cooking my way home: a new meaning for comfort food

A few nights ago, my husband George and I enjoyed an succulent grilled ribeye steak, oven roasted potatoes and sauteed spinach with sun-dried tomatoes and garlic, and of course, a few glasses of Shiraz. I tried to upload a picture, but the Omani internet service is having none of it.

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For us expats, food can be a taste of home. Some countries may offer a wide and exciting variety of cuisines, but certainly not Oman. Omani food is chicken, or fish, and rice. They do make different flavors of rice though, to mix it up. So that's exciting. For my demanding international palette, however, even endless variations of chicken and rice just doesn't cut it. Even in Muscat, the international options are extremely expensive and usually not all that great, particularly if you are used to having the choices offered by Chicago or another cosmopolitan environment. The Mexican food isn't very good here, the Thai is better everywhere else I've been, the Indian is good, but all the same: Today....we have chicken masala, chicken masala, chicken masala, and fish masala.

So I cook my way all over the world, which to me, feels like home. It saves my sanity and makes me feel like I belong in my own house here. Some of my favorites that I make weekly are homemade pizza, grilling (anything! Last week it was shrimp and vegetable kabobs), and pasta and a good thick sauce with lots of vegetables, red wine and herbs. Every time I make a ginger and lemon salad dressing, or hear a steak sizzling on our grill, or eat a big slice of whole wheat bread fresh from my oven, I feel like I'm home. It takes away some of the culture shock of being exposed for month on end with no break to a dramatically different culture.

So cook your way home. Or if cooking isn't your thing, don't feel bad about splurging on the hugely inflated items at the store that make you feel a little better. I might be an obsessive cooker, but my husband always has to have chips and salsa, tortillas and refried beans, German wheat beer, massive amounts of peanut butter, and bratwursts (which is insanely expensive because you aren't supposed to eat pork here). I still have to buy my essentials as well: balsamic vinegar, juicy raisins (which means buying SunMaid raisin for $9 a box), sun-dried tomatoes, Bonne Maman cherry jam, dark chocolate, wheat germ, Twinnings tea and Bailey's Irish Cream. At first I felt bad about spending so much on food here, when I could live for almost no money at all on rice, chicken and lentils, but I don't feel bad anymore. It just, though it may seem trite, makes me feel better.