The Perfect homemade Tomato Soup

Our family loves Tomato Soup and Grilled Cheese, but here you can't just go buy Campbell's Tomato Soup, if we could I"m sure it would be $4 or more for one can. So what do we do? Make it from Scratch. I am surprised at how easy it is.

Cut the tops off of 1.5 pounds of tomatoes and cook in the pressure cooker for 4 whistles. You can also just boil them until they are really soft. Puree them and set them aside.


Next, Saute onion in olive oil, add some minced garlic. Then add some tomato paste, flour, and chicken broth.

I was going to make my own tomato paste until I realized it took hours to make and since In only needed a few tablespoons I decided to spend the 65 cents on a small can and use that.



Add some basil (not italian spices, unless you want it to taste like spaghetti sauce) to your tomatoes.


Mix your broth pan and your pureed tomatoes together and simmer for 10 minutes or so until it boils again. If it's thin, I add some cold milk with a little flour in it and then boil it again. You can keep doing this a little at a time until you get the thickness that you like.  This fed our family of five with grilled cheese sandwiches 2.5 times. It makes quite a bit.

Here is the exact recipe

1.5 pounds of tomatoes
1 small onion
2-3 cloves of garlic
3 T. tomato paste
1/4 c. flour
1 can of chicken broth, make your own with chicken bones, or use chicken boullion cubes.
1/2 c. milk with 3 T. of flour (if needed to thicken soup)
2 T. basil???? Add basil and salt to fit your taste buds!

A quest for the Pumpkin Taste

Here in Nepal we cannot find these--


Or this



Here in Nepal we have a lot of farsi. That is what they call everything that is part of the squash family.

I have a theory that a pumpkin is used for texture and that in pumpkin pie, bread, rolls etc., you are just tasting the spices. If that is true, then I should be able to use farsi with pumpkin pie spices and it will taste like pumpkin pie.

Test 1--This kind of resembles zucchini, but it's not exactly zucchini. I found this one first so this is our first experiment.



This is the inside.

The inside of this definitely has more squash qualities than pumpkin. The inside is soft, not stringy, and the seeds can be eaten easily with no crunch. It reminds me of a cucumber too. The outside has a soft texture you can puncture with a finger nail and can be peeled with a potato peeler. As far as texture goes, I don't think I'll try pumpkin pie here, but a pumpkin bread.

I skinned this, chopped it, cooked it in a pressure cooker for 2 whistles, and then pureed it.


I found a pumpkin bread recipe and made this bread.



The bread, although a little heavy (which I think is more the fault of the recipe, than the farsi), is very tasty and has a hint of pumpkin because of spices. But I think this "farsi" will not be used again for finding the perfect Nepal pumpkin substitute!

Here is the recipe I used. Instead of all white flour I used half white and half whole wheat and left out the chocolate chips. I didn't want to waste them in case the bread was a big flop!

Every Saturday we meet with our church people and I bring a snack for tea time, so no time wasted. I think everyone will like it--even though it's not "pumpkin bread".

Homemade Apple Sauce

I've been wanting a healthy sweet snack and since apples are pretty cheap right now about 75 cents a pound I decided to make some apple sauce. Turns out is is very easy!!

What you need--
A large pot
1 cup of water
5lbs of apples--old apples that are about to go bad work great. For me I got those pretty cheap!
Cinnamon to taste



I peeled the apples and cored them. Since I have an apple slicer (from the dollar tree) I didn't have to do any more work but Abby really wanted to help so I let her cut up the apples with a butter knife. Since we were using older apples they were really easy for her to cut in half with the butter knife. She loved it.



We threw them all in a pot with one cup of water (you can use apple juice, cider, or water), some cinnamon and put it on the stove on low heat for 25 minutes. I covered the pot with a lid and stirred it maybe 3 times during the 25 minutes. Right at 25 minutes when I stirred it I could tell the apples were really soft and some were already starting to break just from me stirring...perfect!

I pulled them out and used my blender to mash them up.

 Our photographer might need to keep his day job! But that was it! We tried it and it tastes great, doesn't need any sugar at all.

Toilets.....

In Nepal the traditional toilet is not like ours back home--now I know why they call ours "thrones".

