Old Clothes and Old Favorites

So after my success with the Mole I wanted to try to make one of my long time favorite recipes growing up, Ropa Vieja (translates into Old clothes). Angela's Abuela would make it all the time when I was over. Its a type of Cuban beef stew and it surprisingly came out a lot better than I thought it would. What I love about it is that it is a double duty dish. It makes a good amount of left overs, (or at least when there is only two people eating it) so I can make it for the weekend and use the left over for burritos for the rest of the week. As a added bonus the day I was going to make the Ropa Vieja my deep fryer came in so I tried making Crab Rangoon since I have yet to find a place that makes them well out here. Luke had his bosses camera for the weekend so got a lot of nice pictures for me.




Tonight I tried to make my first poached egg. The first one went alright the next two not so well. I eventually got two good eggs and put those on top of some roasted asparagus wrapped in ham with toasted baguette. I loved it and surprisingly Luke did too. I spent this entire weekend doing homework except for the occasional Buddy ride so not much to share. This coming week I'm starting my job search up again to look for a different job that will work better with my school.
Wish me luck!

Quick update

I'd thought I'd do a quick update. Since my department moving into the main offices at work no one really knows who we are when we walk in. The higher ups thought it would be fun to do a "get to know the office international heritage pot luck lunch". So 5 people rotating every 20 minutes tomorrow will meet some other people from the other departments while eating a pot luck of food from everyone's heritage, or realistically what ever they pick up at the store. (I swear some times I feel like I'm in middle school at this job. "No gum! No cell phones! Are you going to bring valentines to pass out?") I felt a little cheated being the whitest person in 5 miles, but I realized this gave me an excuse to tweak my sweet tea fried chicken. I used cutlets this time and made nuggets so its easier to just eat with a toothpick. Also I tried a different batter too with different seasonings and a different process of coating. I don't have any pictures but they came out beautifully! I only marinated it for 1 day rather than 2 but I think the sweetness comes out just enough.


Here is the recipe I base it off of. I haven't gotten mine down precise yet. I'm not very good at measuring.

I wanted to make a spicy dip to go with it since I have a feeling a good amount of people will be thrown off by sweet fried chicken. And like my brother always says enough "put enough hot sauce on it and anything taste good" So I made a creamy chipotle dip. I'm really excited because you get both the sweet of the chicken and the heat of the dip is slow so you can taste the garlic and green peppers really well and the chipotle comes in with the final kick.

It was super easy too!
-3 chipotle with adobe sauce with a tablespoonish of sauce I don't really measure)
-2 green onions chopped up real nice
-minced garlic
-1/2cup may0
-1 cup sour cream
- and I wanted to put lime juice but I forgot it ha ha

Just puree the chipotle peppers and combine every thing else and let it set in the fridge for like an hour. Its super good and luckly I saved the mason jar's from Papa A's salsa because Luke seems to want to put this on everything now!

I have pages and pages of recipes I found in Joan's Magazines that I want to try so hopefully I'll post a lot more with pictures. Luke did take some pictures of me the past weekend that I think came out so fantastic. I'm really impressed.





Well that's it for now! I will post the pictures of my Ropa Vieja and crab rangoon this weekend.

-Ciao

Holy Mole! Luke's birthday!

