tribute to food..

Food can be a necessity but also a great pleasure. We don't only enjoy lots of varieties of food but also to have fun in the process of cooking it.
Growing up in a country so rich in climate and land diversity, I enjoyed a lot of fruits from cold climates to tropical ones. Never realizing how spoiled I was, my mom very religiously would cut up lots of different fruits and pack them in a container for school. When I say school is until high school, and even my freshman year of college before I transfer to the States. Therefore, my pleasure for fruit is much higher than ice cream, cookies or chocolate. Having said that, as a mom, I always try to have the big variety of fruit available for the kids, although we still have the cookies, and other goodies.. Interesting enough, Samuel likes most fruits, except cantaloupe. Benjamin however, doesn't like plums or watermelon. Go figure.. But during our short time in the island, what we had the most was mango, star fruit and guavas.. and that was a hit every morning for snack.. I got tired of cutting the mangoes, and discovered that both kids would eat until the seed was hairless!

Daddy, on the other hand is not as big fan. However, his soft spot was juices. Mainly, mango juice which is his favorite. So much I showed him how to make it and he enjoyed the process. Can you tell?This is a short but funny story. I left Samuel finishing breakfast while I was changing Benjamin.. And when I got around to see the table: he had taken all the left over pieces of watermelon from the fridge and scarfed them down till literally no pink was left.. Ironically enough, I always have to watch out for Samuel when I am serving or leaving fruit around, or else, he would really eat it all in one meal...Enough from the fruit group..

Let's talk meat. So in the island is much cheaper to buy in bulk. But the orders can be very large. Gratefully we had a deep freezer where it all fit. These were the left over boxes, of more than 30 lbs of chicken, ground beef, sausage, bacon and steak.Of course it was to feed us all semester long.. without taking into count that daddy was gonna be left alone for half of that time. While there, pizza was one of the favorite dishes. And is the only way Benjamin will gladly eat ground beef.. weird.Also, pizza is one of the easy meals that kids can easily be involved.. and Samuel just enjoyed it as much as eating it.But cheese and meat wasn't the only thing.. Jay's favorite food is seafood; followed by Mexican or any spicy. Too bad Colombians don't eat spicy, therefore, I don't cook spicy; but hot sauce has always been the solution for his particular plate. So, one day he shows up with a big box of shrimp. I grew up in the mountain area.. hardly ever cooked or ate fish, except for canned tuna. So I am very inexperience with any seafood. But, he decided to take the time to "fix" all the shrimp (tedious work) and freeze it. We got quit a few great meals. Like a special batter of his, to fry not only shrimp but chicken too, which both kids liked. Samuel also LOVES shrimp.. I went for the chicken..Both kids love Italian, and so do we. So the Shrimp Alfredo was a hit.Enough seafood. Both, my kids and I absolutely enjoyed BREAD. I usually would do wheat (healthy and easier to do) but Jay only likes white. So I would do twice wheat and then white.. and really, with that much bread I baked (2 lbs) and i would only last 2 and a half days, 3 at the most.

I grew up with rice, beans and plantains. Jay likes them too, except for the fact that I like ripe fried plantains (sweet) and he likes the not ripe ones (salty). I tried making both every week, since Samuel like the "chip ones" (salty) and Benjamin the sweet ones of course. But here was the picture of my first Colombian beans! I was sooo excited. Although I grew up helping my mom on all the process of cooking everything, I never learned to actually cook. So, here were my first ones which are the most famous from above the coffee area. They are kidney beans, cooked with plantain, and a lot of other spices that make them sooo yummy.. The usual "bandeja paisa" looks kind of like that but with fine ground beef, sausage, sunny side up egg, arepa and a piece of avocado on the side.. that's why I named it 1/2 bandeja paisa, because is missing a ton of other little sides.

But I couldn't leave Jay's favorite breakfast (after 5 years of denial I finally got to make it for him), is biscuits and gravy, with sausage and scramble eggs on the side. I thought it was harder that what it really was. But I did tried to do it often while there. The kids like it too, without the gravy though. And Samuel also loves sausages but Benjamin doesn't, he rather chew (not quit eats it all) bacon instead. Yes, the last is a calsone-wanna-be because they ended up being huge and weird looking. The kids and I liked them though. They were full of rice, ground beef, veggies.. yumLast but not least, "pinchos" in Spanish but I have no clue how to spell them in English.. They are made of chicken, onions, bell peppers and lots of BBQ sauce.. also some salty plantains.. of course, I marinated the chicken in the sauce before pinching it on the skewer.. Jay, Samuel and I enjoyed them. Benjamin not so much, but he rejoiced on his peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which Samuel hates since he cant see peanut butter.We don't always eat at home, in fact, we love fast food. Mainly taco bell, but BK can taste good every now and then.. These pictures are from a Christian Fellowship dinner on campus.. they had lots of food. And what did they enjoyed most? The cupcakes of course.

I don't personally like Mac Donald's but at the airport in PR coming back to the States, they little ones thought that was the best dinner ever.. each kid ate 5 CHICKEN McNUGGETS! Although they both like them with a ton of ranch and ketchup.

We like sweets too. Here daddy got us some sugar cookies.. and junk food is welcome. The kids love Gatorade and Cheetos. And daddy couldn't resist the Byington's ice cream sandwich on his birthday.. the kids enjoyed it too.
Best of all, has been when the lovers go for date night to try a new place. Like the famous ribs in Portsmouth. Evidently, this little place there only cooks them on Friday nights. And the orders are basically just ribs with fries, nothing else. They were pretty good. Jay said they were more southern style not as sweet as the Texan ones. If you give me a choice, I go for the Texan ones. We still enjoyed the hour wait in such great company and the 10 minute eating time.

The interesting part in our cooking journey is that the harder the place to cook, the best we have eaten. Of all 11 moves we have had, and both times in Dominica were the best times we have had cooking at home.. even though the shortage in ingredients. I still think necessity is what makes true creativity. Either way, we still enjoyed food wherever we go.