One year in....

So, we've been here a year now.  We have gone from two completely exhausted adults on a 30 hour itinerary with two small children to two not so exhausted adults (still with two small children, they may be the source of a lot of current tiredness).

Me and the girls, on the ground in Arequipa, I think I had about 3 hours sleep in 48 hours here.  I felt like I look.

Just as pretty now as when we arrived.  I got over feeling like it's a movie set, though, and now it seems kind of normal.

Dave told me yesterday that he wanted me to go on a 24 hour retreat for myself since I haven't had serious time alone since we came and that kind of thing recharges me.  He had scoped out four nice hotel options and today we went out for Wednesday lunch as is our norm (we tried Ceviche here for the first time at a recommended restaurant...interesting taste but not one I will be making a favorite anytime soon) and then he dropped me and my stuff off at the hotel.  And I've had a few blissful hours to myself.  The things that I count as worth doing now are perhaps a bit different than they would have been in the past.  But I put a henna conditioning treatment on my hair, took a long HOT shower (with water that seemed like it was genuinely heated by a hot water tank, not just from a solar tank or an electric shower head....until you've lived without this you have no real idea what a luxury you have, US dwellers), finished up my work hours for the week, caught up on Facebook, Pinterest, and email, and ate a gourmet dinner of PBJ sandwiches, an orange, and a little custard cup.  Yum.  I have some books to read and will probably go to bed early.  Because I am a mom and that's the way I roll now that I'm sort-of old.

When we were trying to figure out the right amount of time for our sabbatical, we quickly dismissed anything less than a year.  Some people that we read about when doing research talked about taking 6 months off and that just seemed way too short.  It would have been, too.  We took 3 months just to figure out the basics of life, and then it would have been time to plan our reentry.  We thought a year might be ok, but that it might seem a little short in the long run.  Really, think over the last year. Any single year seems to blip by and we wanted to have a long enough time to really make an impact.  So, we settled on about 21 months.  No magic to this except that it was just under two years and allowed us to leave at the end of a summer and come back at the beginning of a summer (because, really- missing the summer in Minnesota or coming back to winter-as-it-happens?  No thanks.)   It also lets us work within the confines of the US school year without being pressured and rushed to get ready for school right after we return. And I continue to think that the overall timeframe has been a good one.  We're in a groove, we both took a year off of work (and that probably won't happen again until we're retired), and Miss M is going to get some great language acquisition.

Our first visitors!

Sometimes I feel like we are living in Europe.

That isn't to say it's all been simple.  There have been a lot of highs and great things.  But I've had my low points, too, and I'm realizing I am perhaps not quite as adaptable as I thought myself to be.  I am feeling much more positive and like my regular self now, but I'm realizing looking back how draining and hard it's been for me to be around people all of the time, away from my normal support networks, and away from "regular" life.  We like our Minnesota life and coming here had nothing to do with getting away from anything.  We wanted an adventure and in some ways I have been up to the challenge but in other ways it has been difficult for me.  Dave has really picked up the slack and he does so much around our house to help keep the day-to-day things running and also trying to make sure he's looking out for what each of us need that I owe him a debt of gratitude. (Thanks, DP!)

My rescuing, problem-solving husband, recreating us locking ourselves out of the house on our second day in and breaking into the gate with the assistance of our neighbors.

I feel like I'm making progress in little things, like organization.  Did you know that even when you own just a portion of the stuff you owned before that you can still have a cluttered house?  I've never had a dirty house, but I have lived with clutter for most of my life.  Maybe all of my life.  Dave is not a cluttered person.  He is more along the German lines of "a place for everything and everything in its place."  I thought when we came here it would be so easy to keep everything cleaned up because we would have so much less stuff.  Which is true to a point, but it's still plenty easy to be cluttered when you drop your things on the floor and don't put them away or don't truly finish a project.  So, for the last little bit, I've been working hard to first create a place that everything belongs (e.g. little storage bins and containers- and many of them are just free cardboard boxes from the grocery store) and then being thoughtful about where things go and then actually putting them there.  I have read in many organization books over the years that this is a good strategy and also that if you start a project you need to stop the project in time to clean up after it instead of rushing to the next thing.  Another tip is that when something is in your hand, take the time to put it away instead of throwing it on the ground and that approach will actually save you time over the long run. That seems like logical advice but I have never really followed it before.  I always felt like there would be more time later or that I wanted to work on whatever I had until the very last second before going to something else.  Well, what do you know.  When you have a place for things to go and you actually put them away in that place, the house stays cleaner.  Woo-hoo.  I'm hoping when we come back to our house in the States that I will do a better job of having a place for all my personal things (we really did have a place for most family things before, like the kitchen stuff and that was always pretty good) and maybe that part of life will get a little easier.