So this weekend was Luke's 21st birthday. We had a nice relaxing weekend (or at least I did). Friday we had a few people over to the house and hung out on the roof then around midnight we walked down to the bar at the end of the street and met up with a more people. I snuck in like a champ. I felt a little bad we didn't have a lot of choices of places to go since I'm the last one to turn 21 and we come to find a lot of places out here are 21+. Apparantly everyone decided that for my birthday we're all going to Vegas since I'm the youngest. I'm fine with it if I'm not paying for anything (its my birthday after all :-D) After about an hour it was apparent that he needed to get into bed (thank Art and Tyler).
Around 4p.m. Sunday he finally woke up. I was a little happy about him sleeping in since I didn't have to make breakfast. :-) After making some calls to his family and a much needed bath he was awake in time for the special dinner I had planed for him. Cooking for Luke, I've learned, is both extremly easy but still very difficult. Its easy for the fact that anything you put in front of him (espcially spicy) he'll love it. It was so hard to figure out what his favorite meal is, even his mom was stumped! The only meal I've seen him get excited about was in Mexico he was insistant that I try Mole (Moe-lay). Something he always remebered his grandmother making. I found a Mexican market right near out house and it is my new favorite store. It has so many spices and meats and everything is a goot amount cheaper than at our usual store. I was nervous but luckly since he was a sleep all day if it didn't come out right I could scratch it and do something else with out him knowing. Everything came out fantastic! It was so good we wolfed it down with out getting a good picture of it. The best part about it is we have so much left over we have been eating Mole tacos every chance we get. Not to mention ice cream cake!
This weekend I'm going to try and make one of my favorite meals Ropa Vieja. Its a kind of Cuban stew that my friend Angela's Wella would always make. Hopefully we'll find my camera charger so I can get some of the pictures up here.

My White Christmas!

As I'm sure most of you know Luke surprised me with a ticket to spend Christmas in Ohio with him and his family since I was not able to come back to Florida. It was such an amazing time being with After taking the red eye out of LAX and missing my connecting flight I finally made it into Columbus last Tuesday. I forgot how tired and hungry I was when I saw all that it was snowing as we came in. I practically ran off the plane to baggage claim and I got to see Luke for the first time in too long. His parents house looked so cute covered in snow and the frozen pond out front.I made my sweet tea fried chicken for his family (thankfully it all came out right) and got to make my caramel apple cheese cake for Christmas.

There wasn't much snow when I first got there but Luke amused me and played around in it with me. There wasn't enough to go sledding but he pulled me around the yard. I went to my very first middle school reunion party up there too. To much disappointment there were no middle school games played. I was really hoping for a good round of M.A.S.H or at least a cootie catcher or two. We went to midnight mass which was the first time I've been in a Catholic church in a long time. Luckily during communion Brain had to sit back too so I was not alone. I wish we would have stayed for New Years because the end came too quick. It was so weird coming home to L.A. for the first time. When we sitting at the airport waiting to board I just kept thinking I was heading back to Florida. It was nice to be in warmer climates again, but of course the day after we get in it rained and got cold again. Its nice to be back but I can't wait to go somewhere else soon. I don't think I was made to be sitting too long.

3,000 miles and Almost 3 months later

Well, as most people have figured out by now I'm not longer in Florida! Its been almost three months in California and I've put off making the blog for enough time. With all of our worldly belongings carefully packed in my bulging '03 Suzuki Luke and I left my dad's house with adventure in our hearts and big dreams in our eyes.

We made our first stop in Tallahassee to see my dear friend Angela for the first time in forever and the last time for even longer. We made it to Baton Rouge late that night and after a lot of U-turns settled for the night at a motel 6. The next morning we went to Holiday in to try to sneak into their free breakfast but found out for some reason they stop serving it at 9.

However, we did make it in time to see the box spring we optimistically over packed in the beginning strapped underneath our friends moving truck. For the rest of the trip I had a constant fear in the back of my mind that I would start seeing pieces of the bed and all my clothing on the side of the road. Heading into Texas we decided to take a detour down to Weslaco to see Luke's Godparents. The next morning, Jannie took us into Mexico which was only a 5 mins drive. We explored the little border town and bought a few hammocks and had lunch. (It was Luke's first time to Mexico.)

It was nice to break up all the driving with a day to relax and to have a clean bed to sleep in. We loaded up on supplies and head back out. We stoped one more time in Phenoix to sleep before we got to LA. We spent a couple days on the Couch of a friend before finding out apartment.

All in all it was a nice trip (so nice I hope to never have to do it again for a long long time) I'll put up more pictures once I get the hang of this blog. I wanted to start this blog so I could try and recap all of the things I've been doing out in California as well as all the new recipies I've been working on. I'll try to update regularly but for now I'm off to make Sandwiches! :-)