Painting Exposition
You asked for photos…so here they are!
This is the whole group of students with our teacher.
And this is my teacher, Héctor Destéfanis, my painting, and me!
Moist Chocolate Avocado Muffins
This recipe was inspired by the Moist Chocolate Avocado Cake recipe by The Curious Baker. My substitutions were as follows:
- Corn/rice flour for teff and buckwheat flour (I can’t find teff where I live, and A doesn’t like buckwheat)
- Cashews for hazelnuts (because that’s what I had in my kitchen)
- Honey for light muscovado sugar (because I don’t bake with sugar, though I think muscovado is an excellent choice)
I also added a generous sprinkle of flax seeds and cocoa nibs inside the mix, and a bit of sesame seeds on top of the muffins, once they were in their cups. AND, a bit of natural, unsweetened peanut butter in the middle, because all baked goods in our house must have both cocoa and peanut butter in them.
Bake for 22-25 minutes, or until a knife comes out clean.
Enjoy, and thanks to The Curious Baker for this great recipe! Sometimes it’s hard to keep doing the same peanut butter and chocolate muffins every week, over and over again. I loved the addition of avocado for moistness.
Southwest Tart with Homemade Yogurt
Just a note: as I continued to eat the leftovers of the Southwest Tart, I started craving a dollop of sour cream on top. Well, we don’t do that kind of dairy, and plus there’s really no equivalent to sour cream down here in Argentina (the Mexican restaurants use this kind of light and creamy cheese as a substitute), so I poured a bit of homemade yogurt on top and let it dribble down the side.
Yummy!
Oma’s Potato Salad on Food52
Photo courtesy of CatherineJagers
My recipe for potato salad (based on my ex mother in law’s recipe) was chosen as part of the Editor’s Picks for Week 50 on Food52. Reviewer CatherineJagers took a gorgeous photo of this salad (above). Check out the full recipe and Catherine’s notes here.
Feel Good Friday, 14th Edition
Here’s the info if you want to join in:
Step 1:
Pick one of these prompts and write about it on your blog! You can:
- Just make a list. List 5 things that made you really happy this week. No matter how bad or boring you think your week was, I bet you can find 5 things.
- Write about something that happened to you this week that really made you smile. Was it your child, husband, or maybe a complete stranger did to you?
- Write about something that YOU did for someone else that really made them happy or laugh.
- Is there something you treasure so much that every single time you look at it, it brings you happiness? Post a pic and tell everyone about it.
- Having a hard week and can’t find one good thing about it? Well then, what is your happy place? What do you think of that makes you happy? A past vacation? A childhood memory? We want to know!
Step 2:
Head over here and link up with Mister Linky’s Magical Widgets. Then go and read at least one other blog and leave them a comment to make their day brighter.
Step 3:
Have fun. Feel good. Smile.
Then, start looking for all of the good things you can write about for next week! Once you start looking for the “good” you will find it everywhere!
Here goes…
One of my goals with this blog was to get more comments. In the beginning, I was blogging and blogging, and no comments. I kept at it, but it was kind of frustrating with no feedback. I saw lots of visitors, but wasn’t sure if they were actually reading, or bouncing off to something else.
So one of the milestones I set for myself was for my total comments to reach the total post number (which obviously keeps growing). This doesn’t really chalk up to a one comment per post average, because I generally reply to each comment, often one by one.
But, as of yesterday, there were 567 posts, and 567 comments (that’s not counting spam of course, which gets trapped by Akismet and is filtered regularly by me). A BIG thank you hug to everyone who has ever posted a comment here. I appreciate each and every one!!
EcoHotelology, in case you were wondering, was at 16 posts and 19 comments yesterday, so it’s off to a great start.
My next milestone for comments is a 2-to-1 ratio.
Thanks again and happy weekend!! Hugs to all.
Southwest Tart
I know, I know. The name sounds less than appealing. But this is yummy in a big way. The original name was Taco Pie, but I really didn’t get much of a taco feel from it, at least in the Mexican sense (I don’t think I ever once saw a ground beef taco while living in Mexico). This is more of a Tex Mex recipe. Or a Southwest recipe?
Keep in mind this is another hearty fall/winter dish. Sorry, Northern Hemisphere readers. I wouldn’t recommend this one for a hot summer evening.
This is a two-part recipe: I’m including the directions separately for the cornbread base and the tart filling.
Start out by preheating your oven to 350°F/180°C.
