From our Food Goddess, TaMara:
The day got away from me and I almost forgot to put this together. So it’s kind of quick and to the point. For the dog lovers, Bixby’s latest diary is here.
Okay, enough of the chit-chat, bring on the recipes.
How about Fish Tacos? Recipe and full menu here.
Kid-friendly Tortilla Pizzas, recipe here.
JefferyW makes all the good stuff you see pictured above here.
And this week’s Dinner Menu – Carne en su Jugo – recipes and shopping list are here.
Now, what’s on your menu for the weekend? Cookin’ something good, share your recipes in the comments.
It’s hot as the blazes here and expected to stay that way through the weekend, so soups are on hold and salads have moved to the front of the boards. Tonight’s featured recipe is a nice fresh Tortilla bowl that you can really fill with whatever makes you happy.
One of my favorite things to do is have salad in tortilla shell salad bowls. I have 4 heat-resistant (Pyrex) bowls – 1.5 to 2.5 qt bowls work best – that I use to make my tortilla bowls. I lightly oil tortillas, place one in each bowl, so it takes on a bowl shape. I bake them at 425° until bowls are toasted golden, 7 to 12 minutes.
Alternately, there are tortilla bowl forms you can buy if you’re inclined and at the store recently I also saw pre-cooked tortilla bowls – though I would check the fat content on those, it could be very high, since they may be deep-fried. Also, you can make foil bowls, lightly oiled and use those as your forms, that works pretty well. You don’t need the foil to come up to the top of the tortilla shell, about half-way up will allow the tortilla to keep its shape while it bakes.
Whatever way you choose, this is a nice salad to fill them with:
Southwestern Taco Salad
4 tortilla bowls
1 tbsp olive oil
6 green onions, chopped
1 lb chicken breasts, cubed or 1 lb lean ground beef
1 pkg. fajita seasoning mix (recipe here)
½ cup water
½ head iceberg lettuce, shredded
½ head red leaf lettuce, shredded
1 tomato, diced
2 oz sliced black olives
6 oz canned corn, drained
14 oz black beans, drained
8 oz salsa
8 oz ranch dressing
4 oz shredded Mexican 4-blend cheese
skilletHeat oil in skillet and sauté onions, add chicken and brown for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Add fajita seasoning and water. Stir and let simmer on medium-low heat.
Layer ¼ ea: lettuce, tomato, olives, beans & chicken in tortilla bowls. Mix salsa & ranch dressing together, add some to salad & garnish with cheese. Serve.
MomSense
Bixby is such a beautiful pup!! Thanks for sharing those pictures of him.
Schlemazel
I have two projects I hope to complete but this weekend is not looking good right now.
I want to make caramelized white chocolate. Its not hard and I am interested in how it tastes.
I want to figure out the magic in my moms special cheese cake. She made it with cottage cheese which is not that unusual as there are thousands of recipes but none of them have the correct consistency. I think I finally figured out the trick, she didn’t blend or mash the cottage cheese so the curd remained whole.
We still have daylilies to move & I have to work some plus we have a hockey event tomorrow if possible. So we’ll see.
We have a great little Baja style Mexican place near us that does all sorts of seafood tacos that are so good & so cheap I don’t even pretend to try to make them.
Amir Khalid
Those paws … Bixby looks like he’s got hands.
? Martin
Meanwhile in the land that rain forgot:
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
I guess it must have been fate that the cafe I’m having dinner at was out of mini quiches so I got chicken tamales instead. I start my sad FODMAPs elimination on Monday, so I’m having fun today.
Violet
Bixby is adorable. And I love tacos.The very, very best tacos I have ever had were barbacoa from a street cart in Zacatecas, Mexico. Amazing. Went back night after night they were so good.
Violet
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Are you doing FODMAPs elimination by yourself or did you find a dietician or someone to work with?
Mike in NC
Whenever the wife tries to serve turkey tacos, I run screaming from the house.
debit
Good lord, that puppy is massive. Also, too, utterly adorable.
