Adriana and I love to cook together, but this time she gets sole credit for this intoxicating Moroccan Spice Rub and the juicy roast she marinaded it with.
Pork Roast with Moroccan Spice Rub
From the moment she waved the deep brick brown paste under my nose when Leandro and I arrived at her home for a sleepover, I was hooked and dabbing the sides of my mouth. And not because it looked a lot like hashish, because of course I do not know what a hunk of hashish looks like, do I? Continue reading
I had a butternut squash from way back in the fall and a desire for real arroz con habichuelas (Puerto Rican pink beans and rice), which may seem not to have anything to do with butternut squash soup, but after I boiled the squash, I realized I had about twice as much as I needed!
Waste not want not is my motto (as much by necessity as by design), so I thought it would be nice to simmer up a warm soup.
A bit of home-made sofrito (substitutes included in recipe!)
Thus, this ever so simple butternut squash soup, vegan (unless you swirl in some yogurt or sour cream at the end), and rich without being fatty. I used some sofrito I made the other day, but give instructions for store-bought or home-made substitutes.
squash and seasonings simmering
Easy Butternut Squash Soup
2 Cups butternut squash, peeled and boiled until soft in vegetable broth. RESERVE broth
1 tsp olive oil
2 Tbs sofrito (homemade or Goya. May be substituted with a tablespoon of finely minced onion and a tablespoon of finely minced green cooking pepper like cubanelle, in which case you need to saute a bit longer until tender)
2 cloves garlic, minced
½ tsp mild curry powder
½ tsp cumin
½ tsp salt
Fresh cracked black pepper
(dab of pesto, hot sauce or –if you aren’t vegan – yogurt or sour cream to finish, optional)
In a medium soup pot, heat oil at high until fragrant. Lower to medium, add sofrito and garlic and sauté until fragrant and getting dry. Add curry powder and cumin and toast until slightly fragrant. Add broth and squash, bring to a boil, then simmer for 15-20 minutes until very, very soft. Use an immersion blender or food processor or blender to liquefy. Season to taste and serve with optional toppings.
Arroz con habichuelas (click for basic recipe!)
Or click for another MORE basic recipe!
It is awards season…not just the Oscars, but some blogger awards that some of my favorite bloggers were kind enough to nominate me for! I don’t usually do these, because they take up a lot of time and I am flat-out trying to get all the things in my life done! But it is Oscar night and I have some Hollywood and award-related stuff about myself to tell, plus I want to express my heartfelt appreciation (and a link) to Becoming Madame for the Beautiful Blogger Award. She tells her own story best…
“An inside look into a real life in the City of Lights and Love. I’m an American & Canadian turned Madame who lives in the heart of Paris. Come along as I open up the world of the French from the inside – les marchés, Soldes, boulangeries, cafés… Through my posts & videos experience what life is like as a resident of Paris.”
Merci beaucoup, Madame!
The other award comes with a special announcement: Miss Marzipan has just had a baby! Before she did, she nominated me for The Wonderful Team Member Readership Award (below). She’s a DIY girl with loads of great clips for de-cluttering, so pay her a visit, wish her congratulations, and wish her luck keeping organized with a new little one!
Thanks to Miss Marzipan!
The awards ask you to tell everyone seven new things about yourself and then nominate some other bloggers who should say thanks to me, link back, and carry on the awards to their favorite bloggers. I’ll mention the bloggers first, then tell you some movie/awards-related things about myself! Named bloggers…feel free to take the award of your choice…or both!
These folks are new to me and I have not nominated them before. Well, maybe I have and have forgotten! Please don’t feel slighted if I haven’t mentioned you…in fact, send me a message and I will, especially if we are frequent visitors to one another’s blogs. I hesitate to add more, because I know many of you do not or have stopped accepting awards. We aim to please.
Cristian Mihai – musings
Cloud of Lace (fashion!)
