Another Neon Carrot post! You may have noticed I post a lot of Neon Carrot pics. Thing is, it’s probably my favorite restaurant in SLO. I’m there almost every Friday night for Happy Hour. The menu is different every week.
This is from last Friday. We got (1)house fried chips, (2) caldo de mariscos, (3)puerco en mole verde, (4) chocolate banana cream pie
Long time no blog! I have not been active on here in a few months because I’ve been dedicating all of my time to a new project (will talk about in next post). Now that I have finished that, I want to finally make a post about my second trip to California back in June!
outfit : bodysuit : Bershka (similar) | jeans : Rag & Bone (similar) | heels : Bershka (similar) | bag : Bershka x PANTONE
This is a new documentary that a film school friend of mine, Taggart Siegel, made. This looks like it’s going to be amazing. I can’t wait to see it. It’s coming to theaters across the country.
I love seeds! They’re fascinating and are the most basic part of all of life. Please check it out if you can. This is a very important film because there are greedy bastage corporations, who, for the past several years have been trying to patent the entirety of seeds. They’re doing it so they can control the food supply. If you control the food supply, you control the people. Fuck that. Check out this very important and amazing looking film at a theatre near you!
I love to make serious Mexican food from scratch. I live and work in Southern California, so there are Mexican restaurants all around. Most of them are awesome. The ones I don’t love as much are maybe not my favorite because their ingredients aren’t the best, like cheap corn products, or questionable meats. So sometimes I like to spend a couple hours making homemade Mexican everything from scratch. Home made Mexican food, using the best quality ingredients, is delicious and easy to do. It’s a little time consuming, but worth the flavor explosion. The Mexican grocery stores around here are cheaper than any other grocery stores, so that’s good too.
The top picture was the other dish I made to possibly submit to the cheesy Chopped competition, taquitos, stuffed with chicken and poblanos, with ancho chili cheese dipping sauce, shredded lettuce, chopped tomatoes and fresh guacamole. It was delicious. My Hubby and I loved every bite. I didn’t use this photo because after I made it, I saw on their inspiration page they suggest taquitos, so I changed my dish to Fried Chicken & Waffles. Thanks to anybody who voted for me. They don’t announce the winner of round 2 until June 27th. Fingers are crossed and all good luck charms in my small jeans pocket.
The second picture is a chicken and bean tostada I made the next day because I still had a lot of ingredients. This dish has home made restaurant style salsa, avocado crema, and beans and rice. This was also amazingly delicious. Here are some of the basic components I like to make for a Mexican feast.
For easy Guacamole: mash avocado, mince shallot, squeeze of fresh lime or lemon, chopped cilantro, chopped tomato, s & p.
ForAvocado Crema: Mix plain yogurt or Mexican crema with a few spoonfuls of the Guacamole.
For easy Salsa: Fresh tomatoes (or a can of tomatoes) in a blender, salt & pepper, 1 garlic clove, chopped cilantro, 1 seeded jalapeño or red chili flakes, lemon or lime juice. Blend until blended but still chunky. Add minced onion that you have rinsed in cold water, at the end. The rinsing is so the onion doesn’t take over.
Tomatillo Salsa: Roast hulled tomatillos in the oven, at 400, with a small onion, a jalapeño pepper, and 2 garlic cloves, for about 20 minutes. Blend the cooked ingredients with lemon or lime juice, cilantro, salt and pepper.
For Easy Taquitos: Roll your favorite cooked ingredients (chicken, potatoes, charred peppers, cheese) in a softened corn tortilla, secure with toothpicks, fry in hot oil for 3 or 4 minutes.
EasyCheesy Ancho Sauce: 1 tbsp Butter, minced shallot, salt, pepper, 1 tbsp flour, cook until flour cooks, 1-2 min. Add 1 ½ cups chicken stock or Milk, whisk until it thickens. Turn off heat, add 1 cup shredded cheese and 1 tsp Ancho chili powder. yum.
EasyTostadas: Fry organic Non GMO corn tortillas in hot oil until crisp. Top with refried beans, cooked chicken seasoned with chili powder, cumin and coriander, lettuce, tomatoes, guac or avocado cream, & salsa.
For easy Mexican Rice: Oil or butter in a pan, add chopped onions, chopped garlic, chopped jalapeño, and rice. Sauté all ingredients together until fragrant. Add chopped tomatoes, s & p, and enough liquid to cook your rice, I think it’s usually 2 c water to 1 c rice.
