Forest Dreams

 Lately I've been in search for wall decorations to give my bedroom a little more personality. Right now it's just a big brown box, lot's of brown... maybe too much brown. I really want to refinish the furniture white but that's a project that will require some super power sander that I honestly don't want to spend the money on. Instead of refinishing furniture I came across this on pinterest. I definitely didn't want an entire wall of birch trees ( maybe in my "in progress" craft room) but I do love me some birch trees.

Instead I opted for some canvas art! I had two lonely 18x12 stretched canvas in my storage closet and figured birch trees will give these poor abandoned canvases some meaning in life.

I basically followed the tutorial but applied it to a smaller surface. 

On my weekly trip to Michaels I wondered into the art supply section and gorgeous Martha Stewart colors caught my eyes. I immediately fell in love with her neutral tones, I LOVE MUTED, CREAM FORMULA BASED COLORS! 

 The colors I scooped up were "Gray Wolf" and "Lake Fog"

Painted "Gray Wolf" all over and sprinkled silver fine glitter while paint was still wet. 

With painters tape I created stencils just how this tutorial demonstrated. 

The birch trees are in "Lake Fog" and the detailing is "Gray Wolf" 

Free handing the bark details was incredibly easy and if you make a mistake just color over it, it's fool proof.

Once finished I felt like something was missing, so I added the "carved" initials but something was still missing. Than on an inspiration seeking trip to Hobby Lobby I came across teeny tiny LED craft lights. TEENY TINY LED LIGHTS! BATTERY POWERED!! I don't know why I felt like I had to buy loads of them  without an actual project in mind but I knew they had to come home with me. At home I sat at my dinner table in it's shambled state and it clicked. I will not only put new art on my walls I will also put up the perfect amount of light for late night reading or just the perfect amount to make me sleepy.... or Monty. 

Oxtail Soup ( Sopa de Rabo de Buey)

In the short 5 years I lived in El Salvador the one thing I remember most and still remains a tradition, ox tail soup. This soup wasn't a weekly dish, it was and still is a celebratory dish.  Living in El Salvador, eating red meat was not a regular thing. If we had red meat everyone knew we were to expect company, lots of company. Be it a sad occasion or a happy one, the entire family will be packed in like sardines at the dinner table. Great memories, fabulous tradition that we still enjoy and at times love to abuse haha 

[side note: my brothers swear by this soup as a hang over cure ;) ]

This recipe does vary family to family but of course no ox tail soup is as good as moms'. The first time I made it all on my own, was in efforts to woo my fiance, trust me it's totally a man dish. You want to lock him in? You make ox tail soup and if it comes close to his mothers (or in my case is better because his mom didn't really make it) you've got that sucker wrapped around your finger. The poor schmuck won't know what hit him. 

Makes 10 servings, 2.5 Hours start to finish

INGREDIENTS

*I recommend you head to your local international food mart

• 1.5 lb Ox Tail ( pre order with your local butcher or go to local international food mart)
• 1.5 lb Short Ribs
• 2 Medium Sized Yuca Roots
• 2 Wiskil/Chayote
• 1 Medium Spanish Onion
• 2 Large Tomatoes 
• 3 Medium Carrots (not baby carrots! You want the REAL carrot flavor)
• 2 Green Plantains
• Small Cabbage
• 2 Tablespoons Beef Bouillon ( I buy the powder kind)
• 1 Tablespoon Garlic Powder
• 1/4 Teaspoon Oregano
• 1/2 Tablespoon of salt ( or to taste, I find 1/2 TB is enough)
• 1/2 Tablespoon of fresh ground black pepper
• 1 Tablespoon Olive Oil

***The star of the soup is obviously the ox tail and short ribs, when you go shopping for it make sure you look for fatty cuts. I do recommend you stick to a moderate amount, too much fat makes the stock too greasy***

DON'T BE AFRAID OF MAKING THIS SOUP, I PROMISE IT'S RIDICULOUSLY EASY! 

HOW TO:

1. Chop onion and tomatoes. In a 12 quart pot, heat olive oil on medium high heat, sweat onion and tomato for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally

2. While onion and tomatoes are cooking, rinse meat and trim excess fat, remember to keep a moderate amount. Too much fat will make the soup overly greasy.

3. Place meat in pot and let it braise for 10-15 minutes.

4. Add 2 quarts of water, bring to boil than lower heat medium and let simmer 45 minutes... YES 45 minutes. Through out the 45 minutes, add garlic powder, beef boullion, salt, oregano and black pepper. 

