Homecooking - New Mexican Style

We've had weeks and weeks of guests visiting from out of town this summer. And in exchange for the hospitality, room & board and a nice haven from the heat is a home cooked meal. Not just any home cooked meal, but a New Mexican day of feasting.

We started our morning with the best huevos rancheros we have ever had - EVER.

The combination of red beans, refried beans, homemade salsa, crispy fried tortilla and perfectly fried eggs was expertly combined. Like we said the best huevos rancheros ever!

Pinto were soaked for 24 hours and then slow cooked for over 10 hours with a secret blend of spices. The resulting red beans were creamy to the bite, but had a solid snap to them. Bacony refried red beans in combination with the whole red beans added a whole different dimension of bean awesomeness to the dish.

Homemade salsa was spicy, smokey and perfectly bitter. You bet your sweet asses we took notes on how to recreate it.

Our favorite part? The crispy tostada. The crispy fried tortilla topped with bacon refried beans added a crunch and a base to hold up all those fantastic juices from the whole red beans and salsa.

Topped with perfectly fried eggs that were a bit runny, added more texture and flavors to the dish. And a little bit of sharp cheddar cheese finished the whole dish off with a little bit more tang! Now that's how you do huevos rancheros!

That was just the beginning. Later that evening we were treated to a chicken mole feast! Yes, Holy Mole! Previous experience with mole brings to mind a chalky and sweet dish, not that there's anything wrong with that. Our homemade chicken mole was much more complex - smoky, sweet, robust, a bit bitter and a bit spicy.

Served with calabacitas, spanish rice and yes, another bacony tostada, this plate brought on a whole new meaning to the word comfort food.

Summer Recap

August is almost over! Sorry for the long absence, but it is summer after all. Where did the summer go? Our summer went to friends visiting to escape the heat, only to visit during a mini heatwave, we like to say they brought the sunshine!

Our summer also went to making excuses to go for a bike ride

Summer went to birthday celebrations

Summer went to playing disc golf

Summer went to soap box derby racing

Summer went to meals eaten in the garden

Summer went to refreshing cocktails

Summer went to lounging in the hammock

Summer went to eating at the farmer's market

Summer went to checking out new beaches

Summer went to backyard pit fires

Summer went to growing our own food

And lastly, our summer went to marveling in all its splendor and surprises!

Hope you are enjoying your summer as much as we are!

Oregon Coast Wedding Weekend

A few weeks ago we hit the road and headed to the Oregon Coast to attend a very special wedding. We were very excited to spend time with family, celebrate and hang out on the beach. This is the Oregon Coast so it was gorgeous the whole drive up, until we hit the beach.


There were glimpses of blue sky, but with a constant threat of white clouds blowing in to block the sun.


We didn't care, we were at the beautiful Oregon Coast!


It was the first time we had been at the beach during the full moon.


The beach was beautiful during the day too.


Even if it was a bit chilly when the sun wasn't out.


The wedding was intimate, happy, and full of love. Exactly what they had wanted.


And there was even a bon fire with s'mores. The weather even cooperated warming up to a very comfortable temperature for roasting marshmallows and enjoying everyone's company.

And of course we stopped at Mo's for some clam chowder. All in all, a pretty terrific weekend.

Easy As Pie

For the record, only one of us grew up eating home made fruit pies, with the other set of parents using their oven as storage for woks and frying pans, so homemade baked goods is something only one of us experienced growing up. However we are here to say making is pie is easy.

This past weekend was a busy one with family in town for a wedding, it was upon us to entertain the whole southwest clan and for dessert we decided to treat everyone to our hand-picked cherries in the form of a pie!

Granted the beautiful local cherries we picked made the pie that more easy, but all in all pie is pretty easy. Yes, we were intimidated by the idea of making our own crust, but as I said earlier - pretty easy. The most unsure we were about the pie was when the recipe called for cooking the cherries to a soft consistency. What?? Cook fruit?? And such beautiful fruit too.

After cooking down the fruit to what we deemed "soft", we didn't want mush, but these plump cherries weren't going to go mushy in the few minutes of heat; we added a mixture of flour, corn starch, instant tapioca, sugar, cinnamon, and a small pinch of salt.

The heat from the cherries turned the dry ingredients into glossy gooey bowl of heaven!

At this point the smell of the sweet cooked sugared cherries was hard to resist. We could have easily poured this mixture over some ice cream or hell, just in a bowl and eaten straight up. But no, we wanted pie...

The pie cruist was the most difficult part, next to maybe pitting the cherries. If you use cold butter, cold shortening, and cold ice water and a cooler room in the summertime, you too can have 1/8-inch pie crust ready for a sweet fruit filling too!

We decided to bake the pie hours before everyone arrived for our jerk chicken bbq bonanza! Which worked out well since it gave the pie some time to rest and the filling to solidify.

The meaty cherries remained plump and the flour, corn starch and tapioca mixture allowed for a thick sauce that wasn't syrupy and sickenly sweet due to small amount of sugar added. It was delicious and made us think of other things we can stick inbetween two rolled out pieces of dough....hhhhmmmm.....

Grandma's Fresh Cherry Pie from Diana's Desserts

For the Crust

2 1/2 cups of flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) of cold unsalted butter, grated on a box cheese grater

1/4 cup cold vegetable shortening

5 to 7 tablespoons of cold ice water

For Cherry Filling

1 cup granulated sugar

2 Tablespoons quick-cook tapioca

2 Tablespoons cornstarch

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon

6 cups of fresh pitted cherries

2 Tablespoons of vanilla extract

1 1/2 Tablespoons of unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

For the Crust (we used a food processor) pulse together flour, salt, butter, shortening until mixture resembles course meal. Add 5 Tab;es of ice water, a little at a time, Mixture should form a ball. Divide into two equal halves and flatten into a disc. Wrap in plastic wrap and refridgerate for at least 30 minutes and up to 3 days.