A year of mixing old traditions with new situations (still had a Thanksgiving pie spread!)

A year of exploring new foods!  (This one is maracuya aka passion fruit.  You usually see it as juice or flavor because the fruit consistency is like snot.  Sweet, tart snot.)

Here the girls are enjoying another January afternoon.  In years to come, we'll probably have to ask ourselves if we were in Minnesota or Peru.  ;)

I'm curious to see what other kind of long lasting impacts occur from our time here, I think there will probably be many.  Some will be easy to see and some might be a little more buried.  Feel free to psycho-analyze us from afar and when we get back.  :)

We still have both girls.

They seem to be thriving.

And even when we leave Arequipa, I think a part of us will always be here.

Custard Pie (and Gluten Free Crust test): Historical Food Fortnightly Challenge #5

For background on the Historical Food Fortnightly, click here.

The Challenge: Pies! July 27 - August 9
Make a pie! Meat, fruit, sweet, savory - but make sure it’s documented!

Custard Pie from American Frugal Housewife

To start, you should probably know that pies are my home turf.  I have been asking for a birthday pie as long as I can remember (cakes just don't do it for me).  My family has had an annual pie-extravaganza for almost 30 years, ever since the one Thanksgiving where my mom asked what pie we should have for our family celebration (always a pumpkin and pecan and one more in a regular year)....everyone asked for a different pie and she threw caution to the wind and made everyone's pie request.  We had 8 pies for our 6 family members that year, and going forward we insisted on one pie per person; after all, "it's a tradition!"  Our high water mark was something like 26, because we like to invite people over and they get to order a pie, too.  I took over making all the crusts when I was in college and so I've made hundreds and hundreds of pies over the course of my life.  So pie itself is easy for me.  

But, my husband and girls eat gluten free because of family celiac disease on his side and I've been cooking and baking gluten free for about 11 years.  (If you want to check out some gluten free recipes, I have some great boards on Pinterest, here's just one of them.)  In the States, it is easier to find gluten free food.  Here in Peru, there isn't the same general population problem with eating gluten (though they do have tons of naturally gluten free grains here, like maca and quinoa).  Hence, it's also a little trickier to find things.  So I thought for this challenge, I would make it more of a challenge for myself and see if I could come up with a new GF pie crust recipe.  I made four edible attempts but none of them are so fantastic I would make them again without attempting to improve them.  See the pictures below for more details on where I started and if you make a great GF crust from scratch leave the recipe in the comments!

The Recipe: Custard Pie, The Frugal Housewife, Lydia Child, 1841, (p. 68 in this edition.) 

How Did You Make It: I generally followed the instructions, such as they were.  I used a liter of milk because that's what we had (it was slightly sour, but a quick google search showed that custard is one of the suggested ways to use sour milk!)  I used 6 eggs; if it's good enough for Mrs. Child, it's good enough for me.  I heated my milk with stick cinnamon and some zested lemon peel (I didn't have any lemon on hand and it's been a rough two weeks.  I didn't have time to go to market to get some.)  I used 3/4 cup of white sugar based on a modern recipe amount, a pinch of salt, and 1 tablespoon of nutmeg (again, no time to buy a whole nutmeg and I'm trying to use the spices we have here rather than buy more).  Cooking time is impossible to ascertain because I cooked the tester pies on a baking stone which increases time.  My full pie was baked by itself but when the gas died, that added to baking time.  I did bake the large pie crust for about 10 minutes when the little pies were baking.  (Remember to poke holes in the crust so it doesn't puff up while baking.)  I also chose to whisk the eggs before adding them to the milk, and I strained the milk of the cinnamon sticks and lemon zest.  She didn't say to do that but it seemed like a good idea to me.

