A Place at the Table

 

Everyone deserves a place at the table. So that being said, I was recently able to rent a film documentary called A Place at The Table; let me tell you a little about what this film is about:

Food Insecurity in America

Hunger in America

there’s no more I can tell you about this film because you need to watch it. It is heartbreaking, eye opening. And for people like myself who are actually struggling to get by; it is of the upmost importance to inform people that hunger is here in 2013 and it’s not very far from home.

you can rent it on itunes or as I did rent it on google play here.

or check out their web page to find out if your local theatre is showing it.

click here for web page.

don’t feel like watching a documentary… well at least read a book:

click here for the book.

Fish and greens pasta

I made this greens pasta the other day and thought to give it a little more color with ham, I understand that when I made this my dish has ham and fish wich personally I don’t think you’re supposed to eat fish and then ham in the same dish; but whatever I was hungry.

So anyways here’s the recipe.

Ingredients

1 tilapia fish

2 leafy lettuce leafs

spaghetti pasta (this was leftover pasta so just follow the instructions in the box)

1 green serrano pepper

small handfull of parsley

a little piece of onion (diced “small”)

1 slice of ham

2 fresh basil leaves

cooking oil

sweet chili sauce

Preparation

So go ahead chop your green serrano as small as possible (about the size of the seeds)

chop your parsley

Dice your onion into small pieces

chop your ham

preheat your pan about medium to high heat then add some oil, let the oil warm up a little

put into the pan all your chopped things (serrano, parsly, onion, ham) and add your basil leaves

let them simmer for about a minute then add a handful of spaghetti pasta

put your other pan to preheat also about medium to high temperature and add a little bit of oil; let the oil warm up

move your pasta around so that it doesn’t stick to the pan and add your fish to the empty pan

we want to grill your fish or make it so that its well cooked so take your time with it

once the pasta looks a little darker lower the heat on your pan and let it simmer for a bit while your fish is getting done

Presentation

add you lettuce leaves to your plate and use any dressing you like, put your pasta on a the side and leave some space for your already cooked fish. add your sweet chili sauce on top of the fish.

 

(I wrote this recipe in two different days very spaced appart so I might have forgotten something)

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted something here, but I was quite busy working on a very insightful documentary and I’m just giving it it’s final touches. As soon as it’s ready I will post it on my blog and hope you like it.

Brown Bag Monday: Growing Your Own Groceries

loloslunch

Lolo’s mom shared the above video with me and now I’m convinced, I want to be a gangster gardener. The video is around 11 minutes long and well worth the watch.

No one has accused me of having a green thumb before, but I have kept our house plants (OK the majority of them) alive for several years now. I also built a raised garden bed at our old house and had a successful vegetable garden for one summer. I think it is time to build another one!

“Growing your own food is like printing your own money.” What a great quote. I also loved, “if kids grow kale, they eat kale.” I want Lolo to eat a lot of kale; after she’s done with her milk fetish. My mom always included us in her gardening and cooking when we were little. I might not have picked up as much of…

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Treat Yo Self! (Pasta Bolognese & Wine)

I decided to make some pasta since I was torn between making hot dogs (which would be cheaper but a mediocre option) and making fish tacos (but I was kind of tired of fish from eating it all week) so I came up with pasta since I hadn’t made pasta in a while. I also bought some local wine; I have to be honest, I know very little about wine but this wine for me is a winner. More about it later.

Ingredients

1 pack of whole wheat pasta (I used organic; you don’t have to use whole wheat…)

1 can of tomato sauce (use crushed italian tomatoes; organic)

1 can of tomato paste (organic)

fresh basil leaves (organic)

salt & pepper

dried basil leaves

Parmesan cheese (do not buy if it has milk protein concentrates; I used a grater for the cheese)

1 pound of organic lean ground meat

4 tomatoes

cooking oil

1 small green serrano pepper

1/4 onion

parsley

lettuce (I used leafy lettuce)

Instructions

1 take your  3 tomatoes and with a knife slice a cross on the top of the tomatoes that way it will become easier to peel later on.

2 boil a pan of water and when it’s boiling add your tomatoes and wait until the skin on them looks all crumpled up like a prune

3 take your tomatoes out (careful they’re hot!) and lay them to rest while they cool down.