Gravenstone
I made my first attempt at Italian beef tonight. Sadly, I overcooked the meat. Hopefully it will still taste appealing, even if it ends up a little dry.
max
How about Fish Tacos? Recipe and full menu here.
Actually, just now there was nobody here so I made chicken liver tacos. (That is, take some chicken livers, cut them in moderate sized chunks, fry with black pepper until medium, pile some lettuce, tomatoes, onions and the livers on soft corn totillas, add some lime juice and salsa and good to go. Didn’t think to add cilantro, probably should have, oh well. Simple enough.)
Tasty!
max
[‘Shoulda made one more.’]
Mike in NC
@Violet: Ever heard of a song called ‘Mexican Radio’ by Wall of Voodoo? It has the lyrics “I wish I was in Tijuana, eating barbecued iguana”.
That’s actually something you can do there.
PurpleGirl
I love Bixby’s Diary. He is so adorable and, oh boy, is he getting big now.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Violet:
I’m seeing a dietician through work (one of the fringe benefits), but I’m doing the meal planning on my own with a book (“IBS-Free at Last”) and the Monash U app and website. Monash seems to have the most up-to-date and reliable information, so I’m mostly relying on them. I check in with the RD at the end of the elimination period.
My tummy decided to remind me again last night that it DOES NOT LIKE my normal diet, so we’ll see if this helps any.
Tree With Water
Fish tacos sound a lot like french fries with mayonnaise to me.
Admittedly, I am a pork & beans, hand me a can opener type of guy.
? Martin
@Tree With Water: Good fish tacos are sublime. One of the best things about living in SoCal – no shortage of places to get them. The best places no habla, and the tacos cost $1, with another $1 getting you a full-sugar Fanta.
Violet
@Mike in NC: Yep. I know that song. Haven’t tried iguana, though!
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Good luck, I hope it works for you. I’ve heard people it has worked for and people it hasn’t. It can help with figuring out what you’re sensitive too, which is half the battle anyway.
Edit: How long is your elimination period? Is it two weeks or are you going longer?
jibeaux
Getting an ad for Thom Tillis in US Senate race. Tillis is the reason our high school has one of those fundraiser thermometers outside. It’s for textbooks. So if you have extra $, donate to Kay Hagan, a milquetoast Den who has the great advantage of not being Thom Fucking Tillis.
Violet
Tonight I used up some stuff that was lying around. Chicken breast, sliced thin and pounded even thinner. Added the last of some cream cheese and some homemade apricot jam we were given, rolled them up, used some toothpicks to hold them together and baked them. Pretty good. Leftover roasted potatoes, re-roasted since the oven was one. Very crispy and yummy. The last of the lacinato kale for a vegetable. Not a bad meal. Pretty easy Good combination of flavors and textures.
p.a.
No cooking this weekend. Tomorrow Oktoberfest at German-American Social Club, Sunday Connecticut BBQ Championship (as a visitor, not a competitor; those folks are ser-eee-ous).
guachi
On my plate for tomorrow for food is a pot roast and your recipe for Chicken Tortilla Soup from a few weeks ago. My wife requested both.
The pot roast is right out of the Better Homes Cook Book, although my wife purchased London Broil (which is probably a cut of round not a chuck roast). Simple recipe of carrots, onions, celery, potatoes, seasoned with salt, pepper, worcestershire, beef broth and probably a few other spices. Let the crock pot do its magic for 8 hours.
Upon feeding my wife the Soup last week she asked two questions – Is there any salt? and is there any chicken broth? The answer was ‘no’ on both accounts. I’m not sure why the recipe has no salt listed, but it doesn’t. Added 1 tsp salt to a half recipe and it made a big difference.
Yatsuno
@Violet:
This is my favourite version of kale! Milder & cooks up sweet if you let it go long enough. Plus you can eat the stems so much less waste!
