TURKEY

For this meal trip, we traveled to the culturally-rich Turkey!

Turkey, officially The Republic of Turkey, is slightly larger than the state of Texas. It borders the countries of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. 

Over 80 million people call Turkey home. 99% of those people are Muslim and the other 1% are Christians or Jews. The official language is Turkish.

81 provinces in Turkey are ruled by a republican parliamentary democracy. 

The country itself spans two continents: Europe and Asia. Although, 97% of its land lies in Asia. Istanbul (which isn't the capital, Ankara is) is the only city in the world that covers two continents.

The famous Trojan Wars took place in Western Turkey which is where the Trojan Horse can be found today (not the real one, but remains have been found near the site). 

Saint Nicholas aka Santa Claus was born in Patara, on Turkey's Mediterranean coast!!

St. Peter's Church 

The first ever Christian church to be built by man was in Antioch, Turkey. The Apostle Paul was born in Turkey. 

Turkey was the first world hazelnut producer and exporter, with approximately 70% of the world's production, and 82% of the world`s export.

the Fez hat

Once a loved symbol of nationality and a special badge of the Turks, the Fez which was worn by men and women, is hardly worn anymore. The Fez was banned in 1925 and by the 1930 it all but disappeared in the country. 

Tulips do not originate from the Netherlands, as many believe, but from Turkey. Coffee was introduced to Europe from Turkey as well. 

Noah's Ark is said to have landed on Mt. Ararat, Turkey's highest peak. When Noah's family arrived, they celebrated with a pudding made of fruit, nuts, and grains. This pudding, called asure, is still served throughout Turkey. 

And yes, the turkey bird is named after the country of Turkey. Believing they were in the Far East, the Europeans mistook the birds as a type of Guinea fowl that is found in Turkey. 

Turkey is famous for its cuisine. The most famous meal outside the country as it is on the inside, is the kebab. Kebabs are mainly made of lamb, but also can consist of chicken or beef. There are many variations of kebabs and hundreds of different ways each province of Turkey specializes it. 

So, of course, we made lamb kebabs for this meal!

This is an S meal!! The fat content as well as the non-starchy vegetables kept it at an S meal. 

As simple as they sound, we still had to research recipes. We used this recipe, and then added our own touches based on several other recipes we saw. 

It was a beautiful Monday evening, perfect for grilling outside! Lamb Kebabs here we come!

Ingredients:

For the marinade:

2 tsp salt (we used Mediterranean sea salt, but reg. will work just fine)

2 tsp cumin

2 tsp paprika

2 tsp red pepper flakes

2 tsp ground pepper

3-4 garlic cloves

4 Tbs coconut oil

2 Tbs lemon juice

3 lb leg or shoulder of lamb

8 plum or small round tomatoes

1 red onion, cut into chunks

Green/yellow/red pepper, cut into chunks

(Any other vegetable you want)

metal skewers

This recipe was fun because we didn't have to think too hard to make this THM-friendly. We just swapped olive oil for coconut oil. I will say, however, that the coconut oil clumped up as the lamb marinated in the fridge. Don't really know how to correct that..

This was a super fun meal to make, plus everyone just so happened to be in a very good mood, which can be rare in a house with teenagers. Everyone helped out for this meal, my mom and I, and my sister and dad! Let's get started!

Steps:

Combine marinade ingredients. 

Trying so hard to be art$y

In our marinade, we added a few leaves of oregano from our garden! 

I promise this isn't a random plant, it actually
is oregano!

Cube lamb into 1-2 inch cubes. 

Marinate for at least 1 hour, or even overnight. 

We were excited to use the charcoal part of our grill! For the charcoal grill, light the charcoal and wait until medium-hot. You should be able to hold your hand over the grill for at least 5 seconds. 

If using a gas grill, preheat on high, covered, for 10 minutes, and reduce heat to medium. 

While you wait for the grill, chop and skewer vegetables. 

In traditional Turkish cuisine, the vegetables are cooked on separate skewers (tomatoes on one, onions on one, etc.) My mom was super sad about this because she didn't think it would be "pretty" enough, so two of our skewers alternate the vegetables (happy wife, happy life?)

