For the Love of Food

I love the sunny days of summer. The warm air, the garden parties, and the simple meals.

A sandwich is the epitome of a simple meal, and this one is loaded with very complex flavors.

Prior to the creation of this meal, I had been very shy with using – or better said, not using – my chipotle chili powder. Now that I have taken a leap of faith and experimented, I am inspired everywhere I go with new ways to use it. One of my favorite ways it in guacamole. It will take an guacamole recipe and add the wow factor to it. And, because of the cool nature of guacamole, the chipotle chili powder doesn’t come over spicy at all, but rather adds delicious smoky undertones…which enhances any meal that you wish you could bbq, but can’t.

The chicken breast also has chipotle chili powder liberally sprinkled on it. Traditionally, I use Tone’s Garlic & Herb that I brought back from the US with me, and this time around I complemented it with the chipotle chili powder.

Serve your sandwich with a side of chips and some homemade lemonade, and you can pretend (or not) that you are basking in the warm summer son of a few months ago. Continue Reading »

I have been craving spicy food for the past few weeks like crazy. What I wouldn’t give for some really Jamaican jerk chicken that leaves your mouth burning with happiness. But, I don’t have any plans to travel to the Caribbean right now, so when I was paired with Denise from Eat Laugh Love for this month’s Taste&Create, I was excited to see her recipe for Jalapeño Poppers!

Now, I have eaten quite a few jalapeño poppers over the past few years, but I have never eaten any filled with refried beans. I was really surprised how easy these were to make. I never could quite figure out how they could easily be de-seeded, but the trick is in the few minutes you microwave them to soften them! Oh, and if you leave a few too many seeds inside it will be very spicy.

I love making taco salads, so I thought this would be a nice change to my typical taco salad toppings. I also made a fabulous roasted tomato and tomatillo salsa that my brother-in-law taught me – but more about that next week. Continue Reading »

Yesterday I shared my Naturally Ella-inspired roasted spaghetti al pomodoro with you, and today I am going to share with you my favorite take on her recipe!

Originally, I had planned on making her exact recipe – in tostada form, but when I went to start cooking, I realized that my guys had eaten all the tortillas as a snack the day before (the baby starts to wiggle with excitement when he sees a tortilla!). So, I went to emergency plan B and made some rice instead, and decided to turn the meal into a taco salad.

And, wow, we were so blown away by the easy and delicious flavors of this recipe that we have made it 4 times in the last 2 weeks! It just amazes me that something as simple as roasting a tomato – as opposed to frying, grilling, or simply eating raw – can not only the change the flavor of that ingredient, but really transform an entire dish and take it to a whole new level.

This is definitely worth making for friends at dinner parties! Oh, and it re-heats very well in the microwave the next day – so this would make a great left-overs lunch for work! Continue Reading »

So, once you have made a delicious bowl of vegan refried black beans you need a way to use them. Tostadas are a great way to use refried beans in general and they’re quick and easy once the beans are made up. Continue Reading »

As I hinted at in the last post, my father-in-law visits cooking classes at his local Williams-Sonoma that they offer for free on Sundays to anyone who wishes to attend.

While were were visiting, my husband and I had the opportunity to visit a class with him in north Austin.

I found the set-up quite nice. They had a large angled mirror on the ceiling so that we could see what they were cooking. We were able to taste-test everything and it was quite tasty. I was, however, disappointed that they were using mainly ingredients that you could only buy in their stores – like their roasted version of Ro-Tel for $12!!!

My father-in-law mentioned that they have different cooks for the different classes, and that this lady is the one who plugs their products. Other cooks cook from scratch and give tips as to where the correct ingredients can be found at other locations around town.

So, what did we eat while we were there?? Continue Reading »

A while back I came across a recipe on Use Real Butter for some good-looking fish tacos. Now, I’m not a big fan of fried fish – or fried anything for that matter (too messy), but my mom never minds frying something for us. So, when I was visiting her on our trip to the US, we took the opportunity to make this together.

I can’t remember where I got the recipe for the white sauce that we used, or if i just made it up as I thought it should taste, but if you do a Google search for “fish taco white sauce recipe“, you’ll have plenty of recipes to choose from.

My mom ended up frying more fish than we could eat in tacos that day, so she froze the leftovers and said that they defrosted very nicely and remained crispy if you cooked them in the toaster oven. So, if you like to have fried fish, but don’t like to fry all the time, it would be a good idea to make a large batch of these and freeze them for later use. Continue Reading »

At the end of last month I participated in Foodbuzz’s 24,24,24 event. Among many other dishes, we grilled a whole suckling pig. Having some meat left over, I was sent home with some leftovers. So, I took the opportunity to make some bbq pulled pork that my husband had been begging me to make for a while.

I didn’t follow a recipe, I just put in the ingredients that I felt would be right. Luckily, I measured everything out and wrote it all down so that I could share with you.

I also made a less traditional addition to the pulled pork by adding a can of some Heinz Baked Beans in tomato sauce that we had bought to try. They added some nice substance to the meat and next time I will double the amount of beans in the recipe. And, next time I will also just use navy beans instead of baked beans in tomato sauce. I found that the baked beans sauce didn’t add (or take away) from the recipe. So, since baked beans are more expensive than plain old navy beans, I will go with the cheaper alternative.

I served these over homemade buttermilk biscuits and with steamed corn. However, because bbq pulled pork is gooey and messy we ate it with a fork a nice and cut the biscuit into it as well. It was absolutely delicious! Continue Reading »

Right before our trip to the US we canned a whole bunch of tomatoes from our garden (a post about that will follow eventually). We had a few ingredients left over that we needed to preserve since everyone else we knew was also going on vacation at the same time.

We decided to make a sort of pico de gallo. Now that it has a had a few weeks to set and soak in the flavors, we opened a jar to have with some breakfast tacos.

It was lacking in flavor. The lemon juice flavor was gone and it needs much more salt to taste. Everything also should have been diced instead of chopped. What can I say…after a whole day of canning, we were lazy.

What I did end up making was a great pre-salsa. This would be the great foundations of a salsa. I would pulse this in the food processor a few times. Then, just add some more tomato, cilantro, lime juice, salt, and some seasonings. Continue Reading »

The other day I came across a really really good-looking recipe for “San Marzano “Quick” Salsa” on Bucky’s Barbecue and Bread blog. And, just by looking at the photos, I knew it would not only be a fantastic salsa, but the salsa that I have been trying to reproduce for the past 5 years.

I changed-up the recipe a bit to fit the ingredients that are available to me here in Germany. This salsa is not only really easy to make, but tastes just like my favorite Chili’s salsa that are served with Chili’s “BOTTOMLESS TOSTADA CHIPS™”. Most of the people who tried this salsa last weekend were surprised that I had not used fresh, but rather, canned tomatoes. Continue Reading »

Well, I am quite pleased to say that our potluck was a huge success.  Not only did we had over 30 people show up for dinner, but we had many people show-up in the morning to help with our garden Spring Cleaning event.  And, after many hours of hard work in the garden and in front of the grill, we were all ready to sit down and share a nice large meal together.

The buffet was full and everything was picked away to the last piece!  The chocolate-coated fruit was a huge hit with the children and it was gone within minutes!

The whole event was such a great success and made all our gardeners so happy that they asked what we had to do to have another event like this.  I got so many compliments on organizing the event and thanks to our “sponsor” – Foodbuzz – for making this possible.  So…we are thinking and hopefully next month we will come-up with something new and exciting for Foodbuzz 24,24,24 again.

See recipes bellow: Continue Reading »