by the by...

i forgot to mention that i lost my phone in san miguel, which had these really amazing photos of hurricane Ike from just a few miles away, as we were driving pretty much along the southernmost edge. They were incredible, with double rainbows and rays of light coming through thick clouds, they were really something to look at. 

thank god they found my phone in san miguel and are awesome enough to give it back. so i'll post those pictures at some point, once i learn how to post pictures here on blogger...

Oaxaca

Ok, so I know that I have been a little bit out of the loop for a while, but I never promised to write once  a week. I do feel bad for kind of bitching at this other dude who has a blog, for not writing in it for more that 5 days... That's just how I roll...

So, here's the news for the past 3 weeks (or so):

I went to San Diego last week to help my mom move to Mexico. I thought we might have fun and make a good road trip out of it... thought.  We really just ended up bitching at each other most of the time. I think my mom is bipolar, cause I swear to you, dear reader, that there was a point in which I put a cd on to listen to in the car, and my mom starts whistling along. About 30 seconds later, during the very same song, she starting screaming hysterically to ''turn that goddam shit off!!!!'' (I must insert here, that I swear to god my mom is not white trash, she can just get a little out of character sometimes). 

We drove from San Diego until some part of Arizona, I don't really remember, honestly, and then stopped to sleep. The from Arizona to Texas, and during that little stretch of the road is when things started to really suck. 

I was driving at one point and all of a sudden, half of the molding around the windshield flies off the car. Then the other half starts to go, but thankfully, we were able to grab it before it was lost in the desert somewhere in Arizona. So we start to call around local parts shops and such to find a piece to replace this molding and get directed to a junkyard in Arizona, not far off of the highway. We go and see, and they don't have it. We are getting back onto the highway when we decide to stop and have something to eat or get gas or something. So, we're pulling out of the gas station and we hear this strange sound coming from the back of the car, like we're running over a parking lot bush of some sort. I get out to check and, god would have it no other way than for us to have run over 2 inch thorns. Not knowing what they were, and admitedly, stupidly, I pull them out of the tire. Now we have a flat tire and a broken molding from the windshield. 

I'm not even going to go into the rest of our problems from the trip, lets just say it kinda sucked. 

We ended up in San Miguel, Mom's new home, and the minute we got there I went into town to go and find some other people to hang out with. I had lunch, had some beers, found my ex boss, and made an appointment to go and talk to him about this trip that I want to make to Oaxaca. 

Its a culinary tour through oaxaca, where we will eat oaxacan food, learn to cook it, se oaxacan people and beaches, and just plain hang out. I talked to my boss, and he said that he is interested in renting me the hotel and helping me do that, so i am pretty ecstatic about that. I even learned to use excel and make a spreadsheet of all of the costs and people coming along...

I haven't cooked in ages, so don't look here for recipes, cause I ain't got none. 

ps. if any one is interested in the oaxaca trip, please let me know, I can send you more info about it by way of email. 

It's not that I don't want to write, it's that my life is boring.

I really don't have much going on in my life, which is why I haven't written in a while. The only thing interesting is that I have been taking spinning classes which are supper efficient in the calorie burning area. I also made ravioli yesterday:

flour
salt
spices (like oregano, basil, thyme, rosemarry, garlic powder)
eggs

make a dough, and kneed the hell out of it. then kneed it a little more. roll it out until it is as thin as you can get it. cut it into rectangles and add whatever you want to put inside. I used the leftover ricotta mixture from dad's birthday, and added some proscuitto.

RIP

http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2008/08/dave-matthews-b.html?iid=top25-20080820-Dave+Matthews+Band's+saxophone+player+dies

LeRoi Moore

Follow up

Dad's lunch was great, so great, even, that I forgot to take pictures... sorry. Anyway I ended up making some simple bananas fosters alla mexicana, which is to say:

Bananas (try some platanos machos, if you are feeling adventurous!!)
Sugar
Butter
Rum
Canela (MEXICAN, not gringo, cinnamon)
cream.... mexican style, like creme fraiche

saute bananas in butter
add sugar till caramelized
add Canela
Rum, and then flambee
serve on a hot plate with a dallop of the creme fraiche that has been mixed with a few drops of vanilla and a small amount of sugar... it shouldn't be very sweet, its supposed to balance out the sweetness of the bananas, sugar, and rum.

I'm exhausted right now so i will write again later.
ps. I am starting my teacher's degree course soon, wish me suerte!!!

I'm back!!

Ok, so I'm sorry that I left for so long, I won't make excuses, I was just being lazy. But now I'm back and with some yummy recipes to share. I was just reading a friends new recipe blog and realized that I, too, have some sharing to do. So here's whats going on: its my dad's birthday soon and I am making him a Birthday lunch tomorow. I am making some fun dishes that may not have anything in common with eachother except that they are scrumptious. I am starting with Seared tuna tostadas, then crabcakes, then a fig and brulee'd goat cheese salad, folowed by homemade potato gnocchi with pesto on an herbed bed of ricotta, and for desert some sort of bananas and cream dish, which I still havent figured out but i'll let you know.

