elizabeth is an actress and writer. She performed a segment of her one-woman multi-character show about growing up as a dual citizen of mixed heritage in Central America, North Africa, the Middle East, and New England. If you live in the LA area, I suggest you go see her (see link). I could identify with most of what she said.

So that gives you an idea of my day.

Maybe more will come to me later…..

Food Friday: Lemon Sponge Pudding

Posted on March 21, 2013 by Expat Alien

This is is another old family favorite. It melts in your mouth!

Lemon Sponge Pudding

Combine:

3/4 cup sugar

1/4 tsp. salt

1 Tbsp. grated lemon peel

1 1/2 Tbsp. soft butter

3 Tbsp. flour

2 egg yolks, beaten

Add: 1/4 cup lemon juice

1 cup milk

(Mixture may have curdled appearance, but no matter)

Beat: 2 egg whites until stiff and fold into mixture.

Pour into buttered 1.5 quart casserole.

Place in pan of hot water

Bake at 325°F uncovered 40-45 min or until set (1 hr).

Serve warm or chilled. I like it warm!

African Ants

Posted on March 16, 2013 by Expat Alien

Many years ago I spent my summers between semesters at college at an agricultural research station in Africa. One evening I was on my porch in Ibadan, Nigeria, having a beer and bored out of my mind when I happened to glance onto the floor. The ants in Africa are large and can be lethal. Fortunately the ones I saw that night were not Army ants. I think they must have been vegetarians.

I followed the river of ants and found they were coming out of the kitchen, across the dining room, over the sliding door tracks, onto the porch, and out a hole near the floor to the outside. I was mesmerized by them. Scouts ventured out at regular intervals to either check for danger or look for food. They would report back and another one would be dispatched.

Pretty soon I noticed a potato chip moving across the floor. Several of them had hoisted it onto their backs and were carrying it out. I couldn’t believe my eyes at first. After a while I saw another one.

This got me thinking. I just happened to be eating chips myself, although I’m pretty sure they were plantain chips. I wondered what would happen if I placed one where a scout might find it. Sure enough a scout found it. He reported back and the river actually split off!! None of them missed a step. They picked up the chip and rejoined the parade. I was amazed.

That same summer I went on a day trip to a large forest in western Nigeria with six other people in a pick-up truck. The trip to the forest was pretty uneventful with the usual bickering between friends about the problems with transporting orchids. At one point, I was watching everybody gathered around a tree stump discussing the orchid growing on it and suddenly I realized I was being eaten alive by army ants.

Army ants have pinchers instead of front legs, are carnivorous and can devour a lizard within seconds. The ants crawl up your legs inside your pants (unless you are smart and tuck your pants into your socks) and when they reach the thigh or pelvic area, they latch on! And they hurt! You can’t just brush them off; you have to actually pull them off. I had to completely take my pants off to get rid of them.

Another friend of mine used to love to take his father’s car out onto the dirt roads and look for army ants. When he would see a river of them crossing the road, he would speed up and then slam on the breaks to slide the car over them. I don’t think it did much damage, they seemed to continue on their way unfazed. He got a thrill out of it, though!

Food Friday: Oven Swiss Steak

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Expat Alien

According to Wikipedia:

Swiss steak is a method of preparing meat, usually beef, by means of rolling or pounding, and then braising in a cooking pot of stewed tomatoes, either on a stove (cooker) or in an oven.

No wonder there are hundreds of recipes for Swiss Steak. This recipe comes from my Mother and I have enjoyed it for many years.

Oven Swiss Steak

2 lbs round steak, in serving pieces

1 large onion, sliced

Brown steak dredged in flour in hot fat with onions, salt and pepper.

Mix:

1 pt tinned tomatoes (1 15.5 oz can)

1 cup water

2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1 Tbsp brown sugar

1 Tbsp dry mustard

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp lemon juice

dash pepper and paprika

Pour over meat in a skillet (covered)

Bake in 350 degrees F oven for 2 hours (or more)

On another note… It is my blog’s one year anniversary!! Yay!!

Jim Thompson and the Burmese Kalaga

Posted on March 10, 2013 by Expat Alien

Jim Thompson was an American expat living in Thailand. During World War II he worked for Office of Strategic Services (OSS). He was a spy. He arrived in Bangkok shortly after the end of the war to organize and open the OSS office there. In Bangkok he worked with Kenneth Landon who was first a missionary in Thailand and then was hired to work for the OSS. Kenneth’s wife, Margaret, lived with him in Thailand and wrote the book “Anna and the King of Siam” which was also made into the musical, “The King and I”.

By 1948, Jim Thompson had left the OSS and become interested in Thai silk. He formed the Thai Silk Company and his goal was to revitalize the industry. In 1951 designer Irene Sheraff was designing costumes for the Rogers and Hammerstein musical “The King and I” and decided to use silk from Thompson’s Thai Silk Company. That was what he needed. He was a success! Jim Thompson’s company and the Thai silk industry is thriving to this day.

At one point he thought it would be a good idea to go into Burma and try to revitalize their silk industry as well. He did not have much luck but there he discovered the royal Kalagas. These were heavily embroidered tapestries made for the royal palaces of Burma. The last King of Burma, Thibaw Min, was persuaded to abdicate by the British when they took over the country in 1885. Some of the tapestries have been around for 150 years.

Jim Thompson had several of the Kalagas copied and sold them in his shop. During this time, the late 1950’s, my family was living in Burma and knew all about of Mr Thompson and his silk shop. They purchased one of these tapestries and it hangs in my parents’ living room to this day. It is beautiful.

In 1967 Thompson took a trip to the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia on holiday and mysteriously disappeared. There was an extensive search made but nothing was found. Nobody knows what happened to him or why. There is much speculation around him and his disappearance.

He left a house he had designed full of art and antiques from Southeast Asia. It is now a museum open to the public.

Expat Alien

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