The big departure from the script was trying to make a gluten free crust that was relatively easy, from ingredients that are easy enough to find (here in Peru and in the States), and tasted decent.  I made four mini-crusts, plus one large crust from my old standby, Cooqi Flour, the All Purpose Flour Blend.  (I get nothing from them, but I've been using their products for several years and have found this blend to be usable in a 1:1 ratio in regular recipes for cookies and pie crusts and cakes.  I like the all purpose blend better than the cake/pastry blend.)  My family is gluten free due to a family history of celiac disease (I'm not).  So I have about 11 years of experience in cooking gluten free.  I have a lifetime of experience in pie baking.  So, it seemed fitting to make the two go together.  When I'm back home, I have been able to successfully use the Cooqi flour for everything I want to make but the only way I can get it in Peru is to have a visitor bring it down.  So I have been hoarding it.  I did break out a cup for the pie in this challenge since I have about 3.5 pounds and we have about 9 months until we go home.  And I found a great sugar cookie recipe that uses gluten free flours I can find here, which means my need for the GF flour has decreased.

Time to Complete: Oh, I didn't really time this one.  I suppose I spent a few hours putting everything together, mixing 5 different crusts, and doing two baking times.

 
Total Cost: Approximately $4.50-$5  Butter: about 4 soles ($1.43 USD), Milk: 2 soles (71 cents USD), 6 eggs: 3 soles ($1.07 USD), sugar, stick cinnamon, nutmeg and salt, in pantry and negligible cost.  Flours were probably the most money, but I'm really not sure how much, maybe $1-2 USD total for the pantry items.

How Successful Was It?: It tasted good and all the sample crusts were edible and even passable, but I don't think I have achieved a good enough GF crust to end my quest.  I also think it would have tasted better with some cinnamon baked in the custard (rather than just the boiled cinnamon sticks).  I sprinkled a little on the top on later pieces and liked it better that way.  I may have eaten pie for dinner.  It's a tough life but someone has to do it.

How Accurate Is It?: Very accurate.  The gas tank even ran out on the oven, so I got to experience what life might have been like if my fire went out in my wood fired stove or hearth.  It stopped in the middle of baking my large pie, which suffered temperatures ranging from 150 (when I noticed that something was wrong) to 400.  Poor pie.  It did seem to come through everything ok, though.  I did use ground nutmeg instead of a freshly ground whole nutmeg and lemon zest I had in the freezer instead of lemon peels, but even those are pretty close.

Time to Research:  Given that I start with Lydia Child on all of the challenges and she had something that would work, the recipe was maybe 15 minutes as I decided what pie to make.  I spent about an hour trying to figure out my gluten free tester recipes.

What I used for my GF mini-pies.  (If any of these worked great, I would just scale up.  Because this was just a general test, I used measurements instead of weight.  You may know that weight is the most accurate way to replicate results and that different flours have different weights for the same volume.)  I started with my great grandmother's basic pie crust recipe (1 cup flour, 1/2 cup fat, 1/4 cup water) and just used those ratios.

**All of the GF crusts had 1/4 teaspoon xanthan gum in addition to the flour ratios below, then I cut in 2 T butter and 1 T or a little less of water.

GF Crust #1:  2 Tablespoons brown rice flour, 2 Tablespoons white rice flour

GF Crust #2: 1 1/2 Tablespoons brown rice flour, 1 1/2 Tablespoons white rice flour, 1 Tablespoon tapioca starch (aka tapioca flour)

GF Crust #3: 2 Tablespoons brown rice flour, 1 Tablespoon tapioca starch (aka tapioca flour), 1 Tablespoon arrowroot powder (aka arrowroot flour or arrowroot starch)

GF Crust #4: 2 Tablespoons brown rice flour, 2 Tablespoons white rice flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons tapioca starch (aka tapioca flour), 1 1/2 teaspoons corn flour (aka masa)

My opinion on results:  All of the flours worked in terms of being able to be cooked, hold the pie filling, and were edible.  But my standards for GF are great taste, not just edible (I still think any of these were better than the sawdust style GF foods).  GF flours #2-4 worked better when patted into a patty in my hand and pushed into place in the pan.  Not uncommon for GF flour mixes.  There isn't any gluten to give elasticity.

