Friday, July 5, 2013

Its a bit different over here

So the other day I was chatting with my sister on Skype. Since she is the Betty Crocker of the family I was asking her for a recipe to make for our 4th of July party here in the Philippines. Granted the Philippines doesn't celebrate but there are a few Americans up here so we got together for a party.

Anyway, she started listing ideas...."go get a bag of mixed salad". Oops, sorry we don't have that here. 
Several ideas later we came up with taco dip. The ingredients sounded pretty feasible.

Sour cream, refried beans or black beans, ground beef, olives, taco seasoning, tomatoes, cheese and lettuce. I was pretty confident I could get everything since the Philippines does have an amazing amount of imported items.

We spent some time converting her measurements to grams and kilos.

4 stores later I had everything I needed. 
No refried beans so I got regular and decided to make my own. The beans soaked overnight, then I boiled them to pieces and mashed them up. 

The sour cream is a simple process, just buy some cream, add some vinegar and then stick it in the fridge to thicken. 

As everything came together I couldn't help but think how different this was from last year's 4th of July while I was home on furlough. One store, throw it together and voila!

It turned out great and tasted just like it did last year. As an added bonus we went and set off a few fireworks of our own. Life may be a bit different here, but its still pretty great. 

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