Award and Movie Related Stuff About Me (I had to dig deep for this stuff!):
1. Way in the past I won the Overseas Press Club Award for coverage of Hurricane Hortense with The San Juan Star in Puerto Rico. In the same year my team of three reporters won the Puerto Rico Press Association Award for investigative reporting for our work to uncover abuses in the Worker’s Compensation system
2. I went to high school with much of the Baldwin clan: actors William and Stephen, and their sister, Jane. I went to college, for a brief time, with actresses Robin Givens, Holly Robinson, and Lauren Holly.
3. Among the Oscar winners I have interviewed are Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks.
4. I once had dinner with Alexander Payne, Oscar-winning screenwriter/director of Sideways and The Descendants. He had just won the Golden Globe for Sideways and would win the Oscar the following week.
5. I participated in a film on the life of photographer and artist Jack Delano. I have never seen the film.
6. My favorite movies are (incomplete and moderately accurate list): The Incredibles, Amelie, Sideways, Motorcycle Diaries; Babette’s Feast (of course), and I can’t remember any others.
7. I have not seen a single Oscar-nominated film this year.
Enjoy the Oscars everyone!
Let’s face it, if you are eating a salad (again) and your son is across the table chowing down on spinach and cheese ravioli coated in real parmigiano and a schmutz of butter…you are secretly hoping he doesn’t finish so you can have just a little, just a taste…
Marinating in oil and lemon
So I am very much looking for more dishes we can eat together and that don’t tempt me into carbohydrate sin while I am trying to work on those troglodytes, I mean, triglycerides that my doctor says I need to reduce. And really, I want to reduce the number of dishes I prepare and have to wash up after! Continue reading
As we get into the planting season, several people have asked me where I get my seeds. The answer is, from several sources (not all organic, as it happens, with my Puerto Rican herbs and peppers): the local garden supply stores like Hicks or Starkie Brothers, giveaways at foodie events, friends who send, seeds I’ve saved from our own garden or from the C.S.A. box.
Click on the radishes for Botanical Interests.
Click here for High Mowing Seeds. Click here for Johnny’s Seeds.
So, I’m putting it out there…what are your most reliable and/or beloved seed sources and why? Please click on Comments at the bottom of the post to add your spoonful of wisdom.
And the poll (which refuses to be centered!)
Be Aggressive…B.E. Aggressive…B.E. A.G.G.R.E.S.S.I.V.E.! Be Aggressive! Yeah!
That old football cheerleader chant is my new mantra when it comes to…of all things…gardening.
Last year, after years of container herb gardening and volunteering at the C.S.A. farms we have been members of, my dad and his buddy built some raised beds in our backyard and we all got to work growing our own.
We learned perhaps more than we ate, so there are many helpful links for starting gardens in this post — including newspaper seed starting cups — click for more!! Continue reading
While I work on other posts that help you make real food, please take a few minutes (it is long, but riveting) to read this New York Times article how the junk food industry formulates their products! Illuminating, scary, weird science, indeed! Just click on the header, or the picture and you should get there.
It’s a sad irony that I finally have perfected Latin white rice (thanks to my dad’s technique) and the doctor tells me that I have to reduce carbs for my triglycerides or somesuch! Terrible.
But Leandro received no such warning, so he gets to enjoy my now fantastic rice with any number of dishes.
Here’s franks and beans with an ever-so-slightly Latin flavor. Goya’s Latin-style tomato sauce and cilantro and culantro put a little spring in the step of this easy, kid-friendly dish. My parents used to make us something similar when we were kids, so it was fun to try and recreate them. They have very little in common with the sweet gooey canned Franks and Beans you find. This are actually grown-up worthy too!
Beans and Franks
I use Applegate Farms Organic Beef Hotdogs. I prefer organic meats as a rule. These also don’t use synthetic nitrites, but it isn’t clear from what I have read that natural nitrites are any better than synthetic. They are more expensive than your standard supermarket dogs, but I feel that they are worth it.
