Three Kitchen Fairies

No more countdown/ No más cuenta regresiva

My countdown is finally finished. Last Friday, my family and I finally arrived in Cordoba, Argentina. Thank you so much for all the good vibes, the hugs, and positive comments you left me here, on Twitter, and Facebook. They kept me really positive, and feeling happy about our big quilting community. We lasted close to 24 hrs. in transit. By "we" I mean my family and also our cat; who became a great attraction as she was checked in at the airport, and the next day as she went five (or so) times around the baggage claim belt while we finished all the paper work at the immigration booth. We had an amazing welcoming committee that picked us up from the airport, and drove us to our new apartment. We were showered with attentions, and with as many hugs as possible to comfort us from such a long trip. Today was our first outing as a family. We were invited to the usual Sunday family get together by  a... family friend.

 

We were so warmly received that I have no words to tell you how pleasant it was to spend our Sunday eating delicious food, chatting, and watching my children and our friends' children play together in the yards adjacent to the lovely little house they live in.

We came back home feeling pampered, excited, and inspired. As for the girls; well, they were exhausted from playing hide and seek, claiming trees, and looking for snails.

Mi cuenta regresiva se acabó. El viernes pasado, mi familia y yo finalmente llegamos a Córdoba, Argentina. Muchísimas gracias por sus buenas ondas, sus abrazos, y los comentarios tan positivos en mis últimos posts, Twitter y en Facebook. Sus palabras me ayudaron mucho a mantenerme optimista y feliz de ser parte de nuestra comunidad de quilteras. Viajamos por casi 24 hrs. todos junto incluyendo a nuestra gatita, quien fué la gran atracción en los aeropuertos mientras la documentábamos; y a nuestra llegada mientras dió cinco vueltas (más o menos) en la banda del equipaje cuando nosotros haciamos los trámites en migración. Tuvimos un comité de bienvenida increíble que nos recogió del aeropuerto y nos llevó a nuestro nuevo departamento. Nos sentimos muy bien recibidos. Las atenciones de nuestros seres queridos fueron ilimitadas, así como tambien lo fueron la cantidad de abrazos y cariño.

Hoy tuvimos nuestra primera invitación para reunirnos a comer en un tradicional domingo familiar. Fuimos cálidamente recibidos. Realmente no tengo palabras para describir lo bien que la pasamos comiendo un delicioso almuerzo, conversando y viendo jugar a las niñas con las niñas de la casa en el jardín que rodea la hermosa casa en la que viven nuestros amigos.

Volvimos a casa sintiéndonos muy mimados, contentos, e inspirados. Y las niñas... ellas volvieron exhaustas de jugar a las escondidas, de trepar árboles y de buscar caracoles.

 

 

 

 

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Stuffed Jalapeño peppers

Today I woke up wishing to go visit again my childhood hometown. I grew up by the beach in a lovely port in Mexico called Veracruz. I longed for its people... so friendly and warm hearted. I miss its local repertoire of traditional dishes, and the salty smell of the Gulf of Mexico. Today I stepped aside form my sewing table to cook  "chiles rellenos" or stuffed Jalapeno peppers. Preparing the peppers themselves is quite a craft. I had to carve out all the seeds and the veins of the pepper carefully not to break apart the pepper. It has to stay in one piece!! I did have the patience to do so, and they turned out delicious, and not extremely spicy.  Just because of that I decided to share the recipe with you. 

 Here is to you the way I cook them today.

10 large Jalapeno  peppers

1 teaspoon of instant coffee

1 teaspoon of sugar

1 teaspoon of salt

 

2 cans of tuna in water

olive oil

white vinegar

1 small tomato chopped

1 small onion. 1/2 in thin slices, 1/2 minced

1 small carrot in slices

1 bay leave.

Thyme

a teaspoon or so of sugar to caramelize the onions

salt and pepper

The crafty part of this dish is the cleaning of the peppers. Cut the top of the pepper only half way, then cut open the pepper all along one side. Remove the veins and the seeds carefully. Yep, it stings in your fingers, and make you cough if the peppers are really spicy.

