Sopapillas, I remember them as a kid but I don’t think I’ve had one since. I remember them to be awesome non the less. Come to find out its basically deep frying a tortilla. Since shortening is not so healthy for you (as if deep frying is) I had to search a little while to find a recipe for sopapillas that did not require it. I eventually found it deep in the comments of an allrecipes.com recipe. It was to remove the shortening and replace the water with milk. I went ahead and used coconut milk and it was perfect. They came out with just the right sponginess. I ended up using my pasta machine to roll premeasured dough balls out to a specific thickness. Experimenting with thicknesses I ended up rolling them at a six then a five and keeping them about the size of the palm of my hand. They fry super fast too, mine were like four seconds on each side. Top ‘em off with some honey (God’s candy) and your good to go. The recipe says to cool the dough in the fridge for an hour. I fried some right away and cooled the rest overnight. They both came out great.

You can see here, although deflated they still hold their pocket well and are just the right thickness. So soft, sweet and yummy.

I’ve personally always preferred French toast to pancakes. Actually one of my weird quirks is that I really don’t even like pancakes that much. Ever since I was a kid I’ve always made French toast by simply coating the bread with beaten eggs, cranking the skillet to high and wham bam thank you Mam! That’s good and all but I’ve since found this recipe in a magazine by delish.com that takes it a bit further. I did alter the new recipe by supplementing the cows milk with coconut milk (which I think I’m going to start doing from now on) and it was super good. This recipe calls for cooking the toast on medium for about eight minutes on each side which makes it come out basically perfect. Now a few days ago when opening the fridge our maple syrup went for a crash landing and the jar broke into a syrupy mess. So in the pinch we used honey for half the toast and corn syrup for the other half. That’s another thing, I never liked maple syrup when I was little (I adore it now) so I always used clear corn syrup for my French toast. I still think it’s a wonderful combo but would never use it on pancakes, that just seems wrong. If you’ve payed any attention to this blog you will know I try my best to use only unrefined sugars and whole wheat flours etc. but one thing I have a hard time resisting is powdered sugar. I have actually found an unrefined version online but I’ve yet to order it, someday just not today. With some fresh blueberries to top it off this French toast was divine. J described it as amazing.

I made these cookies last night which received a wonderful reception. A little introduction into fall since it’s actually cooled down here in Vegas to a chilling 88 degrees. I even noticed some leaves falling off the trees last weekend. A few stores are even busting out their Halloween gear already so I guess I’m just feeling it. These cookies were perfect right out of the oven with some vanilla ice cream on the side, a match made in heaven. Try these spicy little puppies out, you’re sure to love them and you too can start easing your way into fall. Although I’m not sure we really want to go there just yet, do we?

I halved this recipe and it was plenty for our small family. We finished them easily but any more and we would be giving the rest out to friends.

A couple of quick stories. First the Pa Boy, it’s named after a sandwich Pa made when he was in town a couple months ago (no shrimp, just kinda clever). When we went to Trader Joe’s he was “allowed” to pick out some items of his own. The things he grabbed were deli meat and these awesome little artisan rolls (and an apple pie). When we got back home Pa made up some sandwiches, Z ate ‘em up like crazy. We’ve been getting these rolls for sandwiches “like when Pa was here” ever since. A simple sandwich consisting of sliced deli meat, tomatoes and mayonnaise, add whatever you like but keeping it simple is best here. We mmmm with every bite of these. Thank you for dropping these little babies in da basket Pa.

Story two is my battle with homemade mayonnaise. This is my third attempt, the first two being a complete disaster. First I tried an Alton Brown recipe from foodnetwork.com. It said to let it sit out for a couple hours to finish. I did that and two hours later it was still an oily mess (my technique I’m sure). When my friend Chris was in town a couple weeks ago I got little closer to mayonnaise but this time it came out tasting like salty oil. It was so thick and yellow it made J want to hurl just looking at it. I tried to make a deviled egg with it thinking it would cover up the wrongness of the whole thing but the stuff was soooooo thick it was srsly gross. This third attempt I was looking through a cook book when and I came across a new recipe. It was taunting me saying, come on, third times a charm, you can do this man. On that first attempt making mayo it was with a hand whisk. The second time a hand mixer. This last glorious time was with a blender. It was very simple and the results were amazing with instant gratification. I slapped some of it on the rolls right away and made a Pa boy sandwich. Remember this kids, NEVER NEVER NEVER GIVE UP!!! I mean look at it, doesn’t that look pretty damn scrumptious for mayonnaise? I think so.