Drain meat and discard marinade sauce. Skewer the lamb. 

Grill. Vegetable skins should be blistered and browned, and the lamb brown and done to taste. (It took us about 30 minutes, but we're also not grill masters so....)

And then, you've got a famous Turkish meal on your plate! We paired this meal with cauliflower rice. 

BONUS: 

Kabak Tatlisi!!

Because this meal was simple, we decided to make a Turkish dessert (No baklava here though). We made Kabak Tatlisi, or, sweet butternut squash. 

Ingredients:

1 butternut squash

1/2 cup pyure organic stevia

walnuts

Steps: 

Preheat oven to 400

Peel squash until orange. Cut ends off. Discard seeds. 

Cut into equal chunks.

Line a baking sheet with foil and spread the chunks evenly across. Bake for 5 minutes.

Remove and cover with 1/2 cup of pyure sweetener (erythritol and stevia blend) or equivalent sweetener.

Cover with aluminum foil tightly.

Bake at 400 degrees for 40-50 minutes.

Remove foil. Stir and bake 5-10 minutes more.

Cool and eat. Top with walnuts and (optional) sweetened whipped cream. 

Thoughts and Comments:

Madeline: I was super pumped for Turkey--I've heard so many great things about the cuisine. Although this is considered the national dish, I think we should have chose something different to cook. It was too similar to things that we eat all the time. Basically, it wasn't foreign enough! Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the food! We have never cooked with lamb before in my house, so that was fun and tasty! Also, as said earlier, we are not grill masters. The vegetables definitely should have been cooked longer, and maybe even the meat as well. Next time, maybe grill amateurs shouldn't take on a meal that requires a grill...haha. The dessert was good, but not great. I think with regular sugar, as it's made in Turkey, would have been a lot better. Real sugar is supposed to caramelize the squash, which didn't really happen with the sweetener. I ate it all, though. And also, we set off the fire alarm because we (aka Lisa) burned the squash :). 

Lisa: I have to admit this was my least favorite meal so far from our trip around the world.  I love lamb in gyros dishes - used to be sandwiches, but now I get it as a salad.  And this lamb had this distinct flavor and was very good.  But it was just all too familiar - like I’ve had this before.  I have enjoyed our dishes that I would have NEVER made myself if it wasn’t for this journey we are taking together!  And this just seemed like grilling out.

We are still new to THM and, although I love it and have lost weight and feel great, I still get confused on whether I should have THIS meat with an E meal or not. Or how much of THAT vegetable can I have with an S meal.  When we decided to make the “candied” butternut squash for dessert, I said we would have to wait 3 hours since that would be an E dessert (more starchy vegetable) and we just had an S meal.  So we ate it at 11pm!  (Well, my hubby did not - he’s not very adventurous when it comes to food!)  But later, I decided if we had kept it to 1/2 cup, it could have been enjoyed after our S meal, especially since we didn’t have starchy veggies with the meal, and we could have put as much whipped cream on it as we wanted!  

Up Next: Portugal!

Here is the second most popular song in Turkey as of this week:

Once again, lamb kebabs and kabak tatlisi:

Lamb kebabs:

Combine 2 tsp salt, 2 tsp cumin, 2 tsp paprika, 2 tsp red pepper flakes, 2 tsp ground pepper, 3-4 garlic cloves, 4 Tbs coconut oil, 2 Tbs lemon juice.

Cube 3 lb lamb shoulder or leg into 1-2 inch cubes. Marinate for at least one hour, or even overnight.

Charcoal grill: Light charcoal and wait until medium/hot. (Hand can be placed above grill for at least 5 seconds)
Gas grill: Preheat on high, covered, 10 min and reduce heat to medium.

Drain meat and discard marinade sauce.

Skewer lamb. On separate skewers, skewer 8 plum or small round tomatoes, 1 red onion cut into chunks, and green/red/yellow cut into chunks.

Grill. Vegetable skins should be blistered and brown. Lamb should be brown and done to taste.

Kabak tatlisi:

Preheat oven to 400.

Peel 1 butternut squash until orange. Cut ends off. Discard seeds. Cut into equal chunks.

