Bacalao

Get a half-pound dried salt cod at your local fish market. Soak it in water for like two days, changing out the water every so often.

Slice a bunch of potatoes and boil them until they're almost ready to eat. Set aside.

Rinse, de-skin, debone, chop up, and rinse the fish again. Dry with paper towels and coat with flour (plastic bag technique recommended). Brown the fish in that same pot. Set aside.

In that very same pot again, fry up sliced onions, garlic, canned tomatoes, tomato puree, lots of olives, lots of oil, oregano, hot pepper. No need to add more salt! Throw in the potatoes and the fish and cook for awhile longer. Add fresh parsley if you have it.

Serve with good bread and cheap Iberian red wine.

Play Doh

1 cup of flour, 1 cup of water, 1/2 cup of salt, 2t. of cream of tartar, 2T of cooking oil. Mix all ingredients in a pan, cook and stir until thickened over low heat. Then remove from heat and as soon as it cools off enough, knead until it is smooth. If you want to add color, add the food color when all the other ingredients are mixed together.

Tofu Stir Fry

Saute onion, garlic, tofu, zucchini, bell pepper, etc.

Steam some chopped sweet potato and add to saute pan once tender.

Add some sugar-snap peas, and some spices (ginger, coriander, tumeric, cayenne, etc)

Serve over brown rice with toasted walnuts sprinkled on top.

Potato Bean Soup

This is a quick delicious soup. We just made it from what we had lying around and it turned out so well we decided to write it down. It goes without saying that you can substitute as you see fit.

Saute a sliced leek in olive oil. Add 3 potatoes chopped, 3 carrots chopped, 3-4 cloves of garlic chopped, and 1 zucchini chopped. Saute briefly and then add stock (we used water and a bouillon cube because they don't sell stock in Europe). Add enough to cover veggies and then some. Add more later as necessary. Add two cans of beans (we did white beans and kidney beans) and 1+ can of diced tomatoes. Cook until veggies are tender. Sprinkle in some spices (I used lots of dried basil, some tumeric, and a little paprika). Using a potato masher, mash around the soup a bit so it gets a little thicker. Add a couple handfuls chopped Italian parsley. Serve with fresh grated parmesan on top.

Great with a salad, bread, and good cheese! Also a nice red wine (but that's too hard to come by in Norway)