Tuna Tostadas
about 4 tortillas, cut w cookie cutter into little rounds (like 16 mini tostadas)
chipotle mayo (mayo w some chipotles in adobo mixed in)
cucumbers soaked in lime, salt and a bit of sugar (juliened or shaved at a certain restaurant that i worked at, we used a microplain that left the cucumbers like spagetti. (flexibility is key)
Fresh Tuna, seared w salt and pepper to rare
soy sauce
minced cilantro

fry up the tortilla tostadas until brown and crispy
spread chipotle mayo on each tostadas
swirl cucmber, like you would spagetti, and place that on top
a sliced of the seared tuna on top
just a few drops of soy sauce
cilantro to garnish
yummmmm
due to the raw-ness of the fish, you should consume them immidiately, but ofcourse, share!!

crabcakes!!!!
red bell peper, small dice
red onion, small dice
1/2 stalk of cellery, small dice
old bay to taste
1 egg
breadcrumbs
crab (you can buy it in cans like tuna and it works great, but if you have loads of cash, get the fresh pasteurized cans in the fish section of your grocery store, they are much fresher, but cost like 18-24 bucks each (!!!!))
combine all and broil or fry

Black mission fig and goatcheese salad
mesclun greens
your favorite balsamic vinaigrette
black mission figs
goat cheese, cut into small medalions
sugar
toasted pine nuts

first, brulee the cheese, which is to say, take the medalions and dip them in the sugar, then with a food torch (you can buy these at macy's or williams sonoma or specialty food supply stores) gently with a low flame, brown the sugar on top. set aside to cool.
resist the urge to eat them all....
cut the figs in half and top with the goat cheese, and lay them on a bed of dressed mesclun greens and garnish with the pine nuts. This could be good with prosciutto too, if your into that (which I totally am, but normally eat all of the prosciutto before it gets to the table)

Gnocchi
4 large Ukon (sp??) potatoes
some flour
salt

Bake the potatoes. peel them AFTER they've been baked. mash them as well as you can, or run them through a food mill if you have one. i don't, so i use a bean masher or a fork if i feel extra energetic.
add salt and just enough flour to make a dough. if it gets too dry, use an egg white to moisten it again. Try not to over kneed the dough, the more you kneed, the tougher the gnocchi. (ewww!)
roll into snakes, cut into half inch lengths, and poke with a fork to give them little grooves to hold sauce.
drop them into boiling water, just until they float and then they are done.

Pesto.
Basil
pinenuts
olive oil
parmesan cheese
raw garlic (using sparingly, start with one small clove and work your way up)
salt and pepper

blend or cuise (pronounced Queeze, from the noun, Cuisiniart) until just blended but not pureed.
dress your gnocchi.

Herbed Ricotta
Ricotta (obviously)
Basil, chiffonade(d?)
lemon zest
minced rosemary
pepperoncino (crushed red pepper, like for pizza, ps. this is optional)
fresh cracked pepper
your best extra virgin olive oil
mix it up and spread about 2 tablespoons onto a hot plate.
pile the gnocchi on top
shave some parmesan on top

bananas will come soon, i'll tell you how i make them after the lunch tomorow and i will post pictures of everything and the steps that I took to make them.


stay tuned, friends, I promise not to abandon you again anytime soon.

Philly

So I got back to new york on weds. The flight was fine. I had a stop over in Cancun and had lunch with an uncle who lives over there. So, anyway, i get to NY and I am exstatic about seeing Mario. I am hanging around by the conveyor belt, and I get my pink suit case. I hang out for another 15 minutes watching the same suit cases pass me by. hmmm.... where's mine? another 20 minutes pass by and nothing. I ask someone and of course the jackasses in the JFK airport have no idea whats going on with anything. So I wait another 10 minutes or so and then I go to the lost baggage area and find out that one of my two suitcases is still in mexico. NICE. REALLY NICE....
anyway, I get outside to mario and his face lights up and he says that I have lost weight and look beautiful. We get home and end up talking until 5 am. Oh how I love being in love. The next day we go to the city and go shopping and stuff and then get home around 5 or so and watch movies and stuff and then around 2 am the buzzer rings and there is my suitcase (yeay!!)with a grumpy middle eastern man that says that I must not care about retrieving my luggage because I didn't answer the door on the first ring (could I have been sleeping, maybe?)
Anyway so on Friday we went to Philadelphia to the ball game and stayed in a really cute little hotel called the Society Hill, which was great cause it was right in the middle of where we wanted to be and it was cheap too! We had loads of fun and got to reconnect after two months of separation from eachother. It was a total blast and I would reccomend it to anyone for the 4th of july. There were free concerts (john legend and boyz II men) and free fireworks shows and we had this waiter at the hotel bar that was hilarious and lots of fun. Once I figure out how to post pictures on the blog, I will.