toddler food

He likes oats and milk for breakfast these days, sometime raw sometimes porridge. Sometimes the milk is actually yogurt.

Raw cucumbers, omelettes and plain pasta are also easy food for me to give him/for him to eat and ones that he likes (atm).

He mostly only likes water melon and grapes (expenisve here) when it comes to fruit, altho last week he finally started eating small mandos and we've had a lot of pomello lately. Today he ate some nashi pear and apple too.

He likes eating rice with soy sauce, and rice with fish, and rice porridge if daddy gets up early! He usually eats bits of whatever we eat for lunch/dinner as well although sometimes not much. One thing he liked recently was a curry/ stir fry that was mainly faloured with peanut butter and cocnut cream.

hot food

After living out of a bag over the last month, good to finally have my own kitchen again. I made somethng today I hadn't made before and it was yummy so I'll write it down while i remember:

Chopped chicken, onion, garlic. Mixed with paprika and peppers. Fried in olive oil. Added chopped up potato (2), then eggplant (1 small), carrot (1/2) and red tomatoes (3).

Ate with rice, might try pasta next time. WOuld be nice with chick peas, broccoli, french beans, other veg and or meat.

Sourdough pancakes

Sourdough pancakes SO FLUFFY, mixing it up is like bicarb and vinegar effect

(Also been eating the cottage cheese on the whey pancakes, and straining yogurt til its like cream cheese)

Mix
1 tab spn sugar
1/2 tea spoon salt
3/4 teaspoon bicarb
1/2 tab spn water
1 cup of sd starter

then in with an egg

Whey Pancakes

Made these today from King Arhtur Flour

1 cup plain flour
1 tb sp sugar 
half teaspoon baking soda
pinch teaspoon salt
1 cup whey
1 large eggs
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Mix the dry ingredients together in a mixing bowl. 

In a smaller bowl, beat together the whey, eggs and vegetable oil. 

I made them with acidic whey from making making cottage cheese, even tho I read for pancakes you should use sweet whey such as from yogurt.

Trying to cook and eat foreign food bu tnot buy too many foreign items

Recently i've been experiment with bready things and milky things, kind of thinking about if we live out of town one day, and kind of to make eating what's normal to me cheaper. At this stage of life we don't have an oven. It would probably be better to be learning how to cook and eat Khmer food, but at the moment I'm thinking about how to cook "Aussie" food in Cambodia.

After thinking about campfire damper, and reading a bit about Dutch oven and preppers I cooked some bread on the stove in a saucepan. I used a yeast dough, our heavy bottom saucepan, I put sesame seeds on top, so it would have at least some texture- no crispy top! Soeun really liked it, so I made it again. Both times I lined the pan with foil as I didn't want to have to wash it- both times the bottom was really balck and burned even though we put the gas a low as possble, must try it on /in fire (we have just started grilling meat near the front door, I just need to have the dough ready at the same time the fire is ready).

Another way I could cut down on buying imported products is by making sourdough, using that I won't need to buy yeast from the supermarket. I've been reading about making starters using al sorts of things, I already tried a flour and water one. It didn't work - after that week I read a bit more and I think it was cos I used the wrong flour. The easiest cheapest flour for me to get is made from cassava, i think we call it tapioca flour/starch. I use it for cakes, breads etc, but i don't think it works for a sd starter unless you use something else as well. So this week I have some wheat flour from the supermarket and I'm trying again. Kind of defeats the purpose (i have to go to the supermarket to get the wheat flour, i was hoping to just use things I can buy in a normal khmer market).

There is no dairy industry here in Cambodia, so milk and all milk prducts are imported. If I had my own source of milk it would be even better (can we get a goat?) , but recently we've been eating yogurt so I've been making some in the esky overnight and trying to make cottage cheese (first time it didn't work, but this time seems ok). ANd as a result of that also been learning about whey and what to do with it.

I didn't make yogurt until recently as I read up on it and it sounded complicated and I don't ahve a thermometre. Also i had tried making cottage cheese awhile ago in the sun but it was gross and it make me sick. But over the last week I just started experimenting using the esky for yogurt and the stove top for cc and they are both working, I'm not following any exact instrucitons but I got the general vibe from youtube, blogs etc.

Just remembered abou tdamper- a bread i can make without an oven, time to experiment. Also bought black beans for the first time, I think they are for desserts here, but I might try them with a mexican kind of flavour. Breadcrumbs for frying chicken! A Western ish taste I can do in a an asian kitchen.

Eclectic lunch of leftovers was yummy- breadmaker bread, hummus (made with sesame seeds for the first time, i've been using sesame oil), khmer salad (lots of herbs, cold noodle and some pork) chicken i fried in breadcrumbs with mayo.