Fall semester 2014

The latest in food adventures

 

Homemade tacos.

Zucchini lasagna, made with zucchini from Blackhawk parents.. :)

Veggie pasta with zucchini, tomatoes and onions?

Caramel popcorn for Nav Night

Using grapes, cheese and walnuts in my salad.

Gorgeous Farmer's Market red onion and yellow pepper. Lurve.

Putting together lunch..

Using Tastefully Simple risotto mix, adding zucchini, more rice, and some other stuff? 

Farmer's Market loot

Famer's Market white mushrooms, about to be sauteed in butter.

Chicken soup from scratch (chicken broth, carrots, onion, corn, noodles, rosemary! and chicken, of course.)

Random pic that ended up in here because I clicked to upload it, oops. Still good.

Homemade tortillas.. Without a rolling pin. Yikes. But still, tacos.. (Eh!)

Banana bread and muffins witch chocolate chips for Nav Nite. 

Egg scramble with Yao.

Not pictured: 

brownies for Carter's Bible Study

and

Peanut butter no-bake cookies for Evan's Bible study (which carried over to my Bible study, as well as meeting up with Erica Weiss at Chad!!!)

Skirt steak & veggie fajitas (Grilled red & yellow peppers and onions)

Cinnamon monkey bread. I cheated. I didn't use yeast and go the long route. I used Pillsbury dough, oops. (pull the biscuit dough apart, into chunks, shake in big ziploc with one? cup granulated sugar and a teaspoon-ish of cinnamon.. Once in forms, pour over 3/4 cup butter (too much! too greasy for the muffin tins!) and 1/2 cup of brown sugar.

Yup.  

Molho branco com Conceição

Melt 2 Tbs margarine
Add some chopped onion
Add 1 Tbs flour
Add milk.
Add more water or milk if too thick.
Add some generic fish or vegetable seasoning.
Add some parmesan
Stir.

There's your white sauce.

Season your raw tilapia with lime, salt and garlic.
Fry it lightly in a pan with some oil. (Not deep fry).

Pour half the white sauce in the bottom of a 9x13. Place the tilapia organizedly on the sauce.
Cover the tilapia with slices of potato.
Cover the potato and tilapia with white sauce.
Sprinkle with parmesan.
Bake for 30 minutes or until cooked.

Mom's pasghetii sauce

So apparently the key to avoiding the vinegary tomato concentrate flavor in your spaghetti sauce is to use real tomatoes.  An unlimited amount.

Oil (olive, vegetable..)
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 and a quarter green pepper, almost as finely chopped
7 small tomatoes (or however many you want/can use) coarsely chopped
Some ground beef
680 grams of tomato sauce
Garlic powder,
Italian seasoning.

Heat up some oil in a saucepan. Sauté finely chopped onions. Add chopped green pepper. Sauté. Add coarsely chopped tomatoes. This will release a juice that will give a better flavor to the sauce.
Cook for 10 minutes or so to let the flavors jive.
Add cooked ground beef.
Add two bags of tomato sauce (340 g each).
Cook.
Add garlic powder and Italian seasoning to taste. Yum.

Buon appetito!
(Or however you say it in Italian. Buon appetite?)

Pudim com Conceição

Recipe:
1 tetrapak of leite condesado
1 same amount of tetrapak of milk
3 eggs

Blend the crap out of it in a blender.

In the forma for pudim, put about
10 Tbs of sugar.
Melt it on the stove, in the pan. Get that caramel-y brown syrup, and spoon it onto the walls of the pan.

Pour your pudim batter in the pan: bake for like an hour.

Delish. Note: avoid using a ridge-y bundt cake pan. The pudding comes out, but it looks real sloppy. Deliiicious, though.

Bonus photo: a memory of simple tapioca: filled with leite condensado and coco ralado.

*Leite condensado tapioca*

Tutu de feijão and farofa com banana with Conceição

1. Have pre-cooked beans on hand.
2. Fry the crap out of some sliced calabresa/chorizo sausage, adding onion to the grease in the frying pan.
3. Fry minced garlic in some oil in medium saucepan,
4. Cut up some onion, tomato and green pepper. Add to fried garlic.
5. Put pre-cooked beans in with the seasonings and veggies.
6.Cook thoroughly.
7. Mix farinha de mandioca with a bit of water and stir thoroughly into the beans and bean broth.
8. Add calabresa, and voilà! Your tutu is ready!

Microwave risotto!

In microwaveable bowl:
1. Microwave small amount of butter.
2. Microwave chopped up veggies (for in risotto) mixed into the butter.
3. Microwave broth until it's around boiling. (Ergo the need for a microwaveable bowl)
4. Pour in half the amount of rice as broth you used, and microwave to the death!

Voilà, risotto in le microwave!

(Abbreviated recipe inspired by recipe given me by my Blackhawk parents, les Sheridans.)