Leandro loves these, and they reheat very well for his lunch thermos the next day. (In the morning, when I am boiling water for tea, I boil extra to pour in the Thermos to warm it up. Then I dump the water, put in the hot food, and it is still warm a few hours later for his lunch ).
Frankenbeanie!
Frankenbeans
1 Tbs extra virgin olive oil
½ Cup onion, minced
1 tsp garlic, chopped
3 hot dogs, sliced into ½ inch rounds
1 Tbs fresh cilantro chopped
1 tsp fresh culantro (recao; sawtooth coriander) or other green herb of your choice, chopped, optional
8 oz can Goya Latin Style Tomato Sauce
2 pinches salt
2 pinches hot red pepper flakes
½ tsp ketchup
1 Cup pink beans (soaked or from a can)
In a large skillet, heat oil on medium high and add onions, Stir to coat, lower heat, and cook for 2-3 minutes, then add garlic and cook an additional minute or two, until the house smells good and the vegetables are wilted. Add hot dogs and stir, then add cilantro and culantro or other herbs. Cook for another 2-3 minutes, then add tomato sauce, salt, red pepper, and ketchup to taste. Add beans. You will probably want to add about ¼ Cup water to thin. Simmer for 10 minutes r more and serve with Latin-style white rice.
I really don’t want to have to get involved. I don’t want to be That Mom. I leave others to let their kids eat the cafeteria food (uncrustables, whatever they are; tacos; chicken nuggets; whatever) and kill myself to make sure my kid gets home-cooked food or whole-grain/natural/unprocessed/organic three meals a day. Most of the time.
Read the label…what? You can’t understand it? Me neither. That’s why I don’t buy it!
On occasion, he has sweets (a lot of them we bake together), we hit Friendly’s, or All-American Burger. He has pizza once a week. At least!
I know I am something of a maniac, but I am not unreasonable. And I know people don’t always want to hear it, so I mind my own business, blog, and feed my kid my way. As a single parent who works full time, I don’t have time to try to change school policy, and I don’t have the energy to give a rat’s ass if everyone else wants to stuff their kid with junk. I am tired enough already.
Another view. I am sputtering in disbelief.
But the garbage my son came home with in his backpack today has me bouncing off the bloody walls in a sugar rush of the enraged kind. Continue reading
Been waiting so long to do it that I almost ran out of real New York Maple Syrup to do it with (Sugar Brook Maple Farms, Kerhonkson, NY)!
Maple Snow
But a few scoops of fresh snow(center cut) and some drizzles of maple syrup later, Leandro and the neighbors had real ices, Little House on the Prairie style…or in more modern parlance Maple Nemo Sno-Cones…..
Are postal workers wishing that no-delivery Saturdays had started now, rather than August?
Stay warm and cozy folks.
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It was another summer Friday in the neighborhood and that called for another festive cocktail. Riding high on the success of last session’s passionfruit mojitos, I decided to make mango mojitos. The drink itself followed much the same construction, but the mango was decidedly sweeter than the passionfruit, so I decided that it needed a […]
Summer evenings in the neighborhood can be wonderful. Occasionally on a Friday some of us neighbors bring out folding chairs and sit together in one front yard for a bit of happy hour while the kids go mental on someone else’s lawn. It’s pretty much BYO, but we do mix up a pitcher of experimental […]
We spent the better part of last summer in Puerto Rico, and among the tasty things that my little guy fell in love with was tembleque, a jiggly (temblar means to tremble) dessert that falls somewhere between pudding and flan. I promised him we’d make it back in New York, and this weekend, for a […]
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There are a number of land crab species skittering about Caribbean coastlines. Some are edible and the one we eat most here in Puerto Rico (although I am told they mostly are imported from Venezuela these days) is Cardisoma guanhumi which we call juey and — if you are English-speaking — you might call the […]
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