4 on a stainless steel pan preheat on high, once it’s hot put your oil and let it heat for a couple of minutes

5 with my ground meat I made 6 meat balls and I seasoned my cutting board with salt pepper and some dried basil, roll your meatballs on the board to season them

6 put your meatballs on your pan and let them cook on one side for about 5 minutes, then flip them over with some tongs let them cook and leave them there for the moment

7 with the rest of your ground meat I seasoned the board again with salt, peeper and dried basil and rolled all the meat in there; then I added the meat to my pan (the meat balls are still there… Just leave them there.)

8 once on the pan make sure to split it apart (we don’t want a giant meat paddy) so just keep on splitting and splitting

9 once your meat is almost fully cooked with about 10 % of your meat looking pink; go ahead and add your tomato sauce

10 add your tomato paste

11 we’re going to cut your cooled tomatoes in half (make sure to peel the skin first; it’s quite easy since you boiled them already); use a strainer so you can squish the tomatoes over your pan so the juice goes in the sauce but not the seeds once the seeds are out of your tomato you can put the tomatoes into your sauce; do this with all your tomato pieces.

12 chop some onion, chop some parsley (TIP: use a clean cleaning cloth to put your parsley in it, then cover up like in a sack, and get it wet, then strain it as much as you can; this will make your parsley crisp and will make the green color on it pop :D) and chop a green serrano pepper (chop this one as little as you can; we want this to be as tiny as the seeds)

13 add your onion, parsley and serrano to the sauce; Add about 3 large Basil leaves

14 let the sauce get reduced I waited for about 2 hours but you can put it on high just make sure to keep stirring every once in a while to make sure it’s not sticking to the bottom of the pan

15 boil up some water in a large pot, add some salt; and cook your pasta according to the box (TIP: screw what the box says, cook it al dente which you need to constantly keep trying so you get it right)

16 once your pasta is done; lower the heat on your sauce (we don’t want to burn it) and strain the pasta with a pasta strainer let it cool for a bit

Preparation

take your lettuce and rip into smaller pieces, take your last tomato and slice it and add a few slices on top of the lettuce; use a grater and grate some of the parmesan cheese on top

put your pasta in your plate and add the sauce on top put desired amount of meatballs on top of the sauce 😀

grate as much parmesan cheese as you like 😀

as a final reward I went ahead and bought some nice local New Mexican wine called Chimayo (named after a small town here in New Mexico also called Chimayo) according to the wine it was made there, this wine is soaked in red chile, It might sound like a terrible idea but believe me when I say that the wine has a hidden after taste of chile in it; I think it was way perfect since my bolognese sause has a little spicy kick from the serrano. This wine is so good with spicy foods like the one I just made. It is refreshing, tastes good, and you can only want more and more. definitely if you’re in New Mexico you can’t miss out on it, best part it’s quite cheap. Look for it, Chimayo Red Chile Wine definitely “Treat Yo Self!”

We Should Be Moving Towards Biodiesel

Mr. Weebl’s Bacon Song

365 Days of Bacon

Ok so it’s a little over-the-top.

But I laughed. Several times.

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4:00 pm French Toast….

I woke up early today but since I did not have any class today I went back to sleep, Late I woke up and took my time to make me some much desired breakfast 😀

 

What you need

2 slices of white bread (I used bread from my local bakery)

3 eggs (get those cage free)

cinnamon (I got the stick kind, you can use the powder kind)

cooking oil (I used vegetable oil)

 

French Toast

1. in a large bowl break the eggs and whisk them with a fork.

2. preheat your pan in between medium and high heat once it’s warm enough put some oil in there and wait a couple of min.

3. soak your bread in the eggs (make sure it’s well soaked from both sides)

4. place your bread in the pan, you want to make sure both sides look toasted so flip and flip a couple of times until it’s done.

Presentation

I added some cinnamon on top, since I didn’t have a grater I grabbed a cinnamon stick and with a knife I started to peel it from the sides (as if sharpening a pencil with a knife; careful when you do this; it’s dangerous); use a grater for faster safer and more efficient way to apply. You can add powdered sugar if you have some. I put on the side some bacon (see my kitchen basics section to learn how to cook bacon) and some diced up cantaloupe. I like them with maple syrup but I didn’t have any.

