Chèvre to the rescue

I <3 cheese. All kinds of cheese- I even like some blue cheese on the occasional salad.
I also <3 Mexican foods. This often involves Mexican blend cheese and all of their amazing melty, gooy wonder. This works out well for Cherilyn, who is all about the easy quesadilla or nachos, my problem is I really ought to avoid lactose. This is easy for me when it comes to milk as I have never enjoyed it. I drink Almond Breeze almond milk and life is good. Lactose free ice cream and almond or rice based ice creams are tasty as well. However cheese is my Achilles' heel.

Recently I decided, on a whim, to melt some Chèvre w/ basil I had on my tortilla and then add my salsa and see how it worked... It was AMAZING! The tartness of the Chèvre went so well with the salsa I was amazed! Since then I have obtained some Chèvre with pimentos in it & that is also very tasty! It melts well (though I find I have to use a knife to smear it around) & I love the blend with the salsa!

Does anyone else have any suggestions of tasty things to do with Chèvre? I eat it on crackers and salad and tortillas now. Anything to help me get my cheese fix, and stay out of the yummy sharp cheddar also in the fridge would be good!

Whomever gifted the yummy sugars...

Thank you!
I keep forgetting which sib gave Cherilyn the yummy fancy sugars, but I am enjoying them on top of my coffee! I also introduced Cherilyn to vanilla sugar on fresh strawberries! Yum yum!

General Food Updates

Hello, all and welcome, Dena! I have been cooking quite a bit recently but I don't really feel ready to be putting any new recipes on here. My cooking has been more oriented in a skill-building direction, following existing recipes written by professionals. The big news is I have started teaching myself how to bake bread! I got a fantastic book simply entitled "Bread." It is actually a DK guide. Thus far my experiences with this book have been excellent! The recipes are so detailed and thorough that it's basically impossible to mess them up so long as you are literate and at least passably good at following directions :)

Beyond the bread-making front, it is Gazpacho season!!! I love Gazpacho season. It is one of my favorite times of year. This year my garden is pretty much an epic failure. The fates are conspiring against me and I have had basically zero luck getting anything to grow and stay growing. So I have been leaning heavily on my local farmers’ market for my produce. Fortunately, they have phenomenal stuff!

K, maybe I lied a little because I am going to include a recipe for “zucchini carpaccio.” The name is a little over the top but you can blame Tyler Florence for that because I sharked the idea from him.

Zucchini Carpaccio:

2 small zucchini

2 tbs. extra virgin olive oil

Juice of ½ a lemon (recipe works without this too but this adds a pleasant freshness and makes it more salad-y)

Freshly cracked pepper/ lemon pepper

Salt

2 tbs julienned basil and/or julienned mint

Parmesan to taste ( I would recommend using the real stuff for this just because it’s pretty major in the recipe. Shaved will give you the best texture compliment too)

Very thinly slice the zucchini into rounds using either a very sharp knife and a steady hand or a mandolin. Dress with the oil, lemon, salt, and pepper. Shave your parmesan over the zucchini using your mandolin, sharpy-sharp knife, or the shaving side of a box grater. Add your julienned herbs (a combo of mint and basil is actually really nice on this). Mix gently and eat J

*I have been making this the night before for my lunch and it refrigerates well. The zucchini stayed firm and everything was delicious.

Potato and Cauliflower Burritos

We made this tonight and it was super yummy and different from any of our other burritos. I got kind of a breakfast burrito vibe out of it, which was nice. It turned out medium spicy, but I think those who like stuff lower on the spice continuum could leave out the chipotle chili and still get a nice flavor just from the fire-roasted tomatoes.

So here it is:

One 15-oz can fire-roasted tomatoes
1 chipotle chili in adobo sauce
2 cloves garlic, peeled

2 tsp vegetable oil for sauteeing
1 small onion, halved and sliced thin
1/2 tsp dried oregano
3 cups cauliflower, chopped small
1 medium potato (I used a red potato), cut into small cubes

3 Tbs. chopped cilantro
several medium flour tortillas
a nice pile of shredded jack cheese
some cooked rice if you want (we forgot it, but the burritos would be less spicy if we used it)

1. Pulse the tomatoes, chili, and garlic in a food processor until it turns into salsa.
2. Heat the oil in a large skillet on medium and sautee the onion a couple minutes. Stir in cauliflower, potatoes, and tomato stuff, add salt and pepper to taste. Cover and simmer 10 to 15 minutes until potatoes are cooked through and then simmer 5 minutes more to thicken up the sauce.
3. Stir in the cilantro and spoon your mix onto your tortillas. Add cheese and maybe rice, and serve. Yum!

Food Bio!

Hi Everybody!
Sooo, I never blogged on here until today (still have a live journal account tho :p.) This is how I wound up following the blog as well... How do I get it to tell me when people make new posts?.