GF Crust #1:  Rolled the best, almost stuck together the whole process of rolling and flipping into the pie pan.  But tasted the worst of the four options (not horrible, but a clear notch down from the others.)

GF Crust #2: Rolled out ok but failed at being able to transfer from rolling mat to the pan.  Good texture, tasted a little sweet and I'm not sure why but it was pleasant.  (I'm guessing the tapioca flour because the first crust didn't taste sweet at all.)  

GF Crust #3: Same rolling comments as #2 but had a smoother texture than #2.  One of the top two of this batch.

GF Crust #4: Same rolling comments as #2 but had a smoother texture than #2 and flakiest texture of all of them.  I wouldn't think the corn flour would help that much, but it really seemed to work.  This may have been the best, certainly one of the top two.  

Heating the milk with lemon zest and stick cinnamon.

Mixing bowls for gluten free flours 1-4

Here's what they looked like with the different flours dumped in the bowls.

Here's how they looked after whisking the flours together.  They were all pretty much the same, except for #4 on the far right had a little yellow cast because of the corn flour.  I think that if you found a GF flour that worked well, you could totally bring it along to a reenactment and no one would be the wiser.

I used room temperature butter as my fat and flour #1 was so smushy the knives didn't work to cut it in.  I ended up finishing with a fork.

Flours #2-4 worked just fine with cutting in the flour.

After adding the water.  Flour #3 needed less water than the others.

Flour #1 rolled and transferred well but ended up with my least favorite taste.

Flours #2 and on were like this- too goopy and just stuck to the mat even with floured surface.

See?  Goopy.  I ended up scraping from the mat, rolling into a ball, patting out like a hamburger patty and finger patting into the cupcake container.

The finished products.  Two each of flour testers 1-4 (from left to right).

I used the rest of the filling to fill this pie plate (this is my Cooqi crust pie).  When Lydia Child said to use a deep dish, she wasn't kidding.  Even after my 8 testers (about 1/3 cup filling in each so almost 3 cups down) this went right to the tippy top.  It's also my only pie plate here.

You can see that the flours look like "regular" flour.  I think they would pass the looks test.

My poor large pie after it suffered temps ranging from 150 F to 400 F.  (The gas tank ran out while it was in the oven.)

Fiestas Patrias (or, Peru's Independence Days)

According to wikipedia (which may or may not be a completely reliable source but is so convenient for things like this), Fiestas Patrias is one of the biggest holidays in Peru.  It is certainly something that stands out for us.

The holiday celebrates Peru's independence from Spain (a nice article here) and covers two days (July 28 and 29).  Both of them are official holidays.

The main square (and everywhere, really) are decked out with flags and cockades.

Here are some of the things we've observed about how the holiday is celebrated:

• For all of July, there have been multiple vendors selling all number of patriotic accouterments.  People wear little ribbon cockades (of real ribbon or metal ones) the whole month.  Miss M got one as a present from her teacher at the beginning of July and was to wear it all month.  There are also lots and lots of paper decorations, flags flying from cars and motorcycles and combis decked out.  Because it doesn't rain here, combis can actually put paper decorations on their car without worry that they will be ruined (though they probably get pretty dusty).

You can see the cockade up in this clothing shop (and Dave is tormenting the little manikin girl by not giving her any ice cream).

Just a little of the patriotic swag available for purchase.

Some of the metal cockades.  I think the ribbon ones are even more common.

