PB, baby!

We try not to spend too much time whining about the foods we can’t get here, that we miss from back in the USA.  There are plenty of great Bosnian dishes we enjoy, and it’s no help to anyone, let alone us, to sit around complaining.

But possibly the one longing I could never get over was for real, all-natural peanut butter.  Those of you who know me (Deron) know that I consume peanut butter like your big American SUV consumes gas.  Rapidly, and in large quantities.

But it’s not a popular item here, and the few you can find are quite expensive and more like Skippy.   I long to share with our Bosnian friends the delights of all-natural PB.  Now, peanut butter is one of those things that is expensive to mail, and doesn’t fit our packing standard (it has a quite low longevity-to-weight ratio).  For a long time I’ve meant to look for a quality food processor that we could grind our own peanuts with, but have never pulled the trigger.  Our cheapo one couldn’t handle it.  So basically we do without.

But upon returning to Bos this time I was more determined.  Tonight on a whim I pulled out a simple handheld immersion mixer a friend gave us and went to work on some peanuts.  Added some oil and then honey to offset their oversaltedness, and BAM.  No, seriously, BAM.  Jess took one bite and her eyes grew to silver-dollar size.  I was dancing in the living room.

Coming up for dinner tonight: PB&Js!

And now on to learning to roast our own coffee beans…

Yes, the yield was small, but I was dealing with the tiny bit we had on hand.  And check the quality…look at those nuggets, and the color!  There’s a business opportunity here.

Happiness is good milk.

You might notice that a lot of these posts are about food we discover here. Right now I’m stoked about finding good milk! Most (~98%) of the milk sold in Europe is UHT = Ultra High Temperature. UHT milk is super pasteurized, which gives it a shelf life of about 4 months, unrefrigerated, until you open it. If that sounds a bit scary to you, it did to us too. I was certain that UHT milk must be lower in nutrients somehow, until I did some reading and found it’s just as healthy as the stuff I’m used to from the States. But we weren’t huge fans of the taste. It’s fine in cereal, but we didn’t drink it by itself.

But then we found sviježe mlijeko, or fresh milk. This stuff is the same price, has much better flavor, and is drinkable by itself. However, it lasts only a few days and isn’t available everywhere. We buy it when possible, and live it up quickly before the dreaded date arrives and it’s either pitch it or pound whatever’s left. (And Jess is particularly suspicious of the smell.)

And at our last trip to the store, we discovered that they’ve begun offering sviježe mlijeko in a huge 1.75L bottle (about 1/2 gallon) with a 10-day duration! We’re living large and drinking a lot, which is especially timely with Jess pregnant. I forgot how awesome a big glass of milk is. It’s like dessert. (Right, Lovie?)

Look out sparkling water, there’s competition in the fridge.

So happy right now…

Today we found a new store that sells a variety of unique and hard-to-get-in-Bosnia foods. Asian: teriyaki sauce, rice noodles, sweet and sour sauce, even chopsticks, which I was jonesing for just a couple days ago. Mexican: tortilla chips, salsa, and guacamole. And a variety of other things. But the pièce de résistance was this:
Sriracha! If you’ve never tried this Vietnamese(?) wonder, made in Rosemead, CA, you’re missing out. We are so stoked to find it.

We eat great food here and really can’t complain, but there are definitely some things we miss…and it’s SO cool to find some of them!

*As an added bonus, the guys who worked there told us where we can buy chickpeas and tahini to make hummus! We used to make it all the time in CA, but haven’t found the stuff. Until now.

If you’re looking for us, we’ll be in the kitchen for a few weeks…

That’s how we roll around here.

Jess: “Whoa, one of the eggs in this carton has bird poop on it.”

Deron: “Oh yeah. That’s how you know they’re fresh.”

It happened in an instant…

Stop the press. Alert the media. Call hell and see if it’s chilly yet. The unforeseeable has occurred. We confess. Something has happened and we know we have to come clean and tell all of you about it.

We may have, well, kinda developed a taste for…wait for it… …instant coffee.
Yes you heard that right.

We love coffee with a passion. Our staff teams have always trusted us to serve good stuff, and to make it strong. We’ve scoffed at cups you can see through, and brought our own bags while visiting places where it’s served weak.

Call it cultural adaptation. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. People here drink strong coffee (Turkish and espresso), but also like Nescafe-type instant coffee crystals. At first we drank it to be polite. But now we have our own jar, and we actually like it! It’s a different flavor, to be sure, but it’s pretty good!

Yes, we still drink espresso and Turkish and French-pressed American-style coffee. So consider this us just broadening our horizons. Let the teasing begin. But don’t tease us too much. Because if you’re nice, we’ll bring you some when we come to visit.

Come to the dark side…

Things we really like here, Part 1

There’s a large pijaca, or outdoor market, about 3 blocks from our home where a few dozen vendors sell every type of produce you can imagine. You wander between the tables looking over piles of tomatoes, lettuce, onions, potatoes, bell peppers of all colors, oranges, bananas, apples, pears, and many other things we don’t know names for, while vendors repeat Izvolite “May I help you?” constantly. Prices are very reasonable, and since our fridge is a college-dorm room size one we try to make small trips every other day or so.
Being salad-crazy Californians, this place was an amazing find about a week ago! We have huge salads for dinner often, which is a great balance to Bosnia’s meat-and-bread heavy fare.