Buffalo Chicken Zoodles with Blue Cheese – hot damn, peeps! Seriously hot.
Beer Bread – using almond meal from making milk. Yes!
Japanese Glazed Sweet Potatoes – that color!!
Cheaters Latte Art – I use a tool to make the swirls – no badass pouring here.
Chicken soft taco sticking it’s tongue out.
Pizza! Pizza! And some super fizzy Popup wine. All the things…
Aloha, dear reader! It’s been a minute since I posted a talkie type. Not gonna lie, I was a little stuck in a rut. None of the thoughts I was having seemed share worthy. Simple as that.
During that time, I did, however, make some delicious foodstuffs, and here we are with them. It had been a long while since I’d made pizza or drank wine, so why not? There were many sounds indicative of gustatory pleasure in that meal, boy howdy! In all of them, truth be told. We’ve got our system down here.
Save this past weekend, where we were out sans coats in the near seventy-degree garden doing our final rake up, it’s been feeling rather wintry. Several storms have brought actual accumulation, which has yet to fully melt. YAY! Unless something biblical occurs, we are always in need of moisture in the high desert. I will make no complaints. No, ma’am.
Hope life in your corner of the world is aces. Until next time…
My aunt and uncle (Hi Betty and Phil!) have family in Arizona, and on their holiday trip picked pounds upon pounds of grapefruits, lemons, and oranges, generously sharing the bounty. We ate many, many and had plenty more grapefruits to make marmalade! Delightfully delicious. I added some rye whiskey to a few and wow-ie, best friends in a jar.
I love me a gyro, but, for the longest time, struggled to make my own taste like the twirl on a spit restaurant variety. I am pleased to report I finally got it right. The key? Add waaaay more oregano and thyme than you think will do the trick. I also pulverized some almond flour crackers to nail the texture. A Greek salad win!
Way back in our first apartment days, we loved to eat at this little local joint called Z-Teca (It is now Q-Doba and not at all the same). My favorite all-the-things burrito thereabouts was a poblano pesto. We had ample frozen poblanos from Farmer Greg’s summer season, and I got to making my closest (and runniest) memory of it.
We simmered it with cauliflower rice and topped it with smoked scallops for a Mexican flag beautiful lunch, accompanied by roasted pepper tomato soup. Um, y e s.
Barely visible white bean and green chile soup, topped with cilantro, green onion, and jalapeno.
Smoked pork shoulder (with whizzed red & green poblanos and a touch of o.j.), pintos, and cilantro lime slaw. Southwestern flavors pretty much rule our roost, friends.
Ground chicken, zaatar, golden raisin, dried cherry, jalapeno, and carrot skillet. We served it over spinach and red lettuce.
A similar blend of Mediterranean flavors, mixed with zoodles and cabbage, with homemade pitas. Sometimes you just gotta.
More Southwestern foodstuffs: butternut squash “queso”, cauliflower lime rice, pintos, and pulled chicken. Oh, and prickly pear margaritas (scroll here for the recipe) from the fruits I harvested this fall. Woot!
I’ve never seen a goose poop mid-flight, but can you imagine?
How about that for a beginning to mark the end of 2021? All told, it was a pretty great year for us, thank goodness. Not that shitty things didn’t happen. Nearly six hundred family homes are mere ashes after burning rapid-fire near my childhood home. People we care about died (one from COVID) and got brain cancer, while others got married and had beautiful, healthy babies. Two had successful surgeries! Relationships ended and others flourished. Good and bad, how life always is. There’s probably a more eloquent saying for that, but I’m too lazy to look at the moment.
Two of my favorite people, hanging out for Christmas! We spent three nights at my parents, where Greg and my dad laughed and played ample pool while sipping adult beverages. I did not document my mom and I making tamales, some of the best ever, or us eating them, but I assure you it happened. We also listened to holiday songs, watched movies, admired the glow of Christmas lights, and played Farkle with my Aunt Mari. All the good things. Y-E-S, yes!
Juniper played and played in the yard of my childhood, and, as always, how fun it was to see the place of my burgeoning imagination run riot with her joy.
Shuttling about, we spent a grand evening at Michael and Mary’s, and another under the twinkle of holiday lights and the roar of laughter with our dear, dear, Andie Card. On the afternoon we went home, we stopped by my cousin Stephanie’s for treats and conversation and to see Stella grow stronger and stronger. An abundance of riches.