Rinse them and put them to boil with the instant coffee, salt and sugar for ten minutes. Rinse them again in cold water and set them aside. In a separate pan heat some olive oil, add the minced onion, and the chopped tomato, salt, and pepper to taste. Drain the water from the canned tuna and add the tuna to the onion and the tomato. Let it cook for 5 to 10 min. In another pan, heat some olive oil. Add the sliced onions, and the carrots, let them sizzle a bit until the onion looks almost cooked. Add a splash of white vinegar, salt, pepper, and a bit of thyme. Then add 1/2 a teaspoon of sugar to caramelized the onions, and lower the heat. Let it cook for another 5 min. When the tuna is cold, take  your Jalapeno peppers and stuff them one by one. Be careful not to loose the tops of your peppers. I was well warned by my mom, and I still lost a few. Arrange then in a  plate. Top them with the caramelized onions and carrots. Let them get cold for a couple of hours in the fridge. Enjoy them with warm corn tortillas and a super cold Mexican beer. 

It feels incredibly sad that my hometown is no longer existing as the place I grew up in. It's now one of the most dangerous places in Mexico. It's a place where cross fire is part of the day to day. People loose their friends, and families in the hands of kidnappers, and sicarios (paid assassins.) It's a place where dusk announces an unofficial curfew for all its inhabitants. If you're the kind of people who prays, please pray for peace in Veracruz.

 

 

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Comfort food

After my three fantastic weeks of vacations, reality is hitting me hard, and winter is hitting us even harder. Just this week we got one ear infection with a touch of conjunctivitis, lots of cuddling needed…

I wish I could keep working on my many projects but the extra trips to the doctor’s office and the pharmacy [in slippery roads due to the freezing rain…] tent to slow everything down, and that stress me out a bit… ok, a lot.

My last resort: cooking. When I need to feel better I cook the kind food that one of the loveliest person in the world would have cook for me: my grandfather.

 

The last time a saw him was when I was 7 or 8 years old, but I still remember our weekly Thursday’s afternoon together. I remember the smell of tobacco of his shirt, he used to smoke. His shoes were always shiny. To keep his pants neat, he used to pull his pants by the ironed line at knee level before sitting down. He cooked the most delicious meals, and when I got sick he used to bring a batch of steam buns for me as a token of his love. He was an amazing grandpa, the kind that looks at you with a melting heart, the kind that is always happy to have you around. I think of him almost every day. Those special meals are my comfort food. When I feel sad or stress, or lonely I cook this soup, and the smell of the ginger and its warmth transports me back to my childhood, days… just like in the “Ratatouille” movie.

 

I had to re-make the recipe to share this soup with my daughter. She’s allergic to eggs and sesame too. When we take about comfort foods she’s the one who mentions : “the wonton style soup. “

And because this world is about sharing here’s my Wonton Style Soup.

For the broth:

2 32oz. Boxes of Swanson chicken broth

Vegetable oil

2in. Long piece of ginger cut in thin round pieces.

4 carrots, peeled.

2 celery stalks

2 boxes of Swanson chicken broth (16oz.)

　

1lb. of ground chicken

1 bunch of green onions (scallions) minced

1 teaspoon of minced ginger root

2 table spoons of soy sauce

1 chopped bok choy

¾ of a cup of dry Barilla Mini Farfalle Piccolini pasta.

This recipe yield for 5 servings, and still you’ll have some left overs

Cover the bottom of a 5qt. stock pot with vegetable oil and heat it up. Add the round thin cut ginger and let if cook but don’t let it burn. It’s just to add ginger flavor to the oil. Pour the chicken broth, and add the carrots, and the celery to the broth. Let the vegetables cook at a medium boil.

In the meantime mix together the ground chicken, the minced ginger, the scallions and the soy sauce.

When the carrots are soft, take the ginger, carrots, and celery out of the stock. Then, with your hands wet make little ‘meat’ balls with the mixed ground chicken, and add them to the boiling stock. When they start to float, add the pasta and the bok choy. Let your wonton soup boil to a medium heat until the pasta is cooked, add salt to taste.

