Sunday, September 23, 2012

A Call for Recipes

Okay, family, friends, and other readers, I have a favor to ask of you, particularly those of you with nifty kitchen skills. We love the food here, and we've made some really tasty things since we got here, but I can't help but linger over  recipes that I see on Pinterest for home-baked bread, cookies, casseroles, and other delicious-looking things. Nonetheless, our resources are a bit different here from what's available back in The States, and I need to find recipes/ideas that will work with what we have. So, the favor I ask of you is to send me (email me or just comment here on the blog) any tried and true recipes that will work given the following circumstances:

  • We have one electric stove burner, and that's pretty much it; no oven, microwave, rice cooker, slow cooker, etc. We have one wok, which functions nicely as either a pan or a pot. We may buy another pot or pan, but the wok has suited us well thus far.
  • Milk is available, though it's not the same as in the states (much sweeter), plus more pricey, but we still use a cup of it here or there. Other dairy products are basically nowhere to be found. Oh but we have found butter (or some kind of butter type margarine stuff), but it is super expensive.
  • Right now is harvest season in Cangzhou, so many fruits and vegetables are widely available and very fresh.
  • We haven't bought any meat because it doesn't come packaged the same way as in America, and we're not sure what we have to do to make it "safe" to eat.
  • I am convinced that baking products exist here, because we've eaten baked goods, but we've had a heck of a time looking for them. By baking products I mean things like baking soda, cocoa, and vanilla extract. I'm not going to give up the search, but for now we don't have those things.
  • We haven't seen any canned foods.
  • The seasonings we have are salt, cinnamon, sugar, Italian seasoning, chicken bouillon, and chili powder.
Oh, and the more "homey" the recipe, the better. Like I said, we are loving the Chinese food here, but would really love a taste of America (and let's be honest, Mexico, too).

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