In the meantime, for the filling:

In a small bowl mix together sugar, tapioca, cornstarch, salt and cinnamon. In a large heavy skillet cook cherries over medium heat, stirring until slightly soft, about 2 minutes. Transfer cooked cherries to a heat proof bowl and add sugar mixture, stirring until thickened and well coated, about 3 minutes. Stir in vanilla extract and let cool.

Preheat oven to 400 Degrees and remove chilled dough. On a lightly floured surface, roll each disc into an 11-inch round circle about 1/8-inch thick. Line the pie pan with one layer of rolled out dough. Spoon the cooled pie filling into the pie pan with dough. Dot all over the mixture with butter pieces. Cover the top of the pie with the other half of the rolled out dough.

To flute and close up pie moisten the edges of the crust and flute the edges. (We just rolled the edges over each other for a clean seal) Cut slits into the top layer of dough to allow steam to release during baking.

Place pie on a baking sheet to catch any filling that may bubble and boil over. After 15 minutes, lower the oven temp to 350 degrees and foil any edges of crust that look as if it may be browning too fast. Continue to bake at 350 degrees for 45-50 minutes or until pastry is golden brown and the filling begins to bubble.

Transfer to rack and allow to cool (3-5 hours).

We served ours with both ice cream and whipped cream! Enjoy!

Summertime Love

Summer makes us want to stop time and let it stand still for a bit. Since this year's summer started off late, it seems as if we're cramming everything summer has to offer into every free moments we have. With family & friends visiting, a wedding, daytrips and weekend events our summer calendar filled up fast.

Even after a long 6 day work week, with a few doubles thrown in, we got up early on our one day off and piled into the car and headed out to our local farms with one fruit in mind - cherries!

Cherry season is short and when its gone, it's gone. This year's late wet spring meant the fruit season may be short, but by the looks of the overflowing cherry trees there may be some hope for a long season of over indulging in these unbelievable fruit.

A few weeks ago we broke out the last of our frozen cherries and berries from last year and are ready to head back out to load up on several pounds of cherries. At 50 cents a pound it's a hard bargain to beat, especially when picking cherries is so easy and not far from where we live. We gathered all the cash we had in the house and managed to get around 50 pounds of fruit in about 40 minutes of picking.

The Schmerber family farms in Snowden, Washington was already sold out on the Teitan cherries (sweetest, plumpest, dark red cherries around), although we still managed to sneak in a few with the help of some strategically placed ladders. The Royal Anns were sold out also, a far superior white/yellow cherry to the Rainier, which was still in picking season but didn't look good. We ended up picking a majority of Vans cherries, some Lapins, some Lambert and some Bing cherries.

We leisurely drove home, enjoying the amazing scenery. But once we got home we immediately washed and began to pit/stone the cherries. As the sink filled up with pits and the large bowl of washed-ready-to-be pitted cherries didn't seem to get any smaller we realized we're gonna need a better system.

So we biked down the store and bought a fancy cherry stoner which made pitting a dream and much faster than we could have done with the individual pitter.

So what are we gonna do with these beauties? After bagging up a few for ourselves to eat immediately and for family and friends, we placed about a few dozen pounds of pitted cherries into the dehydrator. We were lucky enough to have dried cherries for over a year from last year's haul, but that took alot of discipline not to eat them in one sitting. This year we're not going to take that chance and did several rounds of dehydrating and storing for later in the year.

The remainder of the cherries will be placed in a pie, maybe a cream cake or a coffee cake, and we froze 2 quarts of each variety for later in the year. These plumb meaty cherries froze amazingly. Nothing like a cherry tart in the middle of winter!

Storming the Bastille & An Ode to Macarons

July 14th is France's Bastille Day, the infamous day when the citizens of Paris, fed up with King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette's indifference to the French people, stormed the Bastille Prison releasing those inside and then burning it to the ground as an act of defiance and sparking the beginning of the French Revolution, France's Independence Day.

And to celebrate this auspicious day our local patisserie (everyone should have their own local neighborhood patisserie) Pix threw their annual block party! The day started off with a scavenger hunt and a 5K French Run. We sat across the street sipping espresso and cheering the runners as they crossed to the finish line. This being a French themed run there were mime runners, french maid runners, wine grape runners, and even some Marie Antoinette runners.

New Yorker Magazine, along with Savier magazine declared gourmet cupcakes were so 2009 and 2010 is year of the macaron! So as everyone chanted "Fewer Cupcakes and More Macarons" people stomped cupcakes in exchange for a macaron of course!

If you didn't feel like having sticky syrupy cupcake goo on your shoes or bare foot as one person did, there was also a macaron toss that would reward you with a delicious macaron if you made it consecutively in the buckets.

Shortly after the macaron stomp Pix baking staff held a macaron making demonstration and answered questions about making these utterly addictive almond flour treats. We got many tips and the process was demystified about separating and aging egg white to how to tell if you've achieved the perfect smooth, chewy, buttery awesomeness that is the macaron. Can you tell we love macarons? And all we say is these are the skinniest bakers we have ever seen.

On the list of the block party events, which included live music performances all day, the macaron demo was the top reason we went, but also in the hopes of tasting some of the new flavors Pix wanted to introduce. No we didn't stomp any cupcakes or toss any macarons or even try any new flavors, but still enjoyed ourselves. Especially when we spotted the Bastille Tower ala cream puffs.

Cream Puffs! A tower of them! Hauled out into the middle of the crowd and then we were let loose to grab as many handfuls of cream puffs we could manage.

Macarons and cream puffs in one morning, now that's a celebration!