This is what people are used to here...a squatty potty.

You stand over top of the opening and put your feet on the ridged foot pads so you don't slip and fall!

I still have not had to use one of these, but it's not because European toilets are more common, it's because I don't drink much when I'm out and about. If you put dehydration and using these toilets on a scale...you can see which one would win out.

Although I have found a trick. If you can drink 2 liters of water 2 hours before you leave you can use your own facilities before leaving, and not need any water for quite some time---hopefully till you return home.

The most noticeable thing about these toilets is the smell. You can literally smell them from a mile a way and you can use your nose to find them if you find yourself needing to use it.

Usually restaurants that cater to foreigners will have a normal looking toilet...but they don't always have toilet paper--actually mostly they don't.

But they do have this...

Yes, I'm still not quite sure how you would use this without looking like a wet dog after, but you do what you have to do I suppose!

So usually when you pack your bag before leaving somewhere you always BYOTP!

If a place does have it's own TP for you to use, always make sure it is near the toilet. A lot of times it's way over by the door, and that kind of defeats the purpose!

Yes, getting used to a new culture can be challenging at times, but so far nothing we can't handle with a little foresight!

Monsoon Season

So we are in the middle of monsoon season. We are told this is a drier monsoon than normal. As far as what repercussions that will have on the rest of the year, I am not totally sure. I'll make another blogpost about this later.

So in Monsoon we all have rain gear--boots, rain jackets, and umbrellas. The kids love it. Actually I love it too--the rain really cools things off. 

If it pours it usually rains for an hour or so. If it is a light rain it will rain probably all day. 

If it is not a thunderstorm we let the kids go out and play in the rain with their rain gear, which usually doesn't help much because they come inside later soak and wet. But they have fun.

I don't think it was raining in this picture of Abby and Jason. Here people use umbrellas when it is hot and sunny, and Abby likes to do that as well.

Not all roads here are paved and nice. In fact most of them aren't. These are pictures taken from a vehicle as we drove down the road. 

Yes, we just drive straight through. I've only seen vehicles get stuck occasionally, which is very surprising.

The rain causes the dirt to wash away leaving the foundation of the road --just rocks--and it makes it very bumpy. 

These next few pictures were taken as we drove out of the city with our friends and to their new church plant--Berea Baptist Church!

We are very glad they have 4-wheel drive.

I took a lot more pictures of this trip, but because the roads were so bumpy and muddy, most pictures came out too blurry!

These were taken on a trip to our local Post Office.

We had to drive on the opposite side of the road to avoid some of these, had it been a busier day we would have driven straight through!

There is one road that leads to our house that we avoid if at all possible right now because it so messed up with the rain and bumpiness--it's downright painful...lol. And just because it's messed up doesn't mean the taxi drivers drive much slower. So hurdling over these bumps is not too fun.

All in all I think Monsoon has been one of my favorite seasons because of how nice the weather is temperature wise! I just love rain!

6 months here in Nepal

I can't believe it's been over 6 weeks since I last made a post. I haven't necessarily run out of ideas, I've just been busy with other things and keep putting this on the back burner! If you do have some ideas for a blogpost or questions please share them, I'm sure it will help me out!

We both have lost some weight since being here! Can you tell? We haven't been doing anything specific other than eating fresh foods, rice and lentils for lunch almost every day, and walking everywhere, Luke likes to go bike riding in the mountains.

Paul likes to act like his dad.

Some friends of ours here have just rented out this building to start a new church! Luke is helping them get it ready for their inaugural service in September.

Here are some more before and after photos.

Luke and Justin Levine.

Check out Justin's new website

www.faithfortibet.wordpress.com

Trash, Trash, everywhere you look.

Meet our trash dump!

This place is about a 5 minute walk from my house. 

The workers go through each bag and sort it out--clothing, food, plastic, paper, etc. 

There are garbage men that blow whistles so you know they are coming and they go from house to house collecting garbage then take it back to this truck. When it is full then it comes back to the trash dump.

We have to pay for this service, it is only a few dollars each month. The problem is they never come to our house, but we have to pay anyway.

So this is what we usually wind up doing. I'm glad they don't mind helping!