Line a baking sheet with foil and spread the chunks evenly across. Bake for 5 minutes.

Remove and cover with 1/2 cup of pyure sweetener (erythritol & stevia blend) or equivalent sweetener.

Cover with aluminum foil tightly. Bake at 400 for 40-50 minutes.

Remove foil. Stir and bake 5-10 minutes more.

Cool and eat. Garnish with walnuts or optional sweetened whipped cream.

CHILE

This week we traveled to the exotic country of Chile!

An extremely diverse country geographically, Chile stretches along the western coast of South America about 2,700 miles long! This is about the same distance from San Francisco to New York City! Yet, it's width never exceeds 150 miles; this makes Chile's length almost 18 times it's width! So it's not surprising that Chile is the longest country in the world!

Chile is guarded by the looming Andes Mountains. Yet, Chile is not primarily a mountainous country. It holds a desert, river valleys, islands, as well as the mazes of mountains.

So basically, Chile is pretty tight.

Over 17 million people call Chile home, and 99% of them speak Spanish, while a mere 10% primarily speak English or English as a second language. So make sure to pack your Spanish dictionary when you make your trip!

The currency of Chile is the Chilean peso, valuing at $636.49 for every 1 US dollar, which kind of boggles my mind. A gallon of milk in Chile is worth 2,599.32 CLP, which would equate to 4 US dollars. So it's not like you can just move to Chile and automatically be rich!

Chile is the host of Easter Island! It's the world's most isolated island, lying some 2,300 miles west of Chile. Known for it's 887giant statues carved from volcanic stone, don't confuse these moai statues with Stonehenge! The Polynesian Rapa Nui people carved the Easter island statues.


Chile holds the record for the longest dry spell in the world. The Atacama Desert did not receive rain for 40 years.

The world's smallest deer is only found in Chile and just look at how freaking cute it is.

The Pudu deer

There are more UFO sightings in Chile than in any other place in the world. Because of this, Chile is one of the few countries on Earth that has a government-funded UFO research program.

There have been so many sightings, in fact, that the town of San Clemente built a 19 mile UFO trail with plateaus that UFOs can use for landing pads.






After doing tons and tons of research, we could find no "national dish" of Chile, albeit the national staple food of Chile would have to be corn and seafood, you just can't escape it. Because of this we decided to make a native, popular Chilean dish, hoping our research would be over. Then it came to the fact that almost every dish is made with corn, and corn isn't very THM friendly.

More research.

I probably Googled "Chilean recipes" 10 different ways, trying to get different results. We just couldn't decide.

Then finally, FINALLY, we found this recipe and decided it was the one!

Caldillo de Congrio!

(Definitely not our finished product. This is way too beautiful)

(If any of you can read Spanish, then you will know that Congrio is a type of eel. We didn't use eel in our recipe due to our laziness to try to find it.)

This fish stew we decided is an S meal because of the heavy cream used. 

This was, by and far, the easiest meal we have made yet (out of 3 meals ha). It took us only about 30 minutes to make. It was so easy, and spoiler alert, it was so good. 

Let's get started!

Ingredients:

That Mickey Mouse thingy on the right holds our pepper. LOL.

2 Tbs coconut oil
1 onion-- thinly sliced
4 cloves garlic-- minced
1 Tbs paprika
1 can diced tomatoes
1 cup white wine
4 cups seafood stock
2 Tbs cilantro-- chopped
1 bay leaf
salt & pepper to taste
1 lb. white fish-- cut into chunks
1/2 cup heavy cream
10 oz. large shrimp-- peeled & deveined
1 jalapeno pepper (optional!!!)
1 lime-- cut into slices 
Optional hot sauce


This recipe was awesome because we only had to change one thing for it to be THM approved! Coconut oil instead of olive oil. I'm surprised I haven't started sprouting little coconut hairs with all the coconut oil I've been consuming lately. But talk about a gift sent from heaven!

Traditional Chilean caldillo de congrio does call for eel fillets. We used cod instead. I also put three exclamation points behind the optional jalapeño pepper because o m g, this was spicy!! Use with caution!