Enjoy!!

Pastel Azteca

 

It's been a more than a week since I last posted in this space. Lots of stuff are going on around at the same time as usual: crafts, and art, lots of sewing, and drawing; as well as the usual home-y duties. Last week was Miss Clara's B-day, she turned 10. I can't believe her first ten years went by so fast!! Still, I get the feeling we're having much more fun at this age than when she was a baby. Well, I guess it's different yet incredibly interesting and fun. Besides the usual party/cake/presents fun, I prepared her favorite dinner, which by the way turned out to be a recipe request by some friends on my usual chatty bits on Facebook. So here we go, this is my original family recipe since there isn't other like it on the web.

Pastel  Azteca

The chicken and its stock:

1 large chicken breast,  or one and a half.

2 stalks of celery

1 quarter of a large onion

Salt to taste

Boil the chicken with celery, onion, and salt to taste. When the chicken is ready, take it out and shred it. Save the stock for the salsa.

If you want Poblanos peppers to be part of the deal:

2 roasted Poblano peppers as explained here. Just the Poblanos you won’t need the corn or the rest of that recipe.

 The salsa

1 -28 oz. can of crushed tomato, diced, or whole tomatoes work too. I like the crushed tomatoes because the salsa turns out thick and dense.

½  onion. White or purple doesn’t matter.

1or 2  cloves of garlic.

A couple of spoons of Olive oil.

Black ground pepper

Thyme

A touch of salt if needed.

You’ll also need:

24 + corn tortillas

1 queso fresco grated (Mexican fresh/white cheese)

1 chipotle pepper.  Canned in adobo sauce works great. And it’s optional.

Aluminum foil

Vegetable oil

And a lasagna pan (9 X 12in)

How to:

Blend together the canned tomatoes, the onion and garlic. For a spicy sauce add the chipotle pepper or just a bit of the adobo sauce that comes with it depending on how spicy you want it to be. Heat a medium size pot with a couple of spoons of Olive oil. When the oil is hot enough, add the blended salsa.  Add some of the chicken stock until the consistency of the salsa is not too thick and not to watery. Add some ground pepper and a touch thyme and let it break to a medium boil. Let it simmer until the sauce looks more orange than red.  Keep in mind that the chicken stock has salt, and taste the sauce before adding any extra salt.

Let it simmer for fifteen minutes more or less.

Get ready your lasagna pan. Preheat your oven at 300F.

Line up your tortillas, shredded chicken, your grated queso fresco, the Poblano pepper strips, and your  salsa.

Heat the vegetable oil in a frying pan, about a half- inch deep of vegetable oil should be enough. It has to be hot enough to make your tortillas sizzle. You’ll be working one tortilla at the time. One tortilla goes into the medium hot oil, let it sizzle for ten seconds, and the turn it over and fry it for another ten seconds. Do not let it get hard like a tortilla chip, this is Pastel Azteca not Chilaquiles. With help of a wooden spoon and another tortilla on your other hand, take the golden half-way fried tortilla out of the frying pan. Let the excess oil drip, and place it on your lasagna pan. The "half-way fry" process will help the tortillas mantain their texture and not to turn into dough after baking the Pastel Azteca. Lay them down, side by side, and cover the bottom of the lasagna pan. When the first layer is done, add a layer of chicken, a layer of salsa, lay some poblano rajas too, queso fresco sprinkled on it. Repeat the same procedure over and over until you have at least four layers. When finished with the layers, make sure the corners of your Pastel Azteca are cover with salsa. This way the corners will not dry up while baking. Cover your pastel Azteca with aluminum foil, and put it in the oven for 20 to 30 minutes.

When ready take it out of the oven, served it with a side of black beans and enjoy.

Tip: When boiling the chicken breast,  make sure you end up with lots of stock.  If the salsa gets too thick in the process you can add more stock.  If you realize you’ll run out of salsa you can always add a more stock. 

I love cooking this meal. It's a once in a while kind of meal, but it's definitely becoming a family favorite.

