Last Night's Dinner

In yesterday's post I mentioned that I was trying to put together a nice birthday dinner for my husband.  Well, here's how that went... (pictures would have been ideal but someone is borrowing my camera so words will have to suffice)!

Let's start with the cake...DELICIOUS!  I used a recipe for cupcakes but put it in my 8 inch baking pan instead and turned it into a cake.  I was very pleased with the outcome.  It was a nice moist cake, very simple, using orange juice for a really nice flavor.  Then i just used a bit of butter, milk, vanilla, and lots of icing sugar to whip up a nice creamy icing.  Cake= success!

Okay, the fish... My dear husband like fish so much but we don't eat it often.  We are living in a land locked country and finding a nice fish fillet is a bit expensive, the hour drive to town to buy it.  This is the lesson I learned yesterday. :)  I decided that there might happen to be a place in the small town where we live that sells fish so I sent our house helper on a mission to find out.  I probably should have gone myself but I was feeling tired and didn't feel like walking all over town with my huge belly searching for fish...mistake number one.  Well, he was quite pleased with himself when he came home and was excited to show my what he found.  I took a little peek in the bag while he ran to get a pot and I saw tails so I knew what was coming.  Indeed, he found some fish, probably caught from nearby Lake Muhazi.  But they were not the nice little boneless fillet that was I hoping for.  Instead what I got was eight little fish dangling from a rope, tails, eyes, scales, the whole thing.  I smiled and thanked him for finding them and put them in the pot.  That pot sat in my kitchen for the next few hours smelling up the whole place while I contemplated how to cook them.  All I could imagine was a nice birthday dinner gone horribly wrong!  My husband came home and I showed him the fish and began to appoligize for my mistake explaining to him that I have no clue how to cook these fish.  He had a great attitude and reassured me that I could just clean them up good and put them in the oven.  So that is exactly what we did.  Our house helper cleaned them very nicely for me and I just put them in the oven on a pan with a little oil.  Oh, I did cut the tails off first at my husband's request.  I am not sure why that was important since I left the heads in tack :)  Anyway, long story short...they weren't too bad.  We just had to pick them apart and chew carefully to avoid bones but the meat (the little meat that there was) tasted pretty nice.  Oh and I learned that the popping sound coming from the oven while they were cooking was probably their eyes exploding :)  Fish= semi-success
I also threw together a simple sauce with carrots and tomatoes which turned out okay.
The realy success of the night was the rice!  I am very pleased to say that I finally found a way to make rice that is not sticky!!!!!!  I know that rice is so simple and people all over the world cook it, but I am horrified to admit that I struggle to make a nice pot of rice.  It is always either too sticky or I don't cook it long enough.  Last night, I made Spanish rice and it was amazing!  I think that I learned the key is to saute the rice and onion and pepper for a few minutes before adding your water.  It may have been the first time that I cooked rice that was fully cooked (not still crunchy), and not sticky at all.  Yea! Rice=success!
All in all my husband was happy and had a nice birthday so all is well here in the Ntiganzwa household :)