2 min. Salad!

 

So I had little time today to prepare something for lunch so I prepared me something quick and easy. (Of course the cantaloupe had been previously cut into cubes days before and the lettuce had been washed also days before)

So as always enjoy

Ingredients

2 leafy lettuce leaves

1 slice of pepper jack cheese

1 slice of honey smoked ham

1 slice of cantaloupe (diced)

I basically did all of this with my hand (except cutting the slice of cheese; and of course if you haven’t done so with the cantaloupe)

Preparation

so in a bowl or plate, place your lettuce ripped into smaller pieces, add the diced cantaloupe, add the ripped cheese pieces, add the ripped ham pieces. You’re done

😀

You’re probably going to starve later like I am right now; but it helps calm the hunger for a bit, and you might like it with some other recipe as a side.

Off to make me some real dinner.

SFUAD Burger

So just to talk a little about myself I’m a student at Santa Fe University of Arts and Design, I’m a filmmaker and as you already know I have a passion for food; I’m telling this story because when I first came here; I think it was 2010 the cafeteria was non existent in this college, sooner the college grew and we finally had a cafeteria. The problem now was the food, I could see it within myself and others no one liked the food, some people started to become fat and I started to throw up that nasty food. It’s true. A year passed and they promised to change the cafeteria catering service but in the end it turned up to be the same disgusting fattening crap and terrible vegetarian food which I hate.

I was then to transfer to SFUAD (being that I was an exchange student and not a full time student at SFUAD) due to many stupid paperwork reasons I was unfortunately unable to come back last semester (fall 2012) That’s when a change happened in the cafeteria but since I was not at SFUAD to see the change, I was unaware and skeptical about the food this semester (spring 2013). Since I live in the apartments I actually get a kitchen where I can cook for myself (and as you can see I can cook, Cooking has made me more aware of health concerns due to bad food (like the food we got at the cafe a year ago) and so I started my quest to find the freshest products with the best quality.

Living in the apartments and cooking for myself made it a very easy choice for me to opt out of my “Meals” in the housing contract (the contract still requires me to pay for the minimal of meals which are Flex Dollars; it’s a point system that gets put in our student ID’s that allows us to buy food and snacks at the cafe, but only during off hours; meaning I can’t go and order something while it’s regular lunch/breakfast/dinner time; I can however pay for a lunch but at the cost of about 10 bucks, which I can pay with Flex; the problem with Flex is that those points do not last all semester meaning I would still need to get my own food at some point) Given that Flex was to be my last resort in getting food, and my distrust for cafeteria food, I did not recur to the cafe until now.

As soon as I walked in the cafe for the very first time in a year, I could tell already the rumored changes were in fact impressive; but I was stil yet to try the food. In my mind the food was going to be mediocre but I had cooked this afternoon and didn’t feel like cooking something else for dinner, hence me taking a chance at the cafeteria food.

The system to place your order was smarter, quicker, easier than before, you fill out a little paper with the menu printed on it and you give a copy of it to the cashier, then you give the order at the kitchen and they immediately start working on your order.

Based by the title you already know what I ordered; Hamburgers ARE MY FAVORITE dish in all the world, Nothing can top a good hamburger in my opinion. Last year the cafe made these terrible hamburgers that I would go as far as to call them crappier than a Burger King burger… Yeah I’m serious and it was real. By the time I received my order you should have seen my expression; my eyes widened; my mouth opened and I think at some point a little tear wanted to come out; it was a burger that exceeded my expectations by far, this burger was beautiful like the kind you see pictures in Mc D’s except this one was for real. I then proceded to add Dijon Mustard (it’s the only kind of mustard I like; and was impressed that the cafe NOW carried Dijon Mustard, WOW!) then some mayo and my favorite brand of ketchup Heinz 😀 This burger was surely to become an awesome dinner. That being said I told the workers in the kitchen about my past experience in the cafe and how it was my first time eating with the new catering service and they were glad to hear that I loved it; soon they explained that they only cook with locally grown food and organic meats, vegetables and fruits. It was no wonder why this burger looked top notch; the chef sure seems to have great knowledge about food and  the importance of knowing where it comes from.

