Recipes ?

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Alby
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I tried to post this where it belonged but couldn't find a food related section? So here it goes...

Having a gf from the province has its own 'problems'. It's not her fault for not being exposed to more modern ways and ideas? So, I have to contend with that but then again she brings honesty with her and that's what I miss and look for. Mind you, she has a BS degree :)

One of these shortcomings is her lack of knowledge of how more sophisticated people do it. One of those things is her limited recipes!

I can literally count on my fingers the number of meals she knows. Calderata, Minodo, Curry and her luxury meal Tinolo!

Eggs and meat are very luxury items so knowing that I am a Kano, I must have it all the time. Plus of course, she's deprived of it!

My question is ...

Would a food book be helpful to her?

Or may be some names of meals that don't include RICE as a main staple can trigger it?

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jon1
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One of my first attempts with my wife was to get more iron in her diet (especially leafy green vegetables). I was able to get her to try a Ceasar salad with grilled chicken on it, only after I explained that there were sardines in the dressing. Once she tasted it her eyes lit up. She started to trust me on trying different things. You just have to get her to open her mind to that. The next dish I introduced her to was real Italian spaghetti (with hot link sausages in it), not the sweet filipino spaghetti. She liked that immediately and now pasta is one of her staples. If she can't have rice, pasta is good enough for her. 

 

The wife's culinary skills have skyrocketed over the last 3 years and now she makes a variety of great western foods (baked salmon, 8 or 9 different pastas, great seafood dishes). She also enjoys vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus and even spinach.

 

Get her to watch the movie "Chef". It is a great movie and you will be starving after watching some of the stuff prepared (great cuban meals, etc.). After watching that my wife is now eagerly anticipating our trip to Florida just for the Cuban food alone. Another dish that we ran across when I was showing her what is on the Cuban menus in Florida, was Arroz Moro (black beans with rice). She recognized the recipe from her childhood days in Mindanao. So she was keen to make it. so we found a recipe on the internet and all of the ingredients were easily to be had locally. She made it spot on the first time and it is now a weekly staple. 

 

You also might want to try to take her out to some western style restaurants to expose her to more variety. Even if she orders something close to filipino, get her to taste whatever you order.

 

It's a gradual process and you will never ween her off the rice at least twice a day. All you can hope is to add some vegetables to the starchy protein diet only. Another thing that I had to address was the amount of salt being used when cooking. Along with dietary water intake. Kidney stones are common here due to those two factors alone. 

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jpbago
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The wife's culinary skills have skyrocketed over the last 3 years and now she makes a variety of great western foods (baked salmon, 8 or 9 different pastas, great seafood dishes). She also enjoys vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus and even spinach.

 

Yes, Jon1. That is how you do it. In Canada, my wife will go 2 to 3 weeks with no rice. She finds YouTube good for recipes of new dishes and how to do it. I got them to cut back on the salt when I first came here.

Arroz Moro is called Christianos y Moros in Cuba (white and black). I still can't believe the amount of plain cold white rice that they eat here 3 times a day. Even if they would add some sauteed onions, garlic, and peppers, it would taste better.

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robert k
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Something else you might try is if you can't take the rice out of the girl, put some Cajun in the rice. Using a New Orleans cookbook can extend the time before you get tired of rice by half a year or more.

 

Not ten minutes ago I was explaining one of my favorite batchelor one pan dishes, mushrooms rice and gravy, scrambled and drained hamburger, condensed cream of mushroom soup with milk simmer and add rice to suit and let sit, if it's too thick you can thin it with a little more milk. You can cut the time to make it by making the rice separately. 

 

I guess I was lucky, the people around me seemed to be willing to eat pancit as often as I felt like so it was not rice alone. We did eat greens, a good deal of which I didn't recognize and might have been whatever was growing by the side of the road for all I know but it tasted ok. :)

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Alby
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The thing is most of the recipes she knows are made from her province life. Things like Coconut, roots, seeds and whatever is cheap. So, meat was something to dream about or may be just drink its expired soup!

What surprises me is how happy she acts despite all that hardship or what I think it is!

I intend to provide the means and tools of the trade then with little advice I hope her mind will take off on its own!

Desperate people can do a lot of desperate things. Salt, sugar and rice are just a tiny part of that!

Thanks for the suggestions. I will try, hope and see!

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Methersgate
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It can be done. My ex wife "got into" cooking when we lived in China and she had little to do; when we moved to England she found herself in a part of Britain with excellent local food and she read her way through the "classics" - Elizabeth David, etc., to the point where she ran a business catering for dinner parties in other people's houses - she would turn up, sort out their kitchen, cook and serve a meal...

 

She is seriously good cook, and I am sure her new man appreciates it.

 

Now I have to start again... but Cor does show promise....

Edited by Methersgate
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Tukaram (Tim)
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Mine has learned a few recipes for me... but she won't eat anything new.  She has fish & rice, with the occasional chicken curry.  That is all she wants.  If we were to move to the US she would probably have to try some new food.  But here in the PI's she really does not have to.  And has no interest ha ha  :tiphat:

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jon1
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Another good bachelor recipe is to marinate chicken in Zesty Italian Dressing for a couple of hours. Then simmer in a pot on flame until cooked. It will be a zesty vinegar taste that falls off of the bone. It's similar to the filipino pork dish "lechon paksiw" http://panlasangpinoy.com/2010/03/07/lechon-paksiw-recipe/  I used to have the wife make me the lechon paksiw with any pigs that we bought roasted (mainly to protect me from roast pork that's been at room temp for who knows how long). 

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Old55
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Food network has videos and recipes.

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jon1
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Another good site is allrecipes.com

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