• It's the law that you have to fly a Peruvian flag on the holiday itself.  We got ours up early to be sure that we didn't get fined (which is the punishment for not flying the flag...not sure how much you have to pay but we bought a flag from the people moving out so we would be prepared).  The people who moved out of this house left just before the Fiestas Patrias and we came in mid-August so one of the things they had to do was make sure the landlords came to put up and take down the flag to avoid anyone being fined. 

  

  All the flags are flying on this pedestrian shopping street.

• Winter break (2-3 weeks, depending on the school) coincides with the holiday.  Most schools have off the end of July into early August.   
• Parades and demonstrations (usually with a military and/or police emphasis).  They have lots of marching and flags and pageantry.  We tried to see something like this by wandering downtown but no official demonstrations or parades were happening.  
  
  
  
  

  

  No parades, but we had a fun holiday excursion downtown.  I'm wearing my Peru shirt and necklace and a ribbon cockade (obscured by my hair) and the girls each have a metal cockade pin.

• Schools have programs.  The kids dress up in costumes and honor the history of Peru.  Miss M was assigned a costume as a mountain police officer.  But we weren't able to get a picture of her in the costume as she wasn't that excited about it.  Khaki colored shirt, green polyester pants, felted cowboy style hat and a gun holster (sans gun, other kids' uniforms had guns and she was quite disappointed about her costume).  We were told that parents were not supposed to attend the program, that it was for kids only, so we didn't get any pictures.  I know that they sang the Peruvian national anthem (which they do daily, M has it memorized), did some marching (she demonstrated some nice goosestepping) and did some kind of program. 

No pictures of Miss M's costume, but here are some ladies in the costume rental shop section of town.

Thus far, we haven't heard fireworks, which I would have said is the (un)official way that all holidays are celebrated.  Maybe we'll hear them tonight, the second day of the festival!  **Update** No fireworks at all.  Christmas, on the other hand, had so many fireworks we couldn't sleep, as did New Year's.

Feliz dias, Peru!

Mid-Sabbatical Reflections (Part 2)

I had several goals for this family sabbatical time and now that we are midway through our 21 month sabbatical, I'm taking some time to reflect.

Terracing.  Peru during one of our scouting trips in 2007.

This is actually the fourth time that I had considered going overseas.  I thought about being a high school foreign exchange student.  Ultimately, I decided that I didn't want to leave my family a year early and I didn't want to leave my high school track and cross country teams.  (Ironically, my family moved to a different state my senior year, so the latter occurred anyway.)  I considered studying abroad in college, but I was involved in some activities that I didn't want to give up.  I decided in college that I would tour internationally for a year post-college with a music ministry team, but ended up having jaw surgery during spring break of my senior year and the post-op treatment plan required that I be stateside for the following year and a half.  So I got a job, saved my pennies and took an annual international trip, and dreamed about when I might be able to finally live overseas.

When Dave and I were dating, he mentioned that he wanted to live overseas, too, and that was one of the things that got me to thinking that he might be "the one."  Shortly after we married, we started planning our our next ten years and slotted in me getting an MBA, kids, and living in another country.  At first we were thinking that I might do an MBA via internet while living abroad but given that my employer helped pay for the MBA and that we didn't want to have kids in another country, we scheduled the plan like this: K gets MBA, have kid #1, have kid #2, move overseas when kid #2 is 2 years old.  And it all worked out almost exactly according to plan.  I came back from our March planning retreat and started my MBA program that May.  Three years later I was wrapping up my degree and Miss M made her appearance the day after my second-to-last class (contingency plan was in place and all the work was done so I graduated just fine).  Kid #2 came along just a hair later than expected, but we headed off to Peru when she was 18 months old (and it's worked out just fine).

Back in 2006 we were planning our eventual sabbatical.

On one of our scouting trips to Peru (2007) we were encouraged to dress in traditional clothing at our guest house near Lake Titicaca.  We look stunning!

