This is one of my favorite dishes! It is warm and sunny, a perfect meal for a cold winter’s day. It is also a great meal if you are feeling under the weather or depressed because eating it just feels like home and happiness. I like to eat it alone as a stew but it is also great on a bed of Spanish rice.
Roasting peppers is super easy! Basically, you just wash the peppers and place them on a foil-lined baking sheet.
Tomatillos are an interesting ingredient. They are a classic flavor in Mexican and Southwestern food. Tomatillos look like green tomatoes but they are actually a member of the gooseberry family.
Arrabiatta sauce is a spicy marinara sauce. I first fell in love with Arrabiatta sauce at the Olive Garden when a bunch of my friends and I decided to order the never-ending pasta bowl. We all wanted to try more than one sauce/pasta/meat combination which is really hard because the portions are enormous! This recipe is from Rachel Ray’s first book Rachel Ray 30-Minute Meals.
Earlier this summer, I had a hankering for S’mores. I did a quick internet search and chose to try this recipe for Chewy S’mores Bars from the Hershey website. These were such a big hit at work I had to make them twice in two weeks!
I was looking for some new recipes to try out so I headed over to search through Rachel Ray’s recent recipes. I’m not really sure why this particular recipe called out to me, but it did and it was excellent. My friend Dorothy loves Penne alla Vodka so maybe I was thinking of her.
Cheesy goodness
Last month I bought a new cookbook, The Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook by Christina Tosi. The cookbook is written by the head chef of the popular Momofuku Milk Bar in New York. The desserts at the Milk Bar incorporate tastes from different kinds of junk food like potato chips, pretzels and cereal. They are famous for their cereal milk which is basically milk that tastes like the leftovers at the bottom of your cereal bowl. I was excited to try some of the cookies in this book including the famous Compost Cookies which are full of interesting flavors like butterscotch chips, coffee, chocolate, pretzels, potato chips, and anything else that you want to throw in there.
I think this recipe is based on a recipe for shredded beef enchiladas from the Better Homes and Gardens Mexican Cookbook. We’ve added to it a little over the years by adding peppers to the meat mixture. Dad likes to add a can of diced green chilies while I prefer to add a couple of poblanos and jalepenos.
Pina Coladas
I planned to make these when Josh visited as a way to finish up the rum. Sadly, we ended up not really drinking that much. The mission was not accomplished! I bought most of the ingredients before he got here so I decided to use them anyway. (I did end up having one Pina Colada during Josh’s visit while we were playing Lego Pirates of the Carribean…it seemed fitting.)
No Meat No Meal 