Being that I’m still new in town I don’t have much of a social life in Morogoro. I sincerely hope I’ll make some friends (soon) and that my weekends will get a little more exciting (soon), but in the mean time, I’m kind of enjoying the opportunity to be a home-body (depending on the day you ask me).
Oh, and I’ve been cooking & baking like a mo fo.
So, after my first successful solo-market trip on Thursday I decided to do what anyone in my position would probably choose to do on a Friday night: cook a pumpkin.
I’d seen these brownish, greenish gourd looking things at the market and asked someone what they were and it turns out that Tanzanians dig boga (pumpkin in Swahili). After getting the pumpkin home I encountered a few minor set-backs in actually being able to cut up the pumpkin (mostly due to a very dull knife, which resulted in me cutting up part of the pumpkin with my pocket knife), but in the end I had peanut butter container full of pumpkin and pumpkin seeds drying so they could be roasted.
Next up: pumpkin granola.
They have quick rolled oats here and so I thought I’d use some of the pumpkin to make granola. I wasn’t quite sure how it would turn out, but since Ameet fixed my oven last weekend, I thought I’d give it a try. As it happens,…
PUMPKIN GRANOLA IS AMAZING!!!!!
I was literally eating it right out of the bowl with a spoon…before I even cooked it!
Not to get all Martha Stewart on everybody, but seriously this granola is SO good and SO ridiculously easy to make, I feel compelled to pass this recipe on. I’ll include the actual recipe I used, and then how I modified it. Obviously you don’t have to cook the pumpkin yourself and can just buy canned pumpkin.
Pumpkin Spice Granola
Ingredients:
3 ½ cups rolled oats
2 ½ cups puffed rice cereal
2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
¾ tsp. salt
¾ cup brown sugar
½ cup pumpkin puree
¼ cup applesauce
¼ cup maple syrup
1 tsp. vanilla extract
up to 1 ½ cups chopped nuts
up to 1 cup dried fruit
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 325°. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
In a large bowl, combine oats and puffed rice cereal. In a medium bowl, whisk together the pumpkin pie spice, salt, sugar, pumpkin puree, applesauce, maple syrup and vanilla extract. Whisk until very smooth. Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients and stir until the oat mixture is evenly coated. Spread on the prepared baking sheet in an even layer.
Bake for 30 minutes. Then turn over the granola using a large, wide spatula. Sprinkle the nuts onto the granola and bake for an additional 15 minutes, until crisp and golden. Depending on the size of your baking sheet, the center may not be fully dried if your granola layer is thick, so if necessary remove the edges of the cooked granola and let the rest cook until done, 10-15 more minutes. Cool on pan or on a fine wire rack.
Break up granola as desired and toss with dried fruit. Store in an airtight container (or a plastic bag).
Since we don’t have puffed rice cereal in our super market, or maple syrup, and apples are kind of expensive, I basically just omitted the rice cereal, halved the recipe and then used honey in place of the maple syrup/apple sauce. I don’t have any dried fruit, and just used the pumpkin seeds as nuts. Also, instead of the pumpkin pie spice I just used some of the tea masala seasoning available here.
The result was pretty basic, but incredibly tasty. Since it was so tasty I went a little crazy and made another batch, but this time used less honey, added peanut butter and some peanuts and formed granola bars. I baked them a bit longer than regular granola and they are delicious!
I know, like I said…cooking & baking like a mo fo.
…..
In addition to my adventures in the kitchen, I had another adventure of an entirely different sort this weekend.
On Wednesday my mom turned 60 and my amazing brother, sister and dad managed to pull-off throwing her a surprise party (with the help of a number of family and friends)! Mary was set to arrive to a packed house around 2:30pm her time/10:30pm my time Saturday where family and friends (including Brooke & Phil and Nick & Tory who had flown in the night before) were waiting to surprise her. I was set to video call to see the whole thing on Skype.
After packing up my computer and grabbing my headlamp on Saturday night, I went to head out to the office where I was going to use the internet to get on Skype. I got to the gate of our house….and…problem: the gate was padlocked. Assuming everyone was in for the night, my neighbors/landlords had locked the gate. Their house was dark, and while they are incredibly nice people, I didn’t feel I could go banging on their door at 10:30pm to ask for the key.
But THIS IS MARY’S 60th BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!
Looking around to quickly assess my options, I saw there was a ledge next to gate. Using the wall between our house and our neighbor’s house I hoisted myself up on top of the wall and flipped on my headlamp to checkout the prospects for jumping over. (actually I climbed several walls around the compound to investigate the jumping options in different areas).
It was a bit of a long way down, but I probably would have done it if not for two considerations: my laptop’s ability to handle flying through the air and possibly tumbling & more importantly…how I was gonna get back in.
I so badly wanted to be there to see the party and actually get to see everyone that for a few seconds I balanced on top of the wall and really considered it: I can do this; I’m small, I roll well. Buuuut in the end, I decided that if they could call my cell phone on Skype then it probably wasn’t worth a broken laptop or sleeping in my office. Plus, if any unassuming, innocent passerby had seen a muzungo lady jumping off a 10 foot wall with a light on her head and a huge backpack, they probably would have died of freight or laughter.
My family was able to call me quickly later in the evening to say hello and so I got to say Happy Birthday…but still, it’s tough to miss those kind of things.
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