Skill level: Medium, I enjoy trying new things as long as I have a recipe to follow. They can have a long ingredient list & they can be fairly complicated as long as I am properly motivated by the yummy factor! I will improvise once I know a recipe or it is a pasta dish, else wise, I am a recipe gal all the way!

Favorite cuisine: Oh man!! Do I have to pick one? I love Mexican, Thai, Italian, Indian and Chinese. Anything with saffron in it is a surefire win with me! There is very little I DON'T like. If it has saffron, ginger, red pepper, etc etc in it, I'll probably love it!

Cooking or baking: Ummm.... Both? I bake for special occasions (Christmas gifts, parties, birthdays, etc) and cook far more regularly. That said, I tend to get fancier with my Christmas gift baking than I do my general cooking.

Favorite appliance: I've moved a lot. I'm looking forward to learning a single oven and sticking with its quirks! (Not sure I have a favorite appliance now, but my last roommates' espresso machine made me a very happy yuppie coffee drinking gal!)

Favorite junk food: Chips & salsa!!! After that: My nachos, chocolate, chocolate & peanut butter combinations- any variety, Pocky!! (Especially the fancy chocolate & orange swirly kind I had once at an anime con, never to find again!), Gardettos, salty stuff.

Favorite real food: Nearly anything with pasta in it, curries, peas pulao (How do you make this heavenly dish!?!), rice noodles, stir fry, sushi, molé, macaroni & potato salads, rhubarb & lemon pie from family recipes... Make it spicy and I'll probably love it!

I look forward to learning new yummy recipes (especially all the Indian and Japanese ones, yummy!!!) ! I'll be posting my 4th of July grilling stuff at Cherilyn's suggestion, because everything turned out so well!! Cheers!

Silliness

So I read Cracked.com a lot and this one was stupid, but also funny and food-y: Omelets and Super-Sharks.

Food Bio

Skill level: (I'll just leave this answer here) medium. I'm not intimidated by long ingredient lists, but I'm a long way from Top Chef.

Favorite Cuisine: American. Southern and Californian mostly. I love to roast a chicken.

Cooking or Baking: Grilling

Favorite Appliance: Food processor.

Favorite Junk Food: Peanut butter, chocolate, and salt in more or less any combination.

Favorite Real Food: For day-to-day indulgence, it's wings. A birthday-level treat is a nicely cooked piece of steak.

Food bio

Dena's already met me, and even eaten my cooking (such as it was), but I'll do this anyway, to keep the ball rolling.

Skill level: Medium, but erratic. I have a tiny number of mainstays that I've been making once every couple of weeks or so for basically my entire adult life, and I'm good at thinking up endless variations on them based on what's in season or what I have on hand. When it comes to learning new recipes sometimes I can get things to come out well, and sometimes I feel like a Typical Guy who can't even find the "on" button on the microwave.

Favorite cuisine: Do I have to pick just one? Mexican, Chinese, Indian, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Italian, Northwest fusion, Peruvian, North African, Malaysian (think Thai plus mangoes), Japanese of course... None of which I can really make.

Cooking or baking: Definitely cooking. Which is great because Akiko has gotten really interested in baking over the last few years. But doesn't really like to cook.

Favorite appliance: Slow cooker, among those acquired recently. But our fancypants Japanese rice cooker is the one we really can't live without.

Favorite junk food: Chips, yes, all kinds. We went to a city 4th of July festival over the weekend and got these - potato chipper swirls - basically a whole potato sliced into swirly curly chips and fried to perfection, somehow both crispy and chewy... Pardon me, what were we talking about?

Favorite real food: Oh, my, this is going to be hard. Pizza, curries, any kind of cheese. Fish'n'chips. Deep-fried clams, New England-style. Taryn's Hopi corn salad. Fresh berries.

As you can see from the above lists my tastes run entirely toward the heart-attack-by-age-45 end of the spectrum - which gives me about four years to change my ways, come to think of it! One of the great things about this family food blog is that almost every recipe y'all post is healthier than almost anything I habitually make. So it's been great: I hope we keep it going.

Food Bio

Since this doesn't actually involve cooking, I'll do this post.

Skill Level - Novice, though I can make the following dishes better than anybody else in the family: cold cereal, instant ramen (unadulterated by fancy ingredients), and tuna food (aka pouring the juice from a can of tuna on dog food).

Favorite Cuisine - Um...whatever has been cooked for me? Also, Mexican (both Tex-Mex and Mexico City-style).

Cooking or Baking - Doesn't opening a can count as a method? Otherwise, baking.

Favorite Appliance - Hot air popcorn popper. Also, I used to love the thing we'd make single toasty cheese sandwiches on at home.

Favorite Junk Food - Depends on my mood. Lately, Limón potato chips. Also pistachios. Also hot buttered popcorn.

Favorite Real Food - Cold cereal. Also tacos al pastor from El Califa in Mexico City.