10 years after Dave and I planned to move abroad (and about 20 years after I started thinking about living overseas), my goals for this family sabbatical (in no particular order except the first two were most important to me) were as follows:

1. Get to know our girls and cement our relationship.  I believe that this will be the bedrock of our relationship down the line and if I understand them well now, this will help when they are teens and beyond.  Subgoal: develop my parenting skills, understand my goals for our kids and get new tools to help me accomplish the goals in a manner that I want to be employing (not just what comes naturally as that may or may not be helpful).  
2. Spend time focusing on faith matters (studying the Bible, prayer, personal development, strengthening my relationship with God)
3. Formalize exercise and reestablish as a regular habit (like many new moms, this one bit the dust post kids)
4. Experience and better understand a foreign culture- have an adventure
5. Become fluent in Spanish
6. Take time out of the "I'm so busy" norm of American life and slow down.  Open up time for other things I enjoy like reading, baking/cooking, studying.
7. Do some online research for my Civil War era reenactment group.  I have been particularly interested in abolition and bringing that into my impression, as well as doing some research on the clothing that I want to make when I get back. That way I can just jump into sewing, knowing what I have is well researched.

This post is going to get too long if I talk about the first two goals now, but I'll come back to those in a future post.  Now that we are 11 months in, my other goals have morphed and changed, but in general I feel like I am accomplishing my goals.

• Exercise:  We don't have a car here and walk most everywhere.  I take combis occasionally (mostly on the way into school because we can't get it all together to allow enough time to walk there).  Even more rarely do we take a taxi.  We are fortunate in that our house is in a great location and we can walk to almost everything.  So, I'm doing a great job of getting regular amounts of basic exercise in.  I didn't bring a pedometer but I think I probably walk about 4 to 7 miles a day on school days (less if we are home for the day, of course).  However, my cardio exercise and stretching (yoga and TRX machine) are totally lacking.  I have gotten out the yoga mat and TRX machine once each.  I have done exercise videos from YouTube about 7 times since June 1.  Fortunately, my 20th high school reunion is next year and my old cross country teammates want to do a reunion run around Pine Lake (somewhere around 3-4 miles) so I have an end goal and I will have to get my butt in gear.  I'm not terribly out of shape right now but I'm not in great shape, either.
• Have an Adventure: Check.  Just living in another country means that you can have an adventure.  I know what we are doing is atypical and I'm grateful that we have this opportunity.  If I had it to do over again, I would still go.  It doesn't mean it's all been easy (in fact, some of the self-development and awareness has been downright painful and uncomfortable) but I think it's been a good kind of hard.  I am also really thankful for the support system we have (friends and family back home who are helping with the on the ground stuff that needs to happen with things like our house and finances, visitors who have come to lift our spirits and bring us things from home, and technology that allows us to communicate with them).  We also have a great expat community here (Facebook page where you can post and get answers to any number of questions, like where to buy something or how to handle a travel question or what some note from school means) and that has made all the difference in the world.  I feel like I could sympathize with visitors, refugees and immigrants to the US before, but now I think I will be better able to empathize with at least part of their experience.  We aren't refugees here, so it's not the same, but I look forward to continuing with refugee care when we return to the states. 

Life is always an adventure with Miss M!

• Become fluent in Spanish:  not so much.  I realized that I'm not going to achieve this one.  Miss M will- she's basically doing immersion by going to school for 5 hours a day.  Little A gets far less being at home (we speak English here) but she had a good start from 3 months to 18 months from our Columbian au pair and she hears a little bit here from Flor.  We plan to have another au pair when we go back and I think she will end up with fluency.  Dave has come a long way from almost no Spanish to being able to get around quite well (he's very diligent with doing an hour a day of Rosetta Stone).  I have found that my basic Spanish from high school and college has given me enough to navigate regular life (shopping, travel, interacting with people) and I have wanted to do so many other things that I don't want to put in the time to do formal study.  There are language schools and private teachers here, but I haven't wanted to put in the time or money for that kind of study.  Many people go to language school and spend a few hours a day in class and more time on homework.  I don't have 4-5 hours a day to dedicate and I guess this one has dropped in importance to me.  I would still like to become fluent, but I'm seeing myself on a different trajectory than I once envisioned.  
• Step out of the busy life: Check.  We have very little scheduled right now.  I try to chat regularly with family and friends via Skype but we have no hobbies, regular activities, or classes to work around.  We eat breakfast, lunch and dinner together as a family (except Miss M when she is at school).  We've tried a few formal classes/activities for Miss M but haven't found a great fit yet.  (So far, soccer, tennis, modern dance class, and a movement/dance class....we are waiting to see if ballet will be a fit and I would like to get her in swimming lessons before we come back to shore up her swimming skills.)  I'm curious how we will handle the reentry to the US.  In The Family Sabbatical Handbook, the author talks about how when they came back to the states, everyone seemed to have a nervous kind of energy that made them uncomfortable.  And people said that her family was different- more open and relaxed.  I'm curious if we will have a similar experience.   I am so glad to have my Kindle here and have read a number of books (including the Story Girl and Emily series by Lucy Maud Montgomery.  I have always loved her Anne books but hadn't read the other books she had written and I love them.)  It has been fun to have more time for reading.  I have also done some baking, a small amount of cooking, and have gotten to do some research. 

