adjective: made at home, rather than in a store or factory


That definition really made me wanna say, “Duh!!!!”

Anyway, life in the jungle doesn’t quite offer the same amenities as life in a mid-sized college town with a population of approximately 181, 000 people (this would be Tally of course).  Therefore, I am often forced to learn the homemade side of life.

For instance, here we make salsa from scratch.  Thankfully, I can still buy tortilla chips at the grocery store. However, there are days when *gasp* they don’t have any on the shelves. You know, kind of like it is when the weatherman predicts a blizzard and everyone rushes to the grocery store to buy bread. The good news is it’s a healthy snack. The bad news…my family has sworn off grocery store salsa.

I also make a lot of banana bread here.  The picture below should explain why. A Ecuatoriano friend gave us these bananas as a gift.  I tried my best to come up with ways to use them. (Think Bubba Gump and his shrimp list here.) Unfortunately, a family of four would have to eat bananas for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a week before we’d get through these.

The closest mega grocery store (i.e. Super Wal-Mart or Target type store) is 6 hours away. We get to visit maybe once every three months, so we stock up on necessities.  For us, that’s things like butter, bacon, grits, sour cream, brownie mix, muffin mix, and pancake syrup. Recently, however, we ran out of syrup. The breakfast club at my house cringed, so I took it upon myself to make my own syrup.  It turned out pretty good, but I soon discovered that it would be better over ice cream as caramel topping.

During our stay in Costa Rica, we had bread stores on every corner. They made bread fresh every day and it was cheap!  I mean super cheap, like two loaves of Italian bread for 80 cents!  Anyway, here in Ecuador, it is a little different. They only make individual sized bread: think cinnamon roll without all the good stuff.  No crusty french loaves or perfectly-baked Italian bread.  I again took matters into my own hands, scoured the internet (TGFI) and found a recipe for homemade Italian bread.  Then 3 1/2 hours later, our family enjoyed two loaves of Italian bread for dinner – as in we only had bread for dinner. Gimme a break – it took so long to make it!

Not much use for a can-opener around here.  Pretty much everything we eat is fresh at least when it comes to veggies.  Today I’m trying my hand at some fresh green beans.  If you were raised in the South, I’m sure you remember sitting on the front porch and snapping beans.  It’s a definitive sound and smell. Most probably remember sore fingers as well.  I remember doing anything I could to get out of snapping peas. It rarely worked, but now the knowledge sure comes in handy.  (God knows what He’s doing even in the small things:)

Now it’s time to share. What’s the best homemade (made from scratch) food that you’ve ever had?