Ideas for a Cinco de Mayo Party or When You Just Want Some Mexican Food
If you are planning to have a Cinco de Mayo party or just want ideas for making Mexican food at home, here are some of our favorites.
Roasted Green Tomatillo Salsa Read more
Avocado Smoothie with Soy Milk
Our weekday schedule is busy like any other family, and some days I feel like I meet myself coming and going with no opportunity to sit down and have a proper breakfast or lunch. So I try to keep easy healthy foods on hand such as fresh fruit and vegetables, things I can grab quickly and nosh on or turn in smoothies. Smoothies are a standing favorite for our family, an easy way to eat healthy and help us feel like we are treating ourselves. The boys’ favorite smoothie is mango, and avocado is one of my favorites, right up there with strawberry and blueberry.
My smoothie is a variation on the south east Asian avocado shake made with sweetened condensed milk, an addictive concoction. For an everyday smoothie I want something less sweet, so I use vanilla soy milk and skip the sugar, though you could add some during the blending if preferred. The texture is thick and rich and filling, and one smoothie will keep me going all morning. Read more
Roasted Tomatillo Jalapeno Salsa with Avocado
September 30, 2008 by Andrea
Filed under Appetizers, Condiments, Mexican, Salsas & Dips
Creamy with a kick is what comes to mind when I dip tortillas or lavash into this salsa.
The September Daring Bakers challenge required the members to make both lavash and a dip or other condiment to serve with it, and considering our abundance of tomatillos and jalapeños coupled with my utter devotion to avocados, the choice was an easy one. I wanted to make it a little spicier than the previous version to help balance the rich creaminess of the avocado, so we roasted four of our homegrown jalapeños with the intent that we could use them all if necessary, but three seemed to be just right.
It comes together pretty quickly, and I had a batch ready in time for appetizers on a week night. Michael enjoyed it so much he had it for breakfast the next morning, spread all over an omelet and topped with mixed cheeses.
This recipe makes about four cups of salsa.
Grilled Fish Tacos with Mango-Avocado Salsa
May 6, 2008 by Andrea
Filed under Main Course, Mexican, Salsas & Dips, Seafood
I wish I could come home after picking up the kids from school and have time to cook a nice meal. I long for a calm, zen-like cooking experience each day, but instead I find myself chasing after my sons who prefer to run amok, trying to keep them from raiding the refrigerator and the pantry even though I fed them a snack as soon as we got home. We had to put locks on to keep the Three Amigos from eating us out of house and home. Yesterday’s meal was supposed to happen on Monday, but the events of the day and the constant distractions left me disorganized and frustrated at dinner time and I pulled out some leftover pasta sauce and boiled some spaghetti. Now there’s nothing wrong with that, and in fact spaghetti with tomato sauce and/or meatballs is Michael’s favorite meal, but I had a grilling recipe up my sleeve for Cinco de Mayo which I had to grudgingly postpone.
I thought I could start some of the prep for dinner on Tuesday morning, but Monday night we remembered Top Gun, our three-year-old, had a project due for school the next day and I needed to finish some prep work on that before we could do it in the morning. So Tuesday morning was spent cutting photos and pasting them memory-book style onto a piece of paper describing his favorite things, and then we wrote our story about Spike’s visit (Spike is the class mascot, a stuffed kangaroo) and pasted more pictures onto that story. Read more
Sushi Stuffed Avocados
May 30, 2007 by Andrea
Filed under Appetizers
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t make stuffed foods. Michael makes stuffed pizza, but that’s as far as it goes around here. I think I made stuffed manicotti one time and it was not pretty because the pasta tubes kept cracking and spilling the filling out. Too much work, I thought. It’s not that I don’t enjoy stuffed foods, because I love stuffed pastas and tomatoes and will occasionally eat stuffed peppers as long as there isn’t any meat in them, I just find that stuffing requires more time and patience than I have to invest. So when I saw that Cook Sister! was hosting this month’s WTSIM and had chosen stuffed fruits and vegetables as the theme, I figured I would have nothing to contribute and I decided to not participate this time around.
But it bothered me. It kept nagging at me. And the more I thought about stuffed foods the more determined I became to create something stuffed that 1) I would enjoy and 2) wouldn’t require loads of time and patience. I forced myself to envision stuffed vegetables and fruits, trying to decide what would work for me. The inspiration came at the Wegman’s sushi counter. Read more
Ajiaco Bogotano (Colombia)
December 27, 2006 by Andrea
Filed under Poultry, Soups & Stews
For me this is the ultimate comfort food, and it’s also my favorite food from my years overseas. It’s a great weekend soup, but it’s also a celebration meal for the Bogotanos who often make very large pots of this soup for festive occasions such as Christmas. They typically serve the soup in black bowls just like the one in the photo, sitting in a basket because the bowls are rounded, not flat, on the bottom. Sides include rice, capers, and avocado. I’ve missed the wonderful ajiacos I enjoyed in Bogotá, so this year I wanted to have it as part of our Christmas celebration.
There are several versions of ajiaco in Hispanic culture. Ajiaco Bogotano has chicken, three different kinds of potatoes, corn on the cob, and the herb guascas. The potatoes are papas criollas, sabaneras, and tocarreñas, or yellow, red, and white potatoes respectively. Of the three, the papas criollas are the most important Read more