This is M at soccer.  The other kids are having a scrimmage.  She came back to hang out in the stands.

• Civil War era research: Check.  I have read two slave narratives so far (Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, written by herself (Linda Bryant) and Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington).  I just started on Slavery in the Upper Mississippi Valley.  My hope is to better understand slavery as it existed in our past and do my part to respectfully bring that part of our history into my reenacting impression.  I think that we still live with the legacy of slavery and deep-seated attitudes today.  I've also spent a lot of time online looking at the Sewing Academy forums and compendium, CDVs that people have uploaded to Pinterest, and planning out my sewing projects when I return. Here is my board of things I would like to recreate.   I already have a lot of fabric in our basement and just need the time to focus on sewing up my fabric into garments.  I also did a book club discussion on Incidents of a Slave Girl with some of the other members of my reenacting group and we are hoping to discuss another book.

All in all, I think that this sabbatical is definitely allowing me to fulfill several life goals and I'm glad we have had the opportunity.

Fish Stock: Historical Food Fortnightly Challenge #2

For background on the Historical Food Fortnightly, click here.

The Challenge: Soups and Sauces June 15 - June 28
Soups, stews, sauces, gravies! Make a soup or a sauce from a historical recipe.

I had planned to make catsup (homemade tomato ketchup) for this challenge but in the final days of the fortnight, two deaths happened that made me set aside the challenge and offer support to the grieving.  I ended up making the catsup for challenge #3 (on July 4) but I wanted to do all the challenges.  Betsy said to make the challenges work for us, and this fortnight I found myself with the scheduled challenge completed early (Indian Pudding) and the time, inclination, and raw materials to go back and finish an entry for challenge #2.

I happened to have some fish heads and guts (here in Peru, when you buy fish, you select your fully intact fish from the ice and they clean it for you.  You pay for it based on the total fish weight, and get a bag of fillets and a bag of fish guts, head, scales, etc.)  I took them because my friend said I could make stock with them.  It wasn't appealing to me (even after looking up what to do).  But then I realized I could turn my fish heads and guts into a challenge entry!  And my husband also wanted it out of the freezer.  Win-win.

The Recipe: Fish Stock (Recipe 192), The Book of Household Management, Mrs. Isabella Beeton, [1861] (p. 362) The Date/Year and Region: Recipe is English, published serially in 24 monthly parts in The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine from 1859-1861 and bound in 1861 as a book in London.

How Did You Make It: I omitted the beef or veal as the recipe stated it could be omitted.  I am making this for the challenge and may or may not actually use it for something.  I pulled the fish head/guts out of the freezer, where I had stashed it when it came home (not being able to look it in the face, so to speak, at the time).  I went to the market to buy two onions, two carrots, and a lemon.  We had the spices at home already.  I put the fish parts out to thaw (after weighing them to figure out how much of the price was related to the guts vs. the fillets) and washed then cut up the carrots and onions.  I peeled the lemon and put the lemon rind in the pot along with the other ingredients.  I pulled out my sweet spices (I went with the spices we had on hand based on what Mrs. Beeton recommended here and was pleased that she noted dried herbs in the winter months were ok.  We are in the winter months here and dried is what we have.)  