Ingredients for cornbread base:
1 cup Gluten-free flour (I used a blend of rice flour and fine corn flour)
1 cup Cornmeal
1 cup Water
2 Eggs
1/4 cup Olive oil
1/4 cup Honey
4 t. Baking powder
3/4 t. Sea salt
Preparation for cornbread base:
Combine dry ingredients in a mixing bowl, then add moist ingredients. Mix well. Pour into a deep dish tart pan and set aside.
Ingredients for tart filling:
1/2 kg. Ground beef
1 1/2 cups Goat cheese, shredded
2 Yellow onions, finely diced
2 Tomatoes, diced
1 cup Corn kernels (or the kernels of one corn cob, steamed and cut off the cob)
1 fresh Chile pepper, finely diced
7-8 fresh Mushrooms, finely sliced
2 T. Crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 t. Cayenne pepper
1/2 t. Oregano
2 t. Cumin
1 t. Sea salt
Preparation for tart filling:
Dice onions, chile pepper, and tomatoes and shred cheese. Slice mushrooms.
Saute onion in a large saucepan until translucent. Add mushrooms. Once sauteed, add ground beef and cook, breaking up the beef into bits. Add tomatoes and spices, and mix well. Once beef if browned, add corn and mix well. Turn off heat and strain beef in a large colander to drain grease.
Putting it all together:
Spread half of the beef mixture on the cornbread batter base. Top with half the shredded cheese. Repeat, spreading the rest of the beef mixture in the tart pan and topping with the remaining cheese.
Bake, uncovered, for 20-25 minutes, until cheese is melted and the cornbread base sets.
The first photo was of the completed tart getting ready to go into the oven. The second was it just after coming out of the oven, and the third was after serving.
Enjoy!
Image via Wikipedia
As I did last month and the month before, I’m updating with the list of fruits and veggies that appear as seasonable on the organic farm website that I’ve been ordering from. What’s actually available here appears in bold below.
Fruit: apples, cabbage, grapefruit, lemons, mandarin oranges, oranges, papayas, pears, persimmons, pomegranates, tangelos, tangerines
Veggies: broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms, pumpkin, radishes, squash, sweet potatoes
There’s also a variety of radicheta, radicchio, arugula, mixed greens, and fresh herbs on my organic farm list that are technically out of season, so they’re probably coming from a greenhouse.
Enjoy!
Polenta With Bolognese Sauce
You can tell I liked that sauce, can’t you? It’s a delicious, hearty sauce for fall/winter. And to me, this was the perfect dinner for a chilly late fall evening. So for those of you in the Northern Hemisphere, either wait until you’ve got a chilly spring evening to make this, or just hold off until fall. Polenta is not a light meal.
This time I started the sauce a good three hours before A came home from work, so it had time to simmer. The only difference between this sauce and the one I made for the gnocchi is that I added sliced fresh mushrooms this time.
For the polenta, follow the instructions on the package. I used (powdered) goat milk rather than water to make it, and added about a cup of shredded cheese once the polenta was thickened, stirring it in so it melted before serving.
I also made extra, enough for a second meal so we can re-heat it for lunch.
Enjoy!
Feel Good Friday, 13th Edition
Here’s the info if you want to join in:
Step 1:
Pick one of these prompts and write about it on your blog! You can:
- Just make a list. List 5 things that made you really happy this week. No matter how bad or boring you think your week was, I bet you can find 5 things.
- Write about something that happened to you this week that really made you smile. Was it your child, husband, or maybe a complete stranger did to you?
- Write about something that YOU did for someone else that really made them happy or laugh.
- Is there something you treasure so much that every single time you look at it, it brings you happiness? Post a pic and tell everyone about it.
- Having a hard week and can’t find one good thing about it? Well then, what is your happy place? What do you think of that makes you happy? A past vacation? A childhood memory? We want to know!
Step 2:
Head over here and link up with Mister Linky’s Magical Widgets. Then go and read at least one other blog and leave them a comment to make their day brighter.
Step 3:
Have fun. Feel good. Smile.
Then, start looking for all of the good things you can write about for next week! Once you start looking for the “good” you will find it everywhere!
Here goes…
- My painting class had the opening to its annual exposition on Monday evening. Just about everyone had one drawing or painting there (including me!). It was great to see everyone’s best work together in one room, though it was kind of hard to take a good look at everything because the place was packed. So we’re going to stop by another day to see everything with less people.
- I had my second knitting class on Tuesday. We agreed to meet every other week rather than once a week. That way, she doesn’t have to come all the way to Martínez for just one student and I can have more time to work on projects between classes. We closed off the end, and put the fringe on my first scarf (which to be honest is so thick and wide I’m just not quite sure how to tie it on).
