Ingredient: olive oil

Afghan Red Bean Chili

Our friend “Muzzy” made us this recipe so many years ago. It is an easy vegetarian dish that is great with spaghetti.

Pita Bread

Even though this bread does not always puff up or pull apart into a pocket, it is still a very good flat bread.

The longer the dough has to sit in the fridge, the better it tastes. It can be made up to three days ahead, but it is also good if you are making it last minute.

Chicken Pot Pie Soup

This is basically the inside of a pot pie. Instead of a crust, either serve with fresh biscuits or, like Audrey recommended, cheese crackers! While this is good the first day, leftovers for lunch was even better.

Pasta Fagioli

There are so many different ways to make this bean and pasta soup. This is just a rough guideline.

Aunt Bonnie’s (Reble) 12 Grain/Seed Bread

We asked Aunt Bonnie for a good bread recipe when we were in Colorado. She was super sweet and gave us this recipe plus all the ingredients that we needed to make it. While Aunt Bonnie found all the ingredients and Adrian ground everything, we enjoyed spending the afternoon just chatting and being able to be with Aunt Bonnie and Uncle Bill. We then walked back “home” to enjoy the rest of our lazy Sunday.

Samosas

This was a favorite treat at all church potlucks! While this is very close to what I remember from Swaziland, I would love to be able to compare it and see how close we really are.

If you do not like spice, cut the spices in half for your first batch. These are not hot, but they are spicy.

Mississippi Pot Roast

I am not sure why this is called “Mississippi” pot roast, but it is very good. A friend from work told Allan about it and we decided to try it. We are glad that we did, it is an easy dinner idea for after church or company

Our roast was not completely defrosted, so we turned the crock pot on high for a few hours and then reduced the heat to low for the rest of the time. It still came out wonderfully.

While this would be good with rice or potatoes, we served it with farro and cauliflower rice and sugar snap peas. For those who like mushrooms, they are a great addition also.

Greek Dolmades with Avgolemono Sauce

When the kids were younger, we wanted to introduce them to recipes from around the globe. Allan had a friend from work who shared her recipe that she said was handed down for a few generations. Janet mentioned her family made these for Christmas Eve every year.

We have tried these once or twice and they were good. Last year we could not find jarred grape leaves at any store (this year we ordered early online). We also bought the ground lamb when we found it at the store and froze it so we knew we had it. Finding those ingredients was the hardest part of the recipe!

The recipe we were given uses lamb, but many online recipes use beef. So feel free to use either.

When we made these in 2012, Megan they they were wonderful! The rest of us enjoyed them also, but debated if they were too lemony or not.