For easy Refried Beans: The easiest way is buy a can of low fat organic refried beans. You could doctor it up with Ancho chili powder, maybe a little garlic powder, maybe a little cumin, or just heat it up and let the rest of the stuff you made flavor the beans. The slightly harder, but still easy way, is to buy dry beans, wash them, cook in a big pot with several cups of water or chicken stock, cook for a couple or more hours, add salt and seasonings, mash. Add to a baking dish with some cooked rice, top with cheese, bake until the cheese melts.
Garnishes for me always include shredded lettuce, chopped cilantro, chopped tomatoes, and a fresh squeeze of lemon or lime. Seriously Yum.
I made this dish for a contest sponsored by Chopped and the Sargento cheese co. I had to make a Mexican dish using: chicken thighs, 4 cheese Mexican blend, corn tortillas, and poblano peppers. I made this:
Quatro Queso Chicken and Waffles with Maple Poblano Salsa, featuring 4 main components, Poblano & Cheese Corn Waffles, Corn and Panko crusted fried chicken, delicious Poblano Tomatillo, Maple salsa, and a Quatro Queso Sauce, which has a little Ancho chili powder kick.
If I win, I get to go to NYC and they’ll give me money! I can use it to pay for groceries and kitchen equipment and such. I kind of really want to win.
Please vote for me if you have a spare minute, you can vote up to 5 X a day. I wish we could do that in the presidential primary next week. If I win a trip to NYC, I will say hi to Ted Allen for you.
I made this dish for a contest sponsored by Chopped and the Sargento cheese co. I had to make a Mexican dish using: chicken thighs, 4 cheese Mexican blend, corn tortillas, and poblano peppers. I made this:
Quatro Queso Chicken and Waffles with Maple Poblano Salsa, featuring 4 main components, Poblano & Cheese Corn Waffles, Corn and Panko crusted fried chicken, delicious Poblano Tomatillo, Maple salsa, and a Quatro Queso Sauce, which has a little Ancho chili powder kick.
If I win, I get to go to NYC and they’ll give me money! I can use it to pay for groceries and kitchen equipment and such. I kind of really want to win.
Happy Cinco De Mayo Tumblrs! Cinco de Mayo is a celebration of the Mexican defeat of French forces in a clash during the Battle of Puebla in Mexico, in 1862. Mexican Independence Day is September 16. I’ve learned a little bit about Mexico in the past couple years. I live and work in California, and CA used to be part of Mexico. Sometimes when I’m looking at the hillsides, I try to think back hundreds or thousands of years and imagine what it looked like back then. Some of my co-workers are from Mexico and they’re awesome. Some are from Spanish ancestry and some are Indigenous People. Mexican food is amazing, because it’s a mix of so many ingredients and cuisines, going back hundreds and thousands of years. It’s a massive essay to explore all the flavors and influences. My favorite part of the day while working on a landscape, is lunchtime. I usually get steak tacos with all the sauces, and then we sit around and tell stories, before getting back to hard ass work.
This is a dish which I particularly crave, corn tortilla enchiladas, either stuffed with cheese, black beans, or chicken. I usually don’t get this for lunch at work, because it’s sometimes too messy to get from a carry out place. I also like to make it at home because when you go out, no matter how nice the restaurant is, chances are you aren’t getting organic corn tortillas, and you might even be getting genetically modified corn. So I just make it at home.
I made this for lunch yesterday, and I have leftover sauce so I can make more today. I think I need to make some Taquitos today too, because I have all the ingredients and I need more crunch in my diet. And just fyi, the Vallarta recently started carrying a small selection of organic produce, beans, chicken, and some other products. Yay to not living in a food desert.
I recently started trying to crack the formula of basic enchilada sauce. It’s easier and faster than I thought. Basically you’re cooking a roux, with chili powder, tomato paste and seasonings, adding stock or broth and then stir and thicken.
In a sauce pan or skillet, add 1 tablespoon butter, a drizzle of olive oil, 1 small chopped sweet onionorshallot, 3 to 7 minced garliccloves,saltandpepper. Add 2 tsp all purpose flour, 1 tablespoon tomato paste and let it cook a bit. Add 2 teaspoons chili powder, and 1 additional tsp Ancho chili powder, 1 cup vegetable broth or chicken stock, or wine or water. I also added a spoonful of home made poblano salsa fresca that I made yesterday (optional). Simmer to thicken, blend if you want it nice and smooth. Heat the oven to 400. Roll corn tortillas around cheese, I used mozzarella, but you could use pepper jack or cheddar, or whatever you have. Pour some of the sauce in the bottom of a baking pan, add the rolled enchiladas, cover with more sauce, a little more cheese, and bake until bubbly. Yum! Serve with margaritas and beer, and a salad dressed with lime juice and olive oil.
