Since moving to Thailand, I’ve had to learn how to make do without certain food items that I would usually use to cook. Often this isn’t really a big deal, especially since there is so much delicious Thai food with which to fill that void. However, after being here for more than a year, there are some things that we just would rather not live without.
This has forced me to make some things from scratch that, previously, I would simply purchase already made or use a pre-packaged mix. Here are some recipes that I’ve found to be both easy and delicious!
When we lived in the U.S. we ate pancakes quite frequently; they were a weekend favorite! I had made some specialty pancakes from scratch (like these banana pancakes and these apple pie pancakes--so good!), but for regular pancakes had generally used a mix. We can get pancake mix here, but it’s significantly more expensive than just making our own. This mix is easy to make up ahead of time; I usually double it and put it in a gallon ziploc bag. Then you can just use as much as you need when you’re ready to make your pancakes!
Waffles
As you can see, we LOVE eating breakfast food! In fact, we’ll eat it for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or a snack. Last year we ate mostly pancakes because we didn’t have a waffle iron. This summer I got some money for my birthday, so we decided to spend it on a waffle maker. Best birthday present ever! Now we get to eat our beloved waffles whenever we want. We’ve even discovered other uses for it, like making cookies or grilled cheese sandwiches--Yum!
Anyway, I had never made waffles from scratch before, so I tried out this recipe. It’s so easy to put together, uses ingredients you probably already have in your kitchen, and tastes great!
(Recipe is originally from Cuisinart)
Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 ¾ cups milk
6 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 large eggs
Instructions:
Place all ingredients in a large mixing bowl and combine until well blended and smooth. Let batter sit five minutes. Use ¼ cup each side of a rectangular waffle maker, or 1 cup in a circular one.
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| Grilled cheese via the waffle maker! |
Another worthwhile purchase was our slow cooker. When we first moved to Thailand we only planned to spend a year here, and I didn’t want to spend a bunch of money on kitchen appliances that we would only use for a short time. Once we decided to stay for a second year, however, I decided that a slow cooker would be a good purchase. It has been life-changing! We study Thai one evening (and on Saturday morning) every week, and getting dinner ready, eaten, and cleaned up before 6 was a bit of a rush. The slow cooker has made that so much easier!
Of course I had a slow cooker in the U.S., so I already have loads of recipes ready to use once we made that purchase. Something I didn’t know you could make in the slow cooker, though, was black beans! I had always bought them canned because I didn’t have a pressure cooker and thought that was the only real way to cook them. Plus, with cans just a few cents each, why not just buy them? Going a full year without black beans was a sad time for our family, though, because it’s a staple in our diet. So, I searched Pinterest for a good slow cooker black bean recipe, and now there’s no going back! Cooking the beans in the slow cooker was soooo easy, the flavor was great, and I can cook a bag of dried beans (which produces about 3.5 cans worth) for only $1! Once they’re cooked you can measure out the usual amount you need for a recipe (I did about the same as one can, since that’s what a lot of my recipes call for anyway) and put it in a freezer bag. Thaw them in the refrigerator for a bit before you put them in your recipe, and BOOM!
Enchiladas are a favorite in our family. We can get tortillas rather easily here (I’ve made my own before but I just don’t have the time/space to at this stage in life), but I had trouble finding canned enchilada sauce, so we just didn’t eat any for the first year. This year, though, I decided I didn’t want to live without enchiladas any more, so when a friend recommended this recipe, I went for it! Honestly, it’s one of the easiest things to make, and it tastes even better than the canned version! I made the recipe as-is the first time, but our kids found it a bit too spicy for their liking, so in the future I’m going to halve the amount of chili powder.
Who doesn’t love a good caramel sauce (whether you pronounce it car-mel or car-a-mel)? It is one of my favorite things about fall, but it just isn’t easy to find here. Scott likes fruit crisps for dessert, so I made this Caramel Apple Crisp a couple of times. The crisp would be good without the sauce, but the sauce adds so much!! I was nervous about making caramel because I don’t have a candy thermometer or anything and our stove doesn’t hold at a specific temperature very well. You don’t have to really worry about those with this recipe, though. Pro tip: it tastes really good with vanilla ice cream!
This recipe is from the Nestle website, and it’s the one I’ve been using for the last year plus. I had made my own crust before in the States, but I wasn’t very good at it and it was so much easier to just buy a crust from the store. I’ve had good luck with this particular recipe, though, and now making crust from scratch is rather easy! Last year I put the crust together using a fork or two knives, but while we were in Indiana this summer I made a point to dig out my pastry cutter. Makes it much easier to pull it all together!
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| Scott's birthday pie--Dutch apple! |
Maybe you’re like me and are living in a new environment that doesn’t offer all the food items you’re used to, or maybe you’re just trying to get away from using processed foods. These recipes are all easy to make with easy-to-find ingredients. Enjoy!
