Let’s have a braai!

First, out here, we do not barbeque or grill, we braai. Today we had a family over that we met at church on Sunday. They are from Missouri and have kids close in age to Tyson and Jori. In fact, their son is 1 day younger than Tyson! Darin and I decided that having a braai would make for a nice day. The grownups could sit outside and soak up some sun while the kids ran around and got dirty. The 2 little girls did spend some time inside playing with Polly Pockets and baby dolls, but the boys were mostly outside with sword and light saber, tracking down lizards.

We had a fun day with our new friends and hope to get together with them again soon. The kids all got along great and Darin and I enjoyed some adult conversation. I also found out there is an American Spar (grocery store chain) that sells Lucky Charms! However, at $9 a box I would probably only buy them as a birthday gift : )

Darin and I never did a lot of grilling in Michigan, so we don’t really have any go-to recipes. I had emailed some friends a couple days ago asking for their best chicken recipes and we found a winner. So simple, yet so delish! Thank you Michelle B. for your contribution.

Chicken Marinade

1 part soy sauce to 2 parts Italian dressing

That’s it. Michelle knows that I am cooking illiterate, so in parentheses she included ½ cup soy sauce to 1 cup Italian dressing. Don’t you love it when friends just really know you and give you enough instructions to make sure you’ll succeed? I sure do.

We have tried several ways of cooking potatoes over fire since we arrived. They have been good, but seemed to need a little something more. Just yesterday I got a card in the mail from my friend Sarah DB and in the card was a little stack of recipes, which is something I would have never thought to send to a friend. She is smart like that. One of the recipes was for oven roasted potatoes, so I emailed Sarah to see if she thought we could braai them. She said yes, so today we enjoyed some delicious potatoes, courtesy of my college roomie.

Oven Roasted Potatoes

12 medium potatoes peeled and cubed, ¼ cup Parmesan cheese, 2 tsp salt, 1 tsp garlic powder, 1 tsp paprika, ½ tsp pepper, 1/3 cup vegetable oil.

Place potatoes in 2 large Ziploc bags. Combine cheese and seasoning; add to potatoes and shake to coat. Pour oil onto 2 15x10 pans, pour potatoes (1/2 in each pan). Bake uncovered at 375 for 40-50 minutes, flipping once during baking.

We had 10 small potatoes and no garlic powder. We had garlic salt and garlic, so I grated 3 cloves of garlic on the cheese grater and used 1 tsp regular salt and 1 tsp garlic salt instead. I put the cubed potatoes in a large bowl, then dumped all the seasonings (which I’d mixed) over them and stirred it all up. Then I dumped the oil in. We had some sautéed onion in the fridge, so I dumped that in too. Then I divided the potatoes into 4 foil packets and Darin put them on the braai. Next time I think I’d add the oil to each individual packet because the last packet ended up having way more oil and seasonings in it than the first 2 packets had!

After our super tasty lunch, which also included hot dogs, boerwors (sausage), chips and fresh fruit, we went on a game drive. The animals were not good to us today. We did see several herds of impala and blesbok as well as several ostrich and warthog. That was it. I guess we’ve just gotten spoiled seeing a little more variety so it was kind of a letdown. Our friends stayed for a while longer and then we said goodbye. Now the kids are having baths and we are heating up some chicken noodle casserole that I made yesterday. Nice to have dinner all ready to go!