Cookies & Hummus & Friends

So last weekend after the Latin fundraiser dinner we spent the day baking cookies for B.'s brother's fiancé's bridal shower. Well L. also ended up with a truck load of Latin garbanzo bean salad(think roughly 6lbs) Well this salad was quite delicious in flavor as it contained chipotles in adobo, jalepenos, lime juice, olive oil, onion, tomato and lots of cilantro all marinated for a couple of hours. Well we thought we could make it better by transforming it with the help of my brand new food processor(Thanks Mom!) into hummus. What we didn't know is how much 6lbs of hummus actually is......lets just say we are still eating after giving a lot of it away.

For the hummus we mixed the salad with tahini, lemon juice, Spanish olive oil from Trader Joe's, salt, pepper, and some Sweet Ancho Roasted Red Pepper spread from Harry & David. It turned out to be a sweet/spicy Latin flared hummus. Not what you would really expect from hummus, but still a good dip. One friend of ours told me the other day she ate it for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

While we tirelessly worked on the hummus, B. got to work on making sugar cookie dough. She endlessly rolled out dough and cut miniature cookies out for the next 3 hours, while L. and I snuck pieces of dough and "deformed" cookies. L helped decorate them with sprinkles and icing, I tried to do the whole sprinkle things, but failed miserable, I figure I will just stick to cooking.

B. did let me make my own creation with the leftover dough. I decided to make my Mii. He later went for a swim in the icing and ended up drowning and getting eaten by a shark or maybe that was me.

A Good Day of Food

So I don't have much time to post before my battery runs out but I wanted to share with you my amazing lunch and afternoon snack I made. For lunch I started with a veggie sandwich made on 12 grain bread(yes it has lots of whole nuts and seeds, yum!). It had sweet yellow bell peppers, a sliver of red onion and fresh baby field greens. This was all topped off with vegannaise my new favorite sandwich spread. Ok so most of you are probably thinking, "what is vegannaise? It sounds disgusting!" But before you judge you must try. It is mayo made out of grapeseed oil. It replaces the egg in the traditional permanent emulsion, with soy protein and mustard flour as the emulsifier. With those ingredients, brown rice syrup, and apple cider vinegar, the vegannaise has a slightly nutty, sweet tang, right up there competing with the mysterious tang of Miracle Whip.

We also made up a great batch of corn cake, the recipe for which I got off of a friend, who found it in a cookbook she received for her wedding. It is real simple and is part cake, part cornbread, almost good enough for dessert. Once it is done baking, simply slather your piece it in butter and enjoy. The recipe is below.

This afternoon I also made tropical fruit salsa and a greek hummus with oregano, lemon juice, tahini, and cumin. Sadly there won't be much for me to enjoy since most of it is going to the women's overnighter tomorrow evening. Hopefully, although late, I will get to Lauren's pumpkin challenge this weekend and have something fun to share.

Corn Cake

• 1 box Jiffy corn muffin mix
• 1 box Jiffy yellow cake mix (or half of a regular one)
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup of milk

Beat eggs and milk in a bowl. Add mixes and stir until combined. Pour in a 9x9 square pan and bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes.

Quick Dinners #1

Tonight Fuego is at PR and is eating dinner with ROTC, so I had to figure out a quick dinner I could throw together for myself before I got working on stuff. I made pork fajitas on flour tortillas with a "dollop of Daisy"TM. The peppers and onions are the seasoning mostly for this dish which has a lot of punch for the ease and speed of this dish. It took me about 15 minutes from start to finish for this.
Pork Fajitas

• Bell pepper
• Onion
• pork(or any other meat)
• black pepper
• garlic salt
• hot sauce

Slice the peppers and onions, toss in pan with 1 T oil. cube or slice meat, toss in pan. Add salt and pepper to taste. Saute until peppers are tender and meat cooked through. Add hot sauce for a kick in the end if you wish. Serve with sour cream on a flour tortilla.

Latin Fundraiser Dinner

So Saturday night the team from I-life that is going to Honduras put on an amazing fundraising event for the new AIDs clinic. L. organized a fantastic feast of steak and chicken fajitas, cheese and veggie enchiladas (the most amazingly gooey, unhealthy enchiladas I have had in a long time), sopapillas, pebre, guac, tortilla soup, and rice pudding and "churros" for dessert.

First off, I didn't have an fajitas, so I can't comment on those, but the sopapillas and pebre made by M. were amazing. I have heard about her sopapillas for a long time but by the time I got there to try them they were always gone. She spent a semester in Chile, so she must know her way around the amazing pebre or cilantro salsa, as it is sometimes referred to in English.

M. made the delicious broccoli and spinach cheese enchiladas, that were sinfully divine. L. also made the garbanzo bean salad that you can see on the right of my plate, which the leftovers proved to make a nice experiment for Sunday. K. made a rockin rice pudding and C. made sweet churros. The girls(and boys) did an amazing job with the fundraiser dinner and it was a lot of fun. Thanks guys.

Cajexitalian? Did I make up a new cuisine?

Ok so it really tasted much better than it looks. And by no means is it "healthy". It is what started off as a Cajun-style lasagna but what then through a series of unfortunate events (not planning, not shopping for vegetable...) It ended up with a new Mexican flair of chili beans and corn. I started off with some leftover red sauce from our pasta two nights ago and added it to the pan with the first layer or no-bake noodles. I then sauteed Andouille sausage, red onion, and green peppers in a skillet. Once that was done I added a red pepper alfredo sauce that I had laying in the back of the cupboard. Mixed the ricotta with cajun seasonings and layered the Andouille mixture first, noodles, corn, beans, ricotta, noodles, sauce. Baked it for 40 minutes at 350 and had a tasty meal with about 20 min of actual work, not bad for a weekday dinner. Plus we had FF, sugar free Jello with FF cool whip for dessert. (something had to be healthy) Stay tuned for this weekend which will hopefully be a cooking extravaganza with recipes.

New Look

After two years of dormancy my blog has been revived and reawakened by the influence of Christy at balance and Lauren at Genki Tummy. Hopefully I will soon get into the swing of actually remembering to take pictures of what I make and eat and post it up here along with recipes. Here's to a new life for this blog!

Black Bean and Corn Salsa

2 (15-ounce) cans black beans, drained and rinsed

3 (11-ounce) cans Mexican corn with peppers, drained and rinsed

2 tomatoes, chopped

2 firm avocados, peeled and chopped

4 green onions, sliced

1 small red onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 cup olive oil

1/4 cup white vinegar

1 (.6-ounce) package Good Season Italian Dressing

Chopped cilantro, optional

PREPARATION: In a large mixing bowl combine black beans, Mexican corn, tomatoes, avocados, green onions, red onion, garlic, olive oil, white vinegar and Good Season Italian Dressing. Gently stir together and let set a couple of hours in the refrigerator. Serve with tortilla chips.

Makes 12 cups.

Nutritional information per 1/4-cup serving: 63 calories, 4 grams fat, 2 grams protein, 8 grams carbohydrate, 2 grams fiber, 0 milligrams cholesterol, 171 milligrams sodium.