Fun with Food

 

 Well, I thought I'd give you all a little update on our new diet. Things have been going ok, but somedays are harder than others. Some days I want to cry when I see people eating pizza and yummy desserts and ice cream, and other times I remind myself what it would do to me later (but usually it's hard to convince myself of that!) I have found some neat things to eat here in Mongolia that I didn't even know we had until I went looking for them. For instance, beans like Mung, Aduki, Kidney, Navy, Pinto, Black, and Lentils, as well as millet and buckwheat. And we can make the Mung, Aduki, Millet, Buckwheat, and brown rice into flours that are gluten-free in place of wheat flours (which broadens the list of things to make quite a bit!) My eczema seems to be getting better, but the during the first month they say that it can actually get worse before it gets better due to the effects of the Candida dying off. And this last week I experienced a bit of that with a couple of sleepless nights of itching and burning on my hands and feet, but I think things are back on the up and up now. Our Father has been teaching me a lot about putting my desires for Him above my desire for bread and desserts. It's not an easy battle, but I'm learning to look to Him more and more to meet my every need. I'm very thankful for this time of trial to bring about a change in my thoughts towards Him and the things He has blessed us with. Please keep us lifted up as we look to Him for our every need and comfort instead of food. :)

So, I thought I would share a little bit of the yummy things we have been blessed with here in Mongolia to make sure you don't think a diet without sugar, flour, gluten or fruit would make us starve!

 

(In the photo on top we had Gazelle and veggies! Gazelle is not normal for the city folk, but one of our friends shared some meat with us that his parents in the countryside had given to him.) Here we have beef, zucchini, red pepper and onions.

 

And of course, Chinggis Khaan eggs.

Fried zucchini (dipped in cornmeal, millet or mung bean flour and egg)

 

Hamburger and cabbage with tomatoes
(Cabbage has officially been removed from my diet as it had adverse ol-factory affects on those around me - if you know what I mean. Maybe we can work back into that one slowly some other time.) :)

Food is so beautiful! Red and green onions with garlic, to go on top of our chicken below...

Chicken breast with scalloped turnips

Roasting Millet...millet is so yummy! Like a cross between brown rice and potatoes, with a little nutty flavor to it. We roast it first and then add water and it gets 3-4x its size in about 20 minutes.

Mung bean crackers! Mung beans are green, and so is the flour.

I season them with a little salt, rosemary and a dash of mixed seasonings and out comes yummy crackers! (We've actually modified this a little bit now to where I make them into Mung Biscuits and they are a little softer in the middle and quite tasty!)

Oh, no! "Not to 50!" (for all you Princess Bride fans!)
Matt likes finding funny faces in the little things of life. (I say finding because he didn't try to do this one!)
Just a little beef pot roast with potatoes, carrots, turnips and onions for our friends coming over later.

And here is one of the days I wanted to cry. I was so excited about buckwheat flour so that we could make tortillas. Unfortunately, we can't get the buckwheat ground fine enough, so it turned into a crumbly mess (you can see a little remnant of the crumbles around the edges).

 

Here is another shot at buckwheat. Buckwheat is quite yummy, but seems to be a little too crumbly to stand alone...a little millet flour would do the trick, I think. Here we have buckwheat, onion and cabbage bread. (This was the culprit that led to the demise of cabbage in the diet. And all I can say is...oh boy, too much cabbage within 2 days.)

 

And here is Matt's creation...the cute little leftovers from all our fun with food.

It's been a crazy journey, but we look forward to learning what He has to teach us through all of this. And hopefully He'll give me some added creativity and grace to try new things and maybe even learn how to cook!

Thanks for your encouragement and thoughts during this time! Much love to you all! ~ Jess