The fresh organic green beans have been looking so good at the store lately I can’t resist picking up a carton. When I get home I figure out what I will do with them. Last time it was Chinese buffet style but this time it’s succotash. Love the word, never really knew what it was. Now I do and I love it. Super simple and tasty, it just feels healthy to eat it. When the edamame beans and corn mix in your mouth it has a wonderful buttery taste. I altered the ingredient ratio because I only had so many edamame beans to work with so I had to make up for them with extra green beans. I think this is one of those recipes you can just eyeball after you’ve made it once. You could even simplify it down to one cup of each vegetable, two tablespoons of olive oil, salt and pepper and there you have it. Succotash, you can learn more here if you’re a major dork.

We served this succotash on the side of some broiled rainbow trout with some thinly sliced roasted zucchini for the other side. A lot of great quality veggies here. J and Z actually love/freak out for these roasted zucchinis. I would have never imagined it, but I’m loving it.

We enjoy Mexican food in this house once a week if not every couple weeks so taco seasoning is a regular item we pick up from the grocery store (Lawry’s brand). There are few things worse than canceling our taco plans because we don’t have any seasoning in the cupboard. Well last time we were at the grocery I knew we didn’t have taco seasoning at home (it was on the list), but walking through the spice section I was like nah, I’ll just make it myself. I’d been wanting to make chimichanga’s for several days and needed something to spice up the beef (grass fed beef of course). Time for homemade taco seasoning! It was actually quite simple, I used the first recipe I found online from AllRecipes.com which had a five star rating (or close too) out of about 1,600 reviews. That’s usually a good sign. I had most of the spices here except for crushed red pepper flakes which I know we have somewhere but I haven’t seen ‘em in a while and I didn’t really want ‘em in there for little Z’s sake. The seasoning came out pretty hot so she still couldn’t eat any meat that had been seasoned anyway, but I always set aside some with just salt and pepper for her anyway, just in case. It wasn’t quite as good as Lawry’s but when I looked at the ingredients of Lawry’s it had sugar and cocoa powder in it. It does add a little more sweetness to it so I’ll most likely be messing around with adding those two ingredients next time as well. Maybe add a little sugar yourself when you make it. If it works out better for my taste I’ll update this recipe here.

The goods baby, they look so nice together, all those wonderful spices.

The oven baked chimichangas were awesome. Homemade tortillas, corn and peas mixed into the beef and spices, refried beans, yum. I’ll be making these next time we have Mexican and do an official post with the recipe etc. They were lacking enchilada sauce and I might have crisped them up just a few minutes more in the oven. Don’t get me wrong, they were nice and crispy but we were super hungry and didn’t have the patience nor the stomach for experimenting with baking times. Z loved it and ate the whole thing. It works well for kids because the baked tortillas harden/seal it up so there’s less bottom drop out (mess).

Oh my my, Oh hell yes, you gotta put on that party dress… I’m not really sure why I just wrote that but for some reason that’s what I’m singing in my head when I start thinking about these molten lava chocolate mousse cups. Oh my, hell yes! This is my second attempt making these this week. The first time they never puffed up, they tasted wonderful but were more like moist brownies. They also shrunk up so they were like two bites per serving. I couldn’t figure out why but I did have several theories, one being that I supplemented (oh no!) dried cane sugar instead of white granulated. When I went to write out this recipe it dawned on me that I may have missed an egg too (I do this sometimes when halving recipes). I did some quick detective work opening up the egg carton and counting eggs. Sure enough that was the first mistake (looking at the pic below I also see two eggs, there should have been three folks). But the biggest mistake was folding the whipped, full of air, egg whites into the melted chocolate and butter too fast and rough. I basically deflated all the air out of my whipped egg whites. This second time I gently folded the two together keeping it more like the light, fluffy egg whites consistency. So try to keep as much air in the folding process as possible. Once again it came down to technique not ingredients. I made a test cup last night with the new and improved fluffy version and didn’t cook it long enough. It needed 5 or 10 extra minutes from what the recipe calls for so more like 35 to 40 in my oven (I added that into the recipe below). Finally I got it pretty much perfect and still did it using the all natural, unrefined, dried cane sugar and 100 percent whole ingredients.

The end result was a molten hot mousse-y gooey goodness. I’m pretty sure I could have just chilled the mixture and ate it without even cooking it, more of a chilled chocolate mousse. Raw eggs though. It actually rose up out of the cup higher but when I dropped it onto the towel by accident it started deflating right away. I snapped some pics as quick as I could. Everyone loved this. Thumbs up from little Z, but of course. It is mostly chocolate, butter and sugar.