Honor to whom honor is due: Thanks to Mexico in my Kitchen for sharing so many wonderful recipes with us. It's one of my favorite Mexican cooking blogs. Go check her blog out! For me, it's like being at home.

Chocolate cover everything

Today Isabel and I spent most of our day in the kitchen. We made bread in the bread machine, and we also made chocolate covered pretzels. When the pretzel were all ready we still had a lot of melted chocolate. We got the marshmallow from the pantry. We gave the little guys a top of chocolate and sprinkles. It's the end of the school year, and all the goodies will go into baskets as gifts for the girl's teachers. This year we're graduating from pre-school, and all our girls will be in elementary school by September. Wow!! time flew by. It feels like yesterday I had a four year old, a two year old, and my new born baby, ah!!

I dipped the pretzels, and the marshmallows in the chocolate. Then she did the rest of the work with the sprinkles. As we were standing by the stove she was telling me her plans for the future. She said she wants to have a store with me. There we'll make and sell chocolate "covered everything," we would be selling coffee too: like starbucks!! "It'll be like bring your child to work everyday, because I'll be working with you." My heart melted like the chocolate on the stove.

Like that I have tons of stories in the back of my mind, but I think I better tell you who are the three winners of my apple pattern.

I did used the random number thingy and the winners are:

Trash , Sudi-Laura, and Wynn.

Random stuff.

 

I'm working really hard at some pattern making. I'm enjoying the process a lot but I wish I had more time.

Hopefully it will be ready to go in a couple of weeks...

Yesterday, I took my camera on our daily walk. A couple of weeks ago she learned how to ride her two wheeler. Now she bikes, and I power walk right behind her. This is half an hour before my other two fairies get off the bus from school. Then, we walk back, and we talk about the important things of their day.

Couple of days ago I realized I was loosing weight. So far I lost 6 lb. I'm guessing it's a combination of the walking, and the vitamin D I started to take on the daily basis couple of weeks ago. Who knows...

Yesterday dinner: molletes. Very easy and quite delicious. They're just what you see: bread, blacks beans, and melty cheese on top, and "Pico de Gallo" with it.

they go like this...

As I write this post I can hear people cheering for President Obama. He's giving a speech at the University of Michigan commencement at the Michigan Stadium, just two block from our house.

Talk to you soon.

 

 

Starbucks style rainbow cookies

First of all, I want to thank all of you my blog friends and readers for your amazing response to my Wagon Wheel Tutorial. I was so happy to see that my post was added to a bunch of tutorial listings and to some other quilting blogs. I was also feature on Whip Up, and I got my button for my side bad. Thank you!! After taking so much inspiration from your blogs and you  flickr photostreams I felt eager to contribute somehow to this quilty/crafty cyber world.

On another subject, today I'm posting about this intent to make rainbow cookies Starbucks style. Why make them instead of buying them from starbucks? Well, one of the fairies is allergic to eggs. If there is something frustrating for an allergic person is to know that they are not allowed in anyway to try something that looks so yummy. Imagine that frustration on a child... This is our third batch and the taste and texture are getting closer and closer with each intent. They aren't as chewy and soft as the originals but they aren't too hard either. These cookies are perfect for dunking. Here is the recipe in case you have an allergic person in your family as well, or just in case you want to give them a try:

1 cup of soy butter, room temperature

1/2 cup of granulated sugar

1 cup of packed brown sugar

3 cups of unbleached flour

2 teaspoons of baking soda

4 teaspoons of vanilla extract

I cup of M&M's

a tiny bit of water or soy milk

Pre-heat your oven at 350F degrees. In a large bowl, mix the butter and sugar until creamy. Add the vanilla, the baking soda, and then the flour little by little. If the mix is too dry add a bit of water or soy milk. Then add the M&M's and fold the dough. To form the cookies, roll small dough balls and put the in cookie sheet. Personally, I prefer to use some parchment paper on top of the cookie sheet. Then flatten your cookie dough a bit with the help of a fork. Put them in the oven and bake for 10 minute.

