Roasted chicken and mashed potatoes

Mom's roasted chicken, mashed potatoes and veggies

This is my top 1 comfort food. Not only because it has the characteristics that describe this kind of food (soft and simple), but because my mom has been cooking it forever. Preparing and eating this dish is like traveling the 12,812 kilometers between here and Lima, even when it does not taste the same as mom’s.

When I was a kid my mom would prepared the mash using boiled yellow potatoes (which have the ideal texture and flavour for this side). A few years later, when she had loads of work and not much time to cook, she switched to instant potato puree, basically dehydrated potato flakes that you add to a mixture of boiled water, milk and butter, and fold until creamy. We ate it until we claimed the unprocessed mashed potatoes back, and she agreed to switch back to the real deal.

Mom’s roasted chicken, simply seasoned with soy sauce, garlic and butter, has an amazing taste that I haven’t been able to duplicate yet. She cooks it with the skin on, and it becomes deliciously crunchy, to the point that I always end up eating the thing even when I usually don’t like it.

I’ve cooked this dish a few times, always with skinless chicken breasts and sometimes wrapped in foil to keep them from getting dry. Of course the flavour is different, but it’s still tasty and a healthier.

Last month my friend Nestor came back from a trip to Lima and gave me, among other goodies, a bag of instant mashed potatoes. He asked me why did I want it if I could make it here. I was shocked, how could he possibly not realised yet (he has been more than 2 years here) Australian potatoes’ lack of taste? I really don’t know the answer, but when I mentioned the flavour he kind of woke up, agreed with me, and decided to ask his wife, who was still in Lima, to bring some bags for him.

Last Friday I had dinner at home with my sister and Alvaro. Since I spent almost all week with gastritis, soft and simple comfort food is what I needed. Gladys bought chicken wings because there were no breasts or thighs with skin in the supermarket and we proceeded to season them. I set the oven at 180 degrees, and about 20 or 30 minutes later, we noticed that the skin was not crunchy yet, but the wonderful smell told us that the chicken was close to ready. We increased the temperature to 200 first, then to 220 and finally we got some crunchiness, not as much as the one my mom achieves, but fair enough. The mashed potatoes were done in 2 minutes, and they were incredibly delicious. We had a salad of baby spinach and broad beans with a simple vinagrette as a side and ate with pleasure until completely full.

A week with gastritis

This week has been a nightmare. Gastritis caught me off guard and it has been weirder than usual, with chills all day long and a general sense of unwellness. As I wrote in my previous post, I had to rethink the week’s menu, this is what I ended up eating:

Monday:

• Breakfast: Yogurt, banana, flaxmeal, pumpkin seeds, wheat germ.
• Snack 1: Apple, almonds.
• Lunch: Roasted squash salad with cherry tomatoes, asparagus, avocado, salad leaves, balsamic vinegar and olive oil.
• Snack 2: Apple, almonds.
• Dinner: Roasted squash + asparagus soup (blended those from my dinner salad with veggie stock), couscous with pinenuts.

Tuesday:

• Breakfast: Oats soaked in rosehip + hibiscus tea, blueberries, banana, wheat germ.
• Snack 1: 2 nectarines, almonds.
• Lunch: Couscous salad with pinenuts, dried apricots, a bit of coriander, salad leaves and lemon juice.
• Snack 2: Banana, almonds.
• Dinner: Same as lunch.

Wednesday:

• Breakfast: Oats soaked in water, blueberries, banana, wheat germ, almond meal.
• Snack 1: Banana, homemade almond milk.
• Lunch: Baked fish with tausi sauce (cooked with salt, pepper, ginger, soy sauce and tausi sauce) with steamed bean sprouts, snow peas, mushrooms and baby corn.
  Plus an orange and ginger juice from Wynyard Station (a couple of sips before lunch and the rest an hour after lunch).*
• Snack 2: 2 nectarines, almonds.
• Dinner: Same as lunch.

Thursday:

• Breakfast: Oats soaked in water, blueberries, banana, wheat germ, almond meal, a teaspoon of peanut butter.
• Snack 1: 2 nectarines, almonds.
• Lunch: Dried pea soup (cooked in pork stock) with a splash of homemade almond milk, baby corn, 2 boiled egg whites and a slice of toasted rye sourdough bread.
• Snack 2: Banana, almonds.
• Dinner: Same as lunch, sans the egg whites.
• I went to the Buddhist Centre to meditate as usual and refrained from eating and drinking anything afterwards.

Friday:

• Breakfast: Oats soaked in water, blueberries, banana, a teaspoon of peanut butter.
• Snack 1: Banana, almonds.
• Lunch: Pan-fried fish (with salt, oregano and a little bit of olive oil), steamed Dutch carrots, boiled potatotes, boiled broad beans, baby spinach.
• Snack 2: 2 nectarines, almonds.
• Dinner (already decided): My sister is coming to my apartment and we will prepare my mom’s roasted chicken (with soy sauce, garlic and butter) plus Peruvian processed mashed potatoes (so much yummier than real Australian mashed potatoes), boiled broad beans and baby spinach.

This was this week’s menu. The weekend, as usual, is a total mistery so far, but I’ll make sure my choices are stomach-friendly.

* Very conveniently, there’s a juice stand in Wynyard train station, a few meters away from my office. I’ll be writing about it in a near future.

Hello again, gastritis

I’m with gastritis again. It’s about the second of third time I get it since May last year, when we arrived here. The first time was about one or two weeks after we arrived. I couldn’t find a job and that was driving me nuts. I know it sounds like I’m a big maniac (which is not false), but I came here having being interviewed on the phone by an agent, and had an interview with the employer the day after landing. I really wanted that job but when I didn’t get it and didn’t receive many calls after sending resumes to lots of ads, of course I freaked out. Fortunately, that gastritis episode did not last long. I recall another episode some months ago, but it was very mild. This time is almost as bad as when I was back in Lima with a huge load of stress on my back.

I’m very, very stressed right now, and the fact that I’m typing part of this blog in my office is a sign that the job’s not the problem. I’ve got problems at home. Of course, my husband does not acknowledge them and says that we’re a pretty normal couple, but I don’t like the status of my relationship. Details aside, that’s what is making gastric acids burn my stomach linings, and the pain in my lower back become more acute day after day.

Last Friday I planned this week’s menu, as usual. As I didn’t see gastritis coming, on Sunday I packed this Roasted Squash Salad from Taste Buddies for Monday lunch. Under normal circumstances that would have been lovely, but it was not. The salad contained cherry tomatoes (one of the biggest stomach upsetters), plus vinegar (acid) and avocado (fat). The symptoms, got worse and worse throughout the day, but I still went to the gym and worked out.

I could only do an upper body set of exercises (from John Berardi’s The Metabolism Advantage), because my physiotherapist asked me to stop all lower body training this week to give my knee a rest. Oh yes, I forgot to mention that on top of the gastritis I have chronic pain on my left knee (that has been there on and off for the last 5 years) and I’m doing some (really expensive) therapy to alleviate it.

Back to the gastritis, when I got back home I pureed the pumpkin and asparagus, which were supposed to be in my dinner salad, with some vegetable stock and had a soup for dinner, along with some cous cous. I’ve had to change a bit the menu for this week and I’m avoiding dairy, tea, apples, and the occasional cup of coffee, which are part of my common repertoire. I have a jar of sweet and sour pickled cabbage in my fridge waiting for my with a sad look in its face. And half a bottle of wine, fortunately closed with a wine saver, also waiting to be consumed.

Hopefully it will be over in a couple of days. Fingers crossed, because I have plans for the weekend.