How can you go wrong with this five piece ensemble? That’s the all natural, unrefined sugar in the cup on the right (I have a link to more info in the recipe below).

My good good friend Chris came down from LA this week to visit. The first night we stayed up a little too late talking about food and cooking, you know man stuff. A lot of that talking was about grilling so a couple days later we’re lighting up the coals for a little backyard BBQ. First we had to hit Trader Joe’s for some special ingredients for his “BBQ potato salad” he was telling me about that first night. For some reason I couldn’t really imagine/get what he was saying about the sauce he was trying to explain so when he actually finished it I was like oh, I’ve made something like this before. These potatoes were so freaking tasty I couldn’t stop munching them. I don’t grill much for some reason but man that’s going to change. These were too delicious to not make again. Very simple and I love the name, BBQ potato salad, yup!

Potatoes on the grill getting all marked up.

The man, the myth, the instigator, Cruz.

The other side of the grill. Those portobellos were seriously awesome.

Whats more American than the Chinese buffet? Well, lot’s of things but you know what I mean. J is not huge on the Chinese buffets but me and little Z have made it kind of a tradition when we are spending a daddy daughter day together. In my opinion you can actually make the Chinese buffet a healthy meal if you can control yourself. There are a ton of vegetable dishes to choose from and they usually keep all the fried stuff together so you can just stay away form that particular island. They usually have a dedicated island for fruit and salads too. Now, I know their not using all organic ingredients and there is a ton of oil, sodium and unrefined sugars in there so it’s not something to eat all the time, but the bad rap they get sometimes is not too deserving. Anyway, when we hit the Chinese buffet one of the standards is the green beans. Simple, crispy and in a wonderful little sauce. I grab a claw full on my first round for every time, sometimes even for seconds, I just love em. So in my attempts to recreate all the things I love from restaurants as well as my attempt to get more veggies in our household meals, behold the Chinese buffet style green beans!

On a side note this was my first experience using rapadura/sucanat sugar as opposed to turbinado sugar. I was always under the impression that turbinado (sugar in the RAW) was unrefined but when I started writing a post about sweeteners I realized that what I was using was actually refined after all. So I made the switch to rapadura/sucanat sugar (organic dried whole sugar cane) to replace white sugar in recipes. I’ll go into more depth on this topic in a post sometime in the near future (it’s in the works). While gathering links for this post I also noticed that the Rapunzel brand has a powdered sugar version as well, something I have been thinking about trying to find lately. Me now found, me now happy. You will find links to more info on these products in the recipe ingredients below.

Home on the range baby! Visiting mama Fifi’s house just outside Topeka, Kansas we ventured into the garden and picked some tomatoes, cucumbers and squash. Not sure where the okra came from, either her garden or maybe a neighbor brought them by, either way they were delicious. The corn we picked from the farm next door and it tasted amazing. J and I tried a bite of it raw when we first pulled up to the house and it was sweet as can be. Delbert, the farmer down the road and I shucked that *&%$ and were eating it with butter in no time. Mom fried up the okra and some pork bites and green beans she picked the day before. Some quick and tasty country cooking, though in Kansas so you don’t get off that easy. A nice big slice of cherry pie and vanilla ice cream to top it all off is how it’s done round here. J passed on the pork saving room for extra pie (wink).

This is the corn field next to my mom’s property. I never knew this but corn naturally produces just one ear of corn per stalk. Of course science and business has taught us that two is better than one so they have figured out a way to get each stalk to produce two ears. These luckily were the more natural one ear versions. To be able to tell if corn is ready to be picked for eating you pop open a kernel with you fingernail and if it has milk coming out it’s good to go.

Fresh cherry tomatoes from the garden. They were so good eating them right off the vine warm from the sunshine. mmmmmmm.

Cucumbers on the vine that were not big enough to eat yet but we had plenty humongous ones already picked inside. Temperature reached 106 degrees this day with a heat index of 113. Looks to me like even the cucumbers were taking cover in the shade of the leaves here.

Here’s the home style country cooking. Fry everything or bury it in butter. Love it! Very simple batter, just mix up some egg and soak whatever your going to fry in the eggs for a few minutes. Then roll in/coat with flour salt and pepper and fry it up! I acquired this awesome metal deep plate/bowl set from moms cupboards and the killer copper mixing bowl and colander (from the first picture in this post, top) at my grandmother Helen’s house.

What can we say? Y U M!