I am sad to say that this semester I opted out of my meal plan due to fear of paying extra money to the school for some crappy food, now I sort of regret that I missed out on this great food, that is truly made with passion, love, and above all a smart brain!

I congratulated the workers there for it must be an honor to be working in a beautiful kitchen like that.

I will be back for more, for sure.

Now the next step would be to copy the Santa Fe Community College so we can have our own gardens that way we teach some students the value of food.

Meanwhile here’s a picture because you know you want to see what I’m talking about. (I hate pickles and I ate that too, that’s how good that is)

 

Isn’t it wonderful… 😀

It’s a FISH! Tilapia with sweet chili sour cream sauce…. It’s a FISH.

So I had a little bit of sour cream (organic without conservatives and local) this past monday that had an expiration date that same day… (click here for expiration article) so i decided to make some sweet chili sour cream sauce, of course it was too much for what I was cooking which is the exact same recipe I’m going to tell you; Today I used the left over sauce and made the fish 😀 I also made up a salad which turned out to be quite good and refreshing. And as you might already know I love spicy stuff so here we are cooking again with some serranos 😀

Ingredients

1 tilapia fish (try to buy fresh one I asure you it’s much tastier than the frozen one I used you can also used catfish I guess… It’s a very similar flavor to tilapia)

1/2 white onion (diced try to make it as small as you can, not perfectly small though)

1 green serrano pepper (diced as small as possible, make it really really small!)

Sweet chili sauce (you can buy it at your grocery store in the asian food section)

Sour Cream (I used local organic Sour Cream, I want you to try to buy this kind as other creams might contain MPC’s)

1 leaf of lettuce (any kind will do, I had the leafy kind)

1/2 lemon (OK let’s get this clear I’m from Mexico and lemon for me is your limes so here’s a picture so you know what’s up)

cooking oil (you can use canola/olive/vegetable; I used vegetable oil)

Salt & Pepper

Directions

Sweet chili sour cream sauce

1. add a couple of dollops of sour cream into a blender (depends on how much you want to make)

2. add half the amount (of sour cream you used) of sweet chili sauce to blender

3. blend until it’s light orange or salmon pink

The Fish (if it’s frozen unfreeze as directed in the package)

1. preheat your pan between medium and high temperature. wait until it’s quite hot to add your oil.

2. add your oil once the pan is hot. (you’re going to fry the onions and the serrano and finally the fish)

3. mix the onions and serrano in your cutting board; use half of it and put it in the pan. You want to caramelize them (I like them burnt, almost black or black).

4. put the fish in the pan (we’re going to fry it) try to mix it with the onions and serrano that way you can add some of the flavor to it.

5. flip over the fish when you think it’s ready on one side continue doing so for about 10 minutes (I really just wing the time just make sure it’s well done otherwise you’re going to eat raw fish… which isn’t bad for you either; but we don’t want that) Season the whole thing with a pinch of salt and pepper (I use the salt and pepper grinders so I just twist it a few times)

Once your fish is ready place on plate (make sure to top it with your onions and serranos).

Salad

For the salad I used a big leaf of my leafy lettuce and tore it into smaller pieces; I added the rest of my onion and serrano on top and added a little bit our LIME (for me it’s lemon) and some olive oil (I used vegetable oil which can be used for dressings too; I prefer olive oil but didn’t have any at hand)

Fish Preparation

1. Drizzle your Sweet Chili Sour Cream Sauce on top of the fish.

2. I added a few drops of LIME on it. (just use the same one you used for the salad)

3. enjoy; you’re done.

Surprise Mini Recipe!!!

Ingredients

1 grapefruit

1 orange

(some sparkling water/tonic water/mineral water; whichever tickles your fancy :D; I used tonic water)

Preparation

I’m not the kitchen police; if you don’t like the little fibers from the Oranges and Grapefruit use a strainer; simple as that. (they’re good for you though and I personally added as much fibers into the drink as posible)

1. use a juicer (I used a manual one like this one; as always use whatever juicer you want) and juiced into a cup both the orange and the grapefruit.

2. I added a little bit of tonic water just to fill up the cup a bit more. (it makes the juice taste like some freaky natural soda that you never had because you’re probably sipping on that Fanta aren’t you? 😀 Hehe )

3. Enjoy