Caldo De Res

I recently went to the second weekend of the ACL music festival. It was fun and exciting and exhausting. I discovered a new favorite band (Twenty-One Pilots) and greatly enjoyed an old favorite (Foo Fighters, They are amazing!) I also somehow managed to come out of it with a terrible cold. 

My week was horrible - I was exhausted, grumpy, and probably more than a little bit contagious. I was greatly looking forward to the weekend so I could lay on my couch all day and catch up on my Netflix. 

What I really wanted though was to have my mom visit and spoil me (yes, I'm an adult... don't judge!) . Unfortunately, she lives about 5 hours away from me. Although she very graciously offered to ride her bike up to make me soup (ha ha, mom), I realized that I had to take matters into my own hands. 

I needed to eat something healthy so I decided to try my hand at making caldo de res -  a beef bone broth / vegetable soup. Delicious and nutritious!

It's churro time!

It's finally Friday! I'm terribly excited! And while this was a short work week due to the Labor Day holiday, it felt soooo incredibly long and tedious. 

I think I need to celebrate. And what better way to do that than with churros! My all time favorite churros are in Mexico City, but these might be a close second.

Churro Co. is a food truck in Austin. (Austin loves its food trucks!) You might see it if you're around E. Riverside or hanging out on the boardwalk by the river.  If you see it, you should definitely stop by! If you don't, you should look for it. I promise you won't be disappointed!

The truck itself looks pretty welcoming.

Donuts for days!

I have a serious sweet tooth. So much so that I'm convinced that if I took sugar out of my diet, I'd be super model skinny... or maybe not. Probably not. I enjoy food way too much! But it's a nice dream to have, no?

Earlier this year, I took a road trip to New Orleans with my guy and decided we needed goodies for the road. We were taking off from Houston which is were my cousin Jessie lives. She had recently discovered and become obsessed with a donut shop. She decided to share her obsession with me, and I ended up with this for the trip:

And ate most of it myself. Of course. R doesn't have a sweet tooth. I totally forgot. My mistake!

Happy hour and a mercantile

My friends and I tend to go to the same places over and over for dinner and happy hour. We love these places. And, seriously, you can't beat Jack Allen's Kitchen for pretty much anything. We have spent many an afternoon happily munching on their amazing appetizer menu and enjoying an Austin margarita or three before deciding that we each need our own blondie for dessert.

Austin, however, has so many amazing restaurants that it really is a shame not to explore them all. Or at least try. In that spirit, I convinced everyone that we really need to expand our horizons and try someplace new - Jacoby's Restaurant and Mercantile.

Bird Bakery

Last week was my friend Monica's birthday. Monica loves cupcakes, and is notoriously hard to impress when it comes to those cupcakes. She has had the best of the best from around the world!

I decided to be brave and get her this for her birthday...

Adventures in Cooking - Asian Chicken Noodle Broth

I cheated on Meatless Monday yesterday. In fact, I completely forgot that it was Monday until today - when I realized that today is Tuesday.  I'm blaming the never-ending cold / sore throat that I haven't been able to completely shake off for my oversight! On a positive note, I was able to make an excellent dish with absolutely no problems!

The Asian Chicken Noodle Broth recipe from the Jamie Oliver book made me nervous at first. The description said something about multitasking, which gave me chills! Fortunately, the multitasking just meant that I had to warm up the broth and cook the chicken at the same time in different pans. I added the chicken to the Foreman grill and, instead of using a store-bought broth like the recipe recommended, I boiled some water and added Knorr bouillon (soup with Knorr reminds me of my mom's cooking). I didn't change anything else on the recipe except that, I didn't add the baby corn (I'm on a corn-ban after watching the Food, Inc. movie on Monsanto. At least until I go to Mexico and get tempted with some corn in a cup!)

Lessons Learned:

1. Don't buy pre-made broth. Knorr is so much better!
2. Toast the cashews and pumpkin seeds when the pan is barely warming up. Always keep your eye on them; they burn easily!
3. When all of your ingredients are white and green, buy red chiles. They look prettier

The cooking score: 1 lose, 2 wins.

I'm getting better!!

Adventures in Cooking - Butterflied Steak Sarnie

When I bought my new cookbook, I decided that my first recipe was going to be the butterflied steak sarnie. The reason for this was 1) this was the 1st recipe in the book, 2) it sounds fancy,  and 3) it was listed as being made in under 20 minutes. In addition to that,  4) I only needed 3 ingredients to make it - filet mignon, portobello mushroom and watercress. I'd never had watercress before (it reminds me of the book "The Trumpet of the Swan"by E. B. White), but I love steak and portobello so I figured I would really like it. That was the plan, anyway. Unfortunately I got sick and made that horrid soup (the horrid part was entirely my fault; not Jamie Oliver's!), so, in the end, the steak sarnie was not my first recipe. 

This afternoon I remembered that I had bought an awesome piece of steak that I never used. At first I freaked out a little bit because the meat had been in my fridge for over a week. I don't know how long meat lasts before it expires! I called my mom for a quick consult, and she reassured me that I was probably ok. I should just check to make sure it wasn't green or slimy (yuck!) and wash it off before grilling it. My grandmother also chimed in that with a bit of lime juice, I didn't have to worry. Armed with the reassurance of the ages (and a ton of lime juice), I set to following the instructions. These were actually fairly easy! I only had to add spices, grill the mushroom and then grill the steak. I have an amazing foreman grill so that was done incredibly quickly. The only glitch (beside the whole bad meat thing) was that the recipe also called for some grilled ciabatta bread. That, unfortunately, didn't hold up as well as the meat so I had to throw it out.  