Violet
@Yatsuno: It’s been on sale a couple of places lately–organic, even. I’ve been buying it for the last few weeks. Really enjoy it.
Wag
This is my new favorite kind of Tortilla
Wag
Link fail. http://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/spanish-tortilla
p.a.
Mostly New Englanders, last year some teams from N.Y.,Penn., and Tenn. A R.I. team won best overall; I asked if they had a restaurant or catered, nope. Just retirees who travel to comps. anywhere they feel like driving. Big investment for many teams: RV’s and trailers set up with commercial grade smokers (and some pretty impressive home made units too.)
p.a.
Next-day fish taco is a great way to finish leftover fish, or any protein. I’m almost strictly a corn taco user now. Haven’t made my own yet.
srv
CDC Alert: Polio-ish enterovirus like cluster in kids around Denver since August:
http://emergency.cdc.gov/han/han00370.asp
? Martin
@srv: Is that different from the respiratory disease that was going around the midwest? Sounds like it since they say it’s localized to the Denver area. Frightening.
srv
@? Martin:
If EV-D68 broke out first in Denver, then…
p.a.
@srv: Looks like it’s time for the House to cut NIH and CDC funds again.
Steeplejack
@? Martin:
I’m not seeing the (latest) icon in front of your nym. Tried a few different character encoding options, but no luck so far. Suggestions? (Firefox on Windows 7 here.)
Seems like I could see the previous ones.
srv
@efgoldman: Says all but one has current vaccinations.
What is the polio vax regimen now? One shot? Maybe if there was some bad vax years back, but they’re apparently not all the same age.
Steeplejack
I had a great dinner tonight. Baked potato for the first time in I can’t remember how long—even made sure to get sour cream at the grocery today—and a rib-eye steak. The store has a new, small display in the meat section for an “organic” brand called Wild Harvest, and the steak was from that. No hormones and no antibiotics (allegedly). Only marginally more expensive, so what the heck. Tasted very good. Opened a bottle of Apothic Red, my current go-to red plonk, and have been nursing that through Law and Order reruns and Web surfing. Good times.
Also: I love Mexican food (“Mexican” = Tex-Mex), and I do like fish tacos, but they always seem like a bit of a stretch. I come from the San Antonio/south Texas tradition, where Mexican (Tex-Mex) is beans and dirt, maybe with a little beef and pork. Fish tacos always say California to me. Just sayin’.
Steeplejack
@efgoldman:
As per usual.
Wag
@efgoldman:
No. That’s Boulder.
Mnemosyne
@Violet:
I’m going to start with two weeks and see how I feel. One thing I really liked about Patsy Catsos’s book is that she doesn’t present FODMAPs as the be-all and end-all. Her attitude is more like, Try it, see if it works. If it doesn’t, try something else. I’m always very wary of diets/food plans (like Paleo) that claim that they will completely transform your life.
scav
@Steeplejack: Well, Tx-Mx doesn’t define all of Mx any more than it defines all of the Us. Hell of a lot of coast on that there country — especially in light of many of the usual meat critters being post-conquest. Just addin’.
Mnemosyne
@Steeplejack:
Dude, California is just as Mexican as Texas is, if not more so. We’re just influenced by a different region.
TaMara (BHF)
@guachi: I go back and forth on salt with that recipe. Most of the time, the vinegar and limejuice are enough for me, then other times I add salt. No chicken broth because its has that thick vegetable broth to it.
This is a good comment though, because it gives me the chance to remind everyone, use the recipes as an outline, then add whatever makes you happy. Me? I love lots of pepper. I go crazy with it.
Thanks for all the puppy comments, I do adore him.
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne:
California ≠ Tex-Mex, as I said above.
Mnemosyne
Apparently my short-term elimination diet will allow me to eat durian, but after seeing “Portlandia,” I’m afraid to try it.
karen
@srv:
It’s reached Virginia. At this rate it’ll probably hit NY in two weeks.