Time to Complete: About 20 minutes of casual hands on work to chop and throw stuff in the pot and 2 1/2 hours to simmer (about 30 minutes to warm the water and then I left it for two hours).  About another 15 minutes to strain it at the end and clean up. (I poured the stock through a strainer and rescued the carrots.  The rest got tossed.) 

Total Cost: $3.40 USD The white fish (liza) is apparently part of the mullet family and is fished in Peruvian waters.  This cost 14.60 soles per kilo.  The weight of the fish guts was 39.86% of the total (you can choose to take or leave the fish guts but you pay for the fish as a whole).  So, the fish guts cost 5.91 soles (about $2.12 USD) or free, depending on your opinion.  I would typically regard them as garbage.  The onions, carrots, and lemon cost 3 soles (about $1.08 USD).  We bought the spices from someone moving away; I would guess the amount I used was maybe 50 centimos (about 20 cents USD). I added about 1/4 cup total of spices, with the bulk being mint because that is what we have the most of.  (I didn't actually measure, just dumped stuff in the pot.) I also used marjoram, savory, and some other green leaf that wasn't labeled but we had in a spice bag. Mrs. Beeton says this will cost 3d per quart, and I assume this makes at least 1 quart (you start with 2 quarts of water).  [Mine did make about 1 quart.]  I don't know the British money, though, so I'm not sure how much this was or what the modern equivalent would be.  If someone knows about British money, enlighten me.  I tried to look it up but got lost.

How Successful Was It?: My 6 year old daughter was not impressed with the smell (upon coming downstairs she said, "AAH!  I can't come down the stairs with that stinky fish head smell!")  My husband came down and asked how long we had to put up with the smell.  He then closed the door that separates the kitchen from the rest of the house and opened the kitchen windows.  (Side note: I use Young Living Essential Oils and when the complaints poured in, I used Purification Oil in the diffuser and it really helped a ton!  I love that oil for helping with stink.)

It made just short of a quart of stock after I strained the veggies and spices out.  I took a taste and it has a TON of fat in it....pretty slimy/thick, like cod liver oil in a way.  I may or may not use this for something we eat.  I'm not sure if the family will eat it or not.   If anyone has a fish stock based recipe you love, let me know!  [ed. note: I am thinking I should have done more skimming and when it's cooled, perhaps I can skim off the fat that should have come off earlier.]

UPDATE: This stuff stinks.  Really, really stinks.  And it stank up every container it was in (the stainless steel pot, the glass liter pitcher (which my husband requested I remove it from because it was stinking up the fridge due to the small holes in the lid), and the glass container to which it was transferred.  Once cooled, at least half the amount was solid fat.  It's probably great for something, but not great for us.  It went in the garbage.  But that liza is one fatty fish.

How Accurate Is It?: As accurate as I could make it.  I used real fish guts, prepared in the correct manner, with the right kind of spices and ingredients.  Per usual, cooked on a modern stove.

Time to Research:  I spent about 30 minutes looking for a soup recipe I could use.  Lydia Child's American Frugal Housewife was light on soups and so I turned to Mrs. Beeton's.  She had a number of options but when I came upon the fish stock recipe it all clicked and I knew what I was going to make.

My ingredients- fish parts in the bag, carrots, onions, lemon, and spices.  The teeny limes are the kind you can usually get here, they start green but these are kind of old and turned yellow.  My vegetable lady had the American lemon when I went to buy the onions and carrots so I used that.

Liza (the type of whitefish) I bought.  They bag up the fish guts separately from the fillets (you select the whole fish and they fillet it for you).

All the ingredients in the pot!

Added the water to the pot and started cooking it for 2 hours.

Mrs. Beeton said to strain the stock, just like modern recipes do.  And I knew I couldn't leave the fish bones in the stock (ouch!)

Here's what it looked like with the veggies and fish parts removed.

There was a lot of spice left after pouring the stock into my container.

I rescued the carrots and rinsed them off.  I hate wasting food!

The finished product.  You can see the fat on the side.  This is a 1 liter pitcher so the net amount is just under a quart.