Steps:

Heat 2 Tbs coconut oil in a large pot over medium/high heat. Add 1 thinly sliced onion and sauté until translucent. (3-4 minutes)

Stir in garlic cloves, paprika, and jalapeno and sauté 1-2 minutes. 

The steam had a good ole time messing up my pictures.

Stir in diced tomatoes (reserving the juice) and white wine. Cook for 5 minutes. 

We admit that we are no wine experts. I'm underage (boo) and my mother just doesn't drink wine. We used this wine. Who knows if it was the right choice. If you happen to be a connoisseur in wine, feel free to use whatever kind you think would fit best! The guy is fishing in the picture in the wine we chose, so why not?

Random wine from the alcohol isle in Kroger

Add 4 cups of seafood stock. We used "Glace de Fruits de Mer Gold Classic Seafood Stock" instead of making our own seafood stock from scratch. It makes 4 cups total which is what the recipe calls for - PERFECT!  We used the reserved liquid drained from the diced tomatoes and added water to equal 4 cups, then added the stock mix.

Along with the seafood stock, add cilantro, bay leaf, and salt & pepper. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium/low and simmer for 15-20 minutes.

The smell of this got everyone excited!

While waiting, cut fish into chunks.

Add fish and shrimp and continue to simmer for 5-8 minutes, or until fish is cooked through. 

Stir in cream and immediately serve in bowls. Garnish with cilantro, optional dash of hot pepper sauce (not for us due to the already spicy jalapeño we used), and a lime squeezed over. 

Savor. 

Yummmm! 

Thoughts and Comments:

Madeline: I don't know how we've lucked out to where each of the three meals we've made were on different continents, but we did! It's amazing to actually taste the differences between the cultures. Chile was pretty great. I can honestly say that without this project, I would have NEVER suggested to make this for dinner. Or any type of fish stew for that matter. That's why I love this project so much because I'm getting to eat foods I would have never tried before. I L-O-V-E spicy food. This dish though, I guess because it's a soup, the jalapeño pepper was in your face the whole time you ate it. It was good, but even I would say maybe half a jalapeño next time. And yes, this was good and easy enough for there to be a next time. Also, shoutout to my sister, Catherine, for helping us for this meal; although it seems her favorite part of each meal is hitting the random number generator button to see which country is next.

Catherine suited up for the meal-making!

Lisa: I am not the biggest onion fan. As a child, if I even SAW an onion in something, I would refuse to eat it, causing my Mom to blend onions with whatever liquid was in the meal before cooking.  Now I will eat them cooked - still can't handle them raw!  So we sliced the onions thinly as called for.  Next time I would dice them.  Even cooked, I did not enjoy seeing the big rings of onions on my spoon!  We had a lot of fun planning this recipe and shopping for the ingredients today and cooking together.  Such a fun Mother/Daughters afternoon!  My husband does NOT like any type of seafood so it was a good thing he was at work today.  We bought a new candle to burn so the smell wouldn't knock him over when he comes home tonight!  Oh! And I was excited about adding the shrimp, but surprisingly enough, I enjoyed the cod pieces more!

Up Next: Turkey!

( ^^^ that's not us. I wish it was though. Maybe we'll reveal what we look like in the next post. In the meantime, enjoy these talented Chileans that I found on YouTube.)

Once again, Caldillo de Congrio:

Heat 2 Tbs coconut oil in large pot over medium/high heat. Add 1 thinly sliced onion and sauté until translucent. (3-4 minutes)

Stir in 4 garlic cloves (minced), 1 jalapeno chopped and seeded, and 1 Tbs paprika. Cook 1-2 minutes.

Drain 1 can diced tomatoes and reserve the juice. Stir in tomatoes and 1 cup white wine. Cook 5 minutes.

Add 4 cups seafood stock, 2 Tbs cilantro, 1 bay leaf, and salt & pepper to taste. Bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium/low. Simmer 15-20 minutes.

Add 1 lb. chopped white fish and 10 oz. shrimp. Simmer 5-8 minutes, or until fish is cooked through.

Stir in 1/2 cup heavy cream. Serve immediately. Garnish with cilantro and freshly squeezed lime.

Serve and savor.