The end products came out pretty good! And it tasted good too!!!! I am very impressed with myself!

Lessons Learned:

1. Butterflied Steak Sarnie is a great, super quick meal. Plus, it sounds and looks fancy so it works for guests!
2. I need to either cook or freeze fresh meat as soon as I get it. Also, bread doesn't stay fresh for long.
3. Watercress is great (and not just for swans)!

By the way, I am having the hardest time photographing food. Somehow the pictures never do the food justice. I'll get the hang of it eventually though; promise!

The cooking score is officially: 1 lose, 1 win.

Am I a good cook yet? Well, I can cook meat on a grill. Does that make me any good?

Adventures in Cooking - Meatless Mondays

I'd heard about the Meatless Mondays campaign a couple of years back. At the time, though, I was in the middle of a short-lived vegetarian phase and didn't pay much attention. Now that I'm eating meat again and learning how to cook (hopefully!), I figure I should take the challenge: no meat on Mondays and, to make it even more exciting, keep it low-carb. This means: no meat, bread, pasta, tortillas, corn or sugar. I am allowing myself rice and potato, so I don't go insane!

My dish for today, from the Jamie Oliver cookbook is a spring vegetable and bean soup. I chose this dish because I was a bit sick all weekend, and when I'm sick, all I want is a good soup (even if it is 90 degrees outside)! So, I wrote up my handy grocery list and headed to Fiesta Mart, a local grocery store that a friend recommended. After I got over the fact that Fiesta Mart is Austin's version of an El Globo or Soriana (including the second-hand clothing store with its gems hanging on a clothesline right in front), I noticed that I only paid $4 for all my veggies! $4! And I made it out without buying any tacos; although I might be back this weekend to try the carnitas. Off to a good start!

I got home incredibly excited, ready to peel and chop with abandon. I did the carrots, celery, onion and garlic perfectly. Then I got to the part about the cannellini beans. The recipe said to drain the can before adding them to the broth, simple enough, right? Well, apparently, I wasn't paying much attention to the wonderful grocery list because I bought raw beans instead of the cooked ones. I decided to cook them. It took 2 hours. I hadn't eaten all day. They did not turn out well.

I ignored the fact that the beans were a little bit nasty and finished the soup. Once it was finally ready, the soup was ok, I guess. The beans were a bit undercooked and incredibly starchy (According to Google, you should let them sit in water overnight before cooking them. Seriously? Who has time for that?) I really didn't care at that point, though; I added some cheese, which makes everything better, and ate.

Lessons learned:

1. I don't like cannellini beans! Next time, I'm skipping the beans and making white rice instead. (Actually, I'm probably going to drain the beans from the soup if I want more of this batch. I might not be as forgiving of them when I'm not starving; I probably won't want more.)
2. 1 3/4 quarts is not the same as 1 3/4 cups - the broth should cover the veggies. It is a soup after all! 
3. Fiesta Mart is the perfect place for fruits and veggies.

Am I a good cook yet? Nope! How can you mess up soup? But... it is my first recipe in the book and it is somewhat edible! I can't be too hard on myself!

full stomach, happy heart

There's a saying in Spanish: "barriga llena, corazon contento" that literally translates to full stomach, happy heart. The idea behind it is pretty self-explanatory - you are usually more content when you aren't hungry. I agree with this saying 100%. The easiest way to see me grumpy is to make sure I don't get fed - or enough sleep, but I guess that doesn't matter right now. I am not responsible for my actions when I'm hungry, but I'm also not the best cook in the world. That is incredibly hard for me to admit since I come from a family of amazing cooks. My grandmother, mom, aunts, and cousins all cook delicious, fairly healthy, completely original food. I'm the black sheep of cooking, but I CAN bake!

I've decided that in order to redeem myself in my family's eyes and keep on with the whole getting-my-life-in-order process, I have to become a good cook. I figure the best way to do this is to buy a good cookbook and make all the recipes. Sounds easy, huh?

Anxious to start, I made my made my way to BookPeople this morning to find the perfect cookbook.

First of all, there are a million cookbooks! Everyone from the food network people to Gwyneth Paltrow and Jerry Seinfeld's wife has a cookbook, including Eva Longoria. (Why does Eva Longoria have a cookbook?)  I spent quite a long time browsing and making a mental list of what I need in a cookbook. I decided that I need a book that has 1) healthy food with some low carb options to help me get ready for summer, 2)  easy to find ingredients, 3) easy to follow steps, and 4) pictures to let me know how the end product is supposed to look.

I finally decided on "Jamie's Food Revolution" by Jamie Oliver.

It satisfies my list, and I love his "pass it on" idea to revolutionize the way people eat. This is my way of passing it on. To Jamie, I pledge to learn at least one recipe from each chapter and teach it to two or more of my friends and family. To you, I promise that I will attempt every recipe in the book and share pictures and interesting tidbits from the experience. Wish me luck!