This is a recipe that's still in the making. I'm open to any suggestions about how to make these cookies softer. So far, I think next time I can try some apple sauce and maybe a bit of cinnamon, and let's see. These fairies of mine are really faithful that will make the recipe right pretty soon. They  really want to share this kind of cookie with their sister. So keep your fingers crossed...

Fairies in the kitchen...

Today my girls had no school. I love these kind of days because they're a total break from the routine, without counting that I have to be "creative" about what to do. First I took them to the library to get their week loaded with stories and beautiful picture books... and they were happy. Then we headed for the grocery store to get ingredients for this delish

 

Chocolate Dominoes is what they are called. This is a recipe we have been planning to bake for some time. It's from this book we got around Christmas. But because I'm so happy with the result I want to share it with you.

Ingredients

1/4 cup of soft margarine (here we substitute for soy butter because of our cow protein intolerance)

1/4 cup caster sugar

1 1/4 cup of self-raising flour

1/4 cup of cocoa sifted

3 eggs (here you can substitute for 1 cup of apple sauce in case you're allergic to eggs like some people around here)

Preheat the oven to 350 F (or 180C.) Lightly brush a 7x11 inch baking tin with oil and line the base of the tin with a greaseproof paper. Put all the ingredients in a bowl and beat until smooth. Spoon into the prepared tin and level the surface with a palette knife. Bake for 30 min. Cool the tin for 5 min. Then loosen the edges and transfer to a wire rack. [mine came thin enough to break apart so I transfered it to a chopping board.]

From here I made it my way which was spreading chocolate frosting on half of the cake, and because my cake came thin I cut it in half and put one half on top of the other. After the dangerous maneuver ( it could have been a catastrophe if I broke the Fairies' work of art...) I put more frosting on top and then cut it into the individual pieces. Little hands added the pieces of twizlers and the M&M to make the dominoes.

The girls did most of the work. Fairy #2 remarked that baking is a craft, clever...The three of them took turns with the electric mixer, very adventurous for a four year old. We ate them for dessert, and ended our day with a great feeling of accomplishment.

I suggest you try them, you may end up with the same feeling.

Pretzels, shopping, and crafts

We are only three days away from the first school " winter break."  I think I'll be done with my to-do list right on time. Last Sunday I made the chocolate covered pretzels for family and friends. They just need to be delivered.

 

Yesterday, I was supposed to go shopping in the morning but I got a sick girl here at home. I only got to go to the post office to deliver some packages. I was starting to feel a bit stressed and grumpy about Christmas, so much to do and to shop for. How can I disagree with "the Grinch" when the parking lots are starting to get crowded and people are starting to get rude. I simply can't enjoy it this way. Lucky for me, Jose came back from work early. I went out into the shopping jungle and one way or another my shopping is finally DONE!!

Crafts: It has been impossible to go out to play. It's way too cold, and there is ice on the ground. Crafts are the entertainment for most afternoons.

 

We made this garland out of recycled Christmas cards and bakers twine. I just traced circles in some interesting parts of the cards, then cut them out, and then glued two circles together with the twine in the middle. The girls loved it and they lasted a good deal of time working with it. We hanged it right away in our dinning room with some other "decorations."

Are you having a fair enough pre-Christmas week? 

P.

Birthday Party.

My due date was December 25 but she was born on December 16. We only get regrets if we celebrate right on her day, it is so close to Christmas. This year we celebrated on the first weekend of December (yesterday) with a big party at Jump City.

I baked "vegan" cupcakes for the almost 20 kids plus parents (she is turning 6 so I asked the parents to stay.) The kids did not even notice the cupcakes were "vegan." Success!!

 

I also made a "Birthday Party Outfit," and she was happy to model it. And so happy to wear it. The cupcake on her t-shirt had sprinkles too.

She is such a special person: sweet, kind, modest, smart, and generous among other things. People say she looks just like me... If I were to write about her I would never end.

It was a super fun weekend. Now she is asking if we can go to Jump City on her "real birfday."

Hmmm...

P.