Djiboutilicious | Rachel Pieh Jones

(Anyone who pre-orders the Kindle book and sends me a copy of your receipt will receive a free e-copy of Djiboutilicious. If you order the paperback and send your receipt, I will send you a free e-copy of your choice: either Djiboutilicious or The Expat Cookbook.)

Right now feels like a really weird time to talk about launching a cookbook that is geared toward those of us with international lifestyles. Who is traveling? Well, me, for one. We got home to Djibouti last week (after a 30-hour flight wearing masks and plastic face shields curtesy of Qatar Airlines and a 3-hour wait at the Djibouti airport for spit tests – negative).

The Expat Cookbook could come off as tone deaf. I understand that. I made it a long time ago, before Covid changed our lives. I could have sent it out into the world back in April but the world had broken and I just couldn’t do it. So I shelved it.

I decided to release it in October because maybe you know someone who will travel abroad or move abroad in the new year. Maybe you will be heading back to your host country and want some fresh ideas. Maybe you, like me, just have a lot of hope. I’m releasing this book in hope.

Hope that the planet finds healing. Hope that these recipes are delicious. Hope that this book will help you feel good about what you feed your family. Hope that what is in here will take a little pressure off decision-making and all the work of expat living. Those are small hopes compared to the first one. But we must keep going, making things, living our lives.

Recipes include things like overnight oats like 15 ways and about a million, okay more like a dozen, ways to spruce up pancakes or waffles. So many smoothies. So many ways to make popcorn more interesting. So many ideas for what you can bring on an airplane and how to pack it. Ideas for what to bring camping or hiking, what to eat at the office if you don’t have a fridge, what kind of food can you put in a box and mail to someone you love on the other side of the planet because we all know that food=love.

Anyone who pre-orders the Kindle book and sends me a copy of your receipt will receive a free e-copy of Djiboutilicious. If you order the paperback and send your receipt, I will send you a free e-copy of your choice: either Djiboutilicious or The Expat Cookbook.

Also, I’ve put the book on Payhip as well, this is a digital version only. The difference between Payhip and Amazon ordering is that I receive a much larger percentage of the price (rather than so much of it going to Amazon). If you order from Payhip, the same deal applies as above. Just let me know and I’ll send you Djiboutilicious.

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By Rachel Pieh Jones|September 16th, 2020|Categories: Writing|Tags: book launch, cookbook, Djiboutilicious, expat cookbook|0 Comments

Pumpkin Honey Bread

This is one of my favorite fall recipes. We don’t carve pumpkins here and the majority of pumpkins are green, not orange. We also can’t find canned pumpkin. So, either in the market, at a vegetable stand, or in the grocery store, I buy pumpkin by the kilo. The vendor uses a machete-like knife to slice off the amount I want, then wraps it in plastic. I bring it home, chop it up some more and either roast it for hours and hours in the oven, or boil it on the stove top.

Personally, I don’t like flipping through a bunch of photos just to get to a recipe. I know what eggs look like. I know what piles of ingredients look like. I know what flour is. Get to it, please, is how I feel when I have to scroll through a ton of images, no matter how lovely they are. So, with no further ado, here is the recipe.

Pumpkin Honey Bread

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease two bread pans

3 cups fresh pumpkin puree (roasted or boiled and mashed and if you add more than 3 cups, no problem, I eyeball it)

4-5 eggs (in Djibouti our eggs are quite small so I go with 5, clean off the feathers)

1 cup oil (I like to use 1/2 cup oil and 1/2 cup applesauce)

2/3 cup water

2 2/3 cups sugar (I cut out the 2/3 cup, this isn’t cake, people. And I use some honey, too. So I tend to go 1 cup white sugar, 1/2 cup brown sugar, and 1/2 cup honey)

Mix these ingredients together until well blended. Mix:

3 1/2 cup flour (or 2 1/2 cup white flour, 1 cup wheat flour)

2 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg (you can buy fresh nutmegs in the market here and grind them at home. If you buy a lot, the vendors will giggle, it is viewed as an aphrodisiac)

1 tsp ground cloves

1/4 tsp ginger

Add the wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix just until blended. Pour into the pans.

Bake 45-50 minutes

Enjoy with butter, maple butter, plain, sprinkled with chopped walnuts, or toasted.

For more recipes like this (using locally available ingredients or modifications), check out the Djiboutilicious Cookbook.

*flickr

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By Rachel Pieh Jones|October 4th, 2017|Categories: Djibouti Life, Expat Thoughts|Tags: Djiboutilicious, pumpkin bread, recipes|0 Comments

Launching the Djiboutilicious E-Book

The Djiboutilicious Cookbook has been for sale now for five years. I’ve had several requests over the years for an e-book version and it is finally ready. It is available in MOBI (Kindle) and EPUB (pretty much everything else) and includes a clickable index and table of contents, both of which are essential for making e-cookbooks user-friendly.

How do you cook in a country with no jars of Ragu or packaged cake mixes? The first time someone handed me a tomato in Somaliland and asked me to make spaghetti sauce, I was at a total loss. Popcorn without a microwave? Were such wonders even possible?

They certainly are and hundreds of chefs have proven it, using Djiboutilicious.

And now, even if you live in a country without reliable postal service, you can get a copy of Djiboutilicious.

“Djiboutilicious has become my go to cookbook in Dji – and I know that I can find most of the ingredients here,” Paula P.

“Djiboutilicious is my go to book when I want to cook something I know is truly homemade. No, “add a can of this” or a “package of that.” All ingredients can usually be found in my kitchen or just around the corner at the dukaan (store),” Jess D.

Over 150 recipes

Lots of photos of Djibouti

A chapter with local recipes

Only uses locally available ingredients

Fresh, delicious meals, made from scratch.