Yesterday, before the snow. Last night, after first noticing the arrival, I dashed onto the porch in my bare feet and shouted with glee. We awoke to several inches and it continues to fall. My word, how long in coming that was. Here’s hoping we get heaps and tons more this 2022.
And finally, the last of the 2021 food photos. For our holiday treats, I made: biscochitos (and created my best iteration, yet), peanut butter fudge (also my own recipe, which tastes like a PayDay!), toasted walnut fudge, cherry mashers (thank you, Joanna Gaines, though I used butter), red chile pecan brittle, butterscotch potato chip shortbread, peppermint slice, and brownie cups (peppermint chip and not-so-plain).
Our New Year’s Eve meal was zoodles with a fabulous Italian sausage and mushroom red sauce (homemade, duh!) and extra cheesy garlic bread. We live large!!
Here’s hoping this is the year we really bust through COVID and make every sweet dream come true! HUGS…
Happy day after Halloween! Are you good and sugared up? Greg and I did our fair share of partaking in the stash of candy, to be sure. They are probably not new, but I only discovered them this year – giant chewy Nerds! So very good. Yesterday was also cookie day, which took the sugar rush to the next level and kept me from getting a pleasant sleep. As Grandpa would say, “The bunnies were chasing me!”
It was wonderful to see so many kids out and having fun. I suppose the only bummer of the day was our weather taking a misty turn. We need the moisture, really and truly, but I wish it had waited a day for the trick-or-treaters.
It is Juniper sweater season, the aspens are dropping glorious leaves at every turn, and I’m trying batches of hot honey and hot sauce with Farmer Greg’s chiles. We also completed our first two puzzles of the season, so you know, all the signs of fall!
Finally, a pretty lunch bowl – chicken tinga, pinto beans, corn, and cauliflower “rice.” Very Weight Watchers approved. Which reminds me, I am down 13 pounds, and Greg, drumroll please…23!! Testosterone really is a body’s best friend when it comes to weight loss. Lucky Duck!
I love HOT coffee. To get quite literal, I’m talking 150 degrees hot, because, of course I measured! On a French press day, I pour it into our old school Corning Ware pot and let it big bubble boil before adding the wonder that is milk. Mostly lotsa, lotsa homemade almond, cow a distant second, I know – snob. But I’ve probably burned a coffee connoisseur bridge or two by boiling it in a pot on the stove. Eeek! Now that we have an espresso machine, that milk’s gotta be creamy-steamy steamed. I like what I like! I sit at my usual spot at the table, sip slowly, and revel in every single sip. I really do.
Lately, I’ve been reading a Psalm while I’m at it. Aside from a few Catechism classes as a wee one, I have never had any sort of bible study. If you are a religious Christian, this might be the moment to avert your eyes. <<PAUSE TO WAIT>> Thus far, I am finding them to be mostly angry rants against the Lord and wishing misery upon others, when I was looking for a bit more eloquence, hope, and aspiration. Let’s just say it answers a lot of other questions about Christianity for me. We’ll see how long I stick with it. <<PAUSE OVER>>
And now for TEA! For reasons I cannot explain, it is pretty much a polar opposite situation. I do not enjoy it at coffee temperature. At all. TOO HOT!! So I wait, generally for enough time to have nearly forgotten about it. Then it is lukewarm perfect and I GULP it down in a truly separate but equal heart aflutter fashion. Odd funny, and another very unsurprisingly me, Colleen Sohn, thing to do. Oh, the multitude on the list. Like anyone cares or needs to know, but alas, here we are!
And finally, the photos. The last bunches of mint and tomatoes. So pretty. Praise be to the beauty of fall. I do not remember the last time it didn’t snow or freeze in such a terrible manner that the majority of leaves immediately fell, so very green and sad, denying us the beauty we are now experiencing. The trees are alive with color, dear reader, and I could not be happier about it!
The amazing salad -Vietnamese Pork with quick pickled radish, jicama, and carrot, and with a bevy of other chopped goodness – the last of Farmer Greg’s cayenne & curly endive, then jalapeno, cucumber, cilantro, mint (from above!), purple and green cabbage, lettuce. Good grief, the chopping! It was super-yummy, but if there’s going to be a next time, I will need a little help. I was at it for an hour, chop, chop, chopping, and pickling. We downed them in less than ten. Not the best ratio, in my humble opinion.
