Taco! Burrito! What’s coming out of your Speedo?

August 24, 2011 //
2

You got troubles, whoooo! You’re blowin’ bubbles, whoooo! Float, float, float, float. You’re puttin’ around like a motor boat. Troubles, whooo! You’re blowin’ bubbles, whooo! YOU STINK! (Thank you, Saturday Night Live.)

The title and first few sentences of this post have double meaning. Meaning one: This post is going to include taco recipes. Meaning two: I stink for not writing a new post for almost a month. Well, not going to dwell on that and instead get right to it! Robby and I enjoy eating tacos, a lot. It’s an easy, quick and always welcome weeknight meal. Taco Tuesday (or Thursday or Monday) anyone? We often go traditional with ground beef or ground turkey, but recently we tried out a few different taco varieties. Both were awesome and we’ll definitely make again, as they’re a great way to add some variety to taco night.

A few weeks ago Robby found a Shrimp Tacos with Poblano-Avocado Salsa recipe on the Weber Grill App. He whipped it up one night and it was immediately added to my favorite recipe list. It was phenomenal! Cooked on the grill, the shrimp were tender and delicious and there were only a few sacrifices to the burner gods (I tried to convince Robby to cook them on a piece of tin foil, but not sure how that would have changed the flavor or cooking time of the shrimp).

Then, last week in the spirit of trying new taco recipes, I found a never-before-made-recipe hanging out in my recipe binder from the November 2009 issue of Cooking Light Magazine. Carne Asada Taco with Avocado Pico de Gallo. We’re not huge red meat eaters, but pico de gallo caught my attention and I thought we should give it a try. Marinating the steak for a few hours made it tender and gave it full, infused flavor. The recipe says to cook the meat on a grill pan, but we used our regular grill and cooked it for a few extra minutes on each side until juicy and medium-rare. I also decided to double this recipe so we’d have leftovers for lunch. Glad I did because they were tasty and just as good reheated.

In addition to trying “fancy” tacos, we like to be stocked with “regular” taco ingredients like salsa (instead of tomato because it doesn’t go bad as quickly; our fav is Newman’s Own), shredded cheese, black olives, a head or shredded lettuce, flour tortillas, etc.  To make regular tacos a little more interesting you can also add homemade guacamole.   Guacamole not only adds a variety of other flavors to tacos, it adds wonderful texture with the creamy avocado and crunchy red onion. The recipe I use is from my friend Tresca and is very easy to throw together. If you have a little baby around (ex. Evelyn), you can share some of the avocado with her as an easy to chew, mushy finger food. Cue picture of mom’s adorable sous chef:

Hope you enjoyed my first post “back” in the blog-o-sphere…hoping it doesn’t take me another month to get another new post up!! So tell me – how do you like your tacos? What toppings do you use? Anything fun and unusual? How many times a month do you have taco night? (Be honest; I promise not to judge. We all know tacos are super easy and tasty.)

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Categories Dinner

Jamaican Me Crazy!! Cooking Class Review

July 22, 2011 //
0

Last night Robby and I attended our first cooking class – Jamaican Me Crazy at Milwaukee Public Market. First of all, let me tell you that it was an exceptionally pleasant surprise when we got there and saw people had carafes of wine from Thief Wine Shop & Bar. We quickly went back to the first level of the market and got ourselves a carafe of Inkberry 2009 Shiraz/Cabernet Sauvignon, Central Ranges Australia, plus some bread to tide us over until we got to taste some of the dishes that were being demonstrated. (It was GREAT wine.)

The class was instructed by Staci who owns Cooking With Class. She was quirky and funny, but you could tell she meant business in the kitchen. Her knowledge of all of the different foods she was using was excellent and we learned so much! We got to follow along with a packet of recipes, prefaced by some Jamaican food history (did you know that actual allspice isn’t a spice blend, it’s a berry? Who knew!?). The class was packed and the attendees ranged from couples in their 50′s to a mom with her daughters. And, it seemed like a popular date activity.

We also got a print-out of the Scoville Units chart. Do you know what that is? I didn’t – Scoville Units are the number of water droplets it takes to diffuse the heat from a drop of pepper on your tongue. Ex. A Jalapeno is 2,500 – 8,000 Scoville Units and a Habanero is 100,000 – 325,000 Scoville Units. In the recipes we tried last night Staci used Habaneros. But, in most cases you can substitute a less hot pepper and the recipe will turn out just fine.

Here are the recipes Staci demonstrated for us; I put the notes I took during the class at the bottom of each recipe.

The class was only $20 per person and well worth the price for the food and cooking tips we learned and the dishes we got to try. Next up? I think we’re going to sign up for Staci’s Magic of the Mediterranean class in September.

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Categories Cooking Class

I Heart Organizing…Recipes!

July 21, 2011 //
5

As most of my friends and family can attest, I heart organization and organizing things. I’m generally better about being organized at work than at home, but for certain things at home order = bliss. This most definitely applies to my recipe collection. Having my recipes organized and easily accessible makes meal planning more enjoyable, therefore it happens more often. My secret ingredient to meal planning? My beloved recipe binder and recipe box, plus my favorite cookbooks.

Now, in full disclosure, the recipe binder wasn’t my idea. I didn’t always have a recipe binder (but I can’t remember what I did with tear-out recipes before the binder??); it was a few years ago when Robby and I spent Thanksgiving with our friends Karen and Justin in Michigan that Karen introduced me to her recipe binder. It was love at first sight and I had to have my own. I think it was within a week or two of our return home that my recipe binder was born. Well, it is actually two binders because all of my categories didn’t fit into one binder.

What you need:

  • One or two binders (depending on how many recipes you have)
  • One or two sets of binder dividers; I have the heavy-duty plastic ones with pockets to put misc. cooking notes and articles, like how to carve a turkey
  • A large box of sheet protectors

My categories:

  • Appetizers, Dips & Sauces
  • Side Dishes
  • Salads
  • Meatless Main Dishes
  • Chicken & Turkey Main Dishes
  • Seafood Main Dishes
  • Beef, Pork & Lamb Main Dishes
  • Soup, Stew & Chili
  • Desserts & Cookies
  • Bread, Muffins, Coffee Cake & Breakfast

Why do I love my recipe binder so much? For a number of reasons:
1) I don’t have to re-write recipes on recipe cards that I print from online or tear out of magazines and I tear out A LOT of recipes so it saves me a lot of time;

2) The recipes easily come out of the binder so when I’m meal planning for the week I can pull them out and stick them on the fridge for easy accessibility (no hunting for the recipe again);

3) The sheet protectors keep the recipe safe from spills and wear and tear on the thin magazine paper; and

4) I don’t need to keep stacks of dog-eared magazines, so it saves space and I can quickly find what I need.

Phase two of recipe binder organization? It’s been about 3 years since it was created so time to go through and pull out recipes that I’ve never used in order to make room for new ones. I’ll let you know if that project ever happens…

How do you organize your recipes (or NOT organize your recipes!)?

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Categories Meal Planning, Organizing
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