- I started my second knitting project, which is a scarf for A! I found this super soft fuzzy brown yarn, so I’m working on that now. It kind of looks like a fuzzy brown poodle (in a good way). Yes, that’s our extremely bright orchid-colored bedspread I used as a background for both photos. It’s really not pink, I swear.
- Because I’ve been feeling like a loser lately for not doing everything I want to do (yes, I know, I’m unnecessarily hard on myself. Working on that), I bought a wall calendar to hang near my junkpile workspace miniscule desk (someday I’ll share a photo of it here, but for now it’s just too embarassing) to try out my old technique of foil star self-motivation. I used to use this back in 2004 or so to motivate myself to exercise. A green star meant I went running, blue was pilates, silver was weights, and I think gold was yoga. You get the idea. Obviously, some days I had two or three stars. So now I’m doing a new system for new things: green for a post on EcoHotelology, purple for here, red for gym, yellow for a day that I worked on the translation of my friend’s book (did I mention I was doing that? I think not), and that’s it for now. I have other colors, but those are the main things that I want to do a little of every day but haven’t been.
- I’m still increasing speed on the treadmill (while running no more than 30 minutes, every other day) with no pain in my tibia! According to estimations, I’ll be back at my pre-fracture speed by the end of July (yes, I’m taking it easy).
Happy weekend, everyone! Enjoy!
Gluten Free Gnocchi With Bolognese Sauce
Remember my last failed gluten free gnocchi attempt? Well, they’ve been on my cooking to do list ever since, and they came out great this time. For some reason, people have the idea that gnocchi are hard to do. Not true. It’s just a long process. Don’t do this recipe on an evening when you’re pressed for time or already starving.
My suggestion: don’t do it like I did and try to get everything done in my tiny kitchen with two small burners (unless, of course, you have a normal sized kitchen with lots of space to move around). Do the sauce first, then the gnocchi.
Bolognese Sauce Ingredients:
1/2 kilo Ground beef (that’s about a pound)
1 large Yellow onion, diced
2 Tomatoes, diced
1 small carton Tomato sauce (if it were summer here, I’d have used all fresh tomatoes, but alas, we’re in late fall down here)
1 cup Red wine
1 t. Oregano
Olive oil
Sea salt and Pepper, to taste
Bolognese Sauce Preparation:
Dice onion and tomato. Saute onion in olive oil in a large sauce pan. Once translucent, add ground beef and cook until lightly browned. Add tomato sauce, tomatoes, and red wine. Season with oregano, sea salt, and pepper. Simmer, covered until the sauce has reached the desired consistency. Set aside and get ready for the gnocchi.
Gnocchi Ingredients:
1/2 kilo Potatoes (Russets are recommended; I just used what I had on hand)
1 cup Gluten free flour (I used a blend of corn and rice flour)
1/3 cup Potato starch
1/2 teaspoon Guar or Xanthan gum
2 Eggs, beaten
Sea salt
Gnocchi Preparation:
Cut potatoes in half or into quarters if large. Steam or boil the potatoes in salted water. Cook until potatoes are tender throughout.
As soon as they’re done, remove potatoes from the water and quickly peel them. The idea is to mash them while they’re still hot, so you’ve got to move as fast as possible without burning yourself.
Once peeled, mash lightly (don’t overdo it) in a bowl, then set aside to cool, about 10-15 minutes.
When they’ve cooled, add beaten eggs and sprinkle about half the flour on top. Add 1 teaspoon of sea salt. I started by mixing with a wooden spoon, then moved to kneading lightly with my hands. As you knead, you’ll notice that it’s really not sticking together and forming much of a dough, so now’s the time to sprinkle the potato starch and guar/xanthan gum on top and knead along with the mixture. Add the rest of the flour if needed to form a nice dough, sprinkling on top and then kneading in.
Once the dough is ready, take a handful of dough at a time and shape it into a long snake. Cut snakes into small pieces, about half an inch long. Roll them down the tines of a fork to create little grooves (these help the gnocchi grab onto the sauce), and place on a large plate. Keep at it until all of your dough has become gnocchified (did you like that word? I did).
When you’re ready to eat, place a large handful of gnocchi in salted boiling water. As the gnocchi rise to the top of the pot (it doesn’t take them long), remove them with a slotted spoon and place in bowls or on plates to serve. Repeat until all are cooked.
Top with bolognese sauce, and add grated cheese if you like.
Enjoy!