5. While the meat is cooking to a near fall off the bone goodness, chop your veggies as follow but in no particular order:

• Carrots, peel and cut into 1/2 inch rounds
• Wiskil/Chayote, peel, wash and cut into 1/2 inch wedges. ( It's very important to wash the wiskil. you may notice a powdery residue on your palms after washing this veggie, just take some salt and rub between palms than rinse. It's sort of a milky residue that doesn't taste very good but the veggie it self is yummy)
• Green Plantains, rinse and cut into full 1 1/2 chunks, leave peel on.
• Cabbage, cut in quarters and roughly pull layers apart. 
• Yuca/Cassava, cut into 2 inch chunks. Use your knife as a hammer of sorts. While knife is wedged into Yuca it on the counter, it's a tough veggie so it may take a bit of work. Peel the skin as follow:

Wedge knife only through the skin layer. 

Wiggle blade under skin to the right, bring knife down and lay it flat on your cutting board while it's still wedged under the skin. 

Pull the yuca to the left as you slowly keep wiggling blade of knife further along under the skin.

VIOLA! You peeled Yuca! YAY!

Rinse Yuca and set aside.

      

         6.  Back to your meat, check several pieces for tenderness. At this point it shouldn't be completely soft and falling off the bone but that's exactly what we want. Begin adding your veggies in the following order 5 minutes after one another : Yuca, Carrots, wiskil and plantain. 

         7. Ten minutes after adding wiskil and plantain, check meat for tenderness. At this point it should be super soft and almost falling off the bone, proceed with cabbage and let soup simmer for 15 more minutes. 

         Your soup is ready! Meat and veggies should be tender. You can serve with a wedge of lime and hot sauce on the side or just enjoy it as is. Sometimes I add fresh cilantro and it takes it to another level, DEELISH.

I truly hope you give this recipe a try, although it takes a while to cook it's not something you have to stand in front of the stove at all times. I actually get a good amount of laundry done whenever I make it. Invite some friends, family and neighbors it's a must. Plus it's a whole lot of soup, don't be greedy. 

Recycle A Little Bit Of Fall

Despite the snow outside and three hours without power, my excitement for fall is still strong.

With my halloween birthday order canceled due to the weather, I got the itch to bring a little bit 

more fall into my home.

I have loads of candle jars with wicks burnt down to the metal, so I thought something quick and simple will make me fill the void for those gorgeous fall colors. OH! Excuse the picture quality.

Dead camera + No Power = iPhone to the rescue!

What you need:

Empty Candle Jar or Votive Holder

Felt

Embroidery Thread

Needle

Fabric Glue

Blow Dryer

Cotton Ball

Vodka (you'll see)

Step 1: Remove label from jar

Bring out your blow dryer and on hi heat aim the air to the label. 

BE CAREFUL THE JAR DOES GET HOT! 

  

Step 2: Vodka time!

Go ahead, take a shot! No? Ok, than just soak the cotton ball with it and rub on the glue residue from the label, or you can use goo gone. I prefer vodka (no oily residue). 

Step 3: Measure and Cut Felt

Very simple, trace the jar to make a circle. Trace straight down from the outside, not at an angle. You want the circle to be a tiny bit bigger. Measure all around the jar and the hight, add 1/4 inch to the hight. When you're done with tracing and measuring, put the jar in the freezer. 

Step 4: Straight stitch rectangle ends together to form a tube, than stitch the circle to the tube, I used a blanket stitch. If you're not familiar with a blanket stitch, here's a GREAT tutorial.

Step 5: Cut out leaf

You can print out this pattern I made to cut out leaf. Stitch detail on it and glue to your jar cozy.

Step 6: Pop out the wax.

Take a butter knife and gently wedge it into the edge of the wax and it pops right off. Be Gentle, the last thing you want is to break the jar and hurt yourself. Use a kitchen towel to get a good grip ... When removing the label, the heat melted a bit of the wax and formed an opening along the edge, wedge knife there. 

Step 7: VOILA! 

Slip the sparkling clean jar to it's cozy and do whatever your little heart desires with it. I'm using mine as an accessories holder, mainly my hair clips and ties. I always seem to loose those, don't know why...

Hope you enjoyed this quick and incredibly easy jar cozy tutorial =]

It's a great way to use up some of that extra felt you may have lying around. Recycle those jars, lovies!

Fall Sundays

I don't know what sundays consist of in your homes, but in mine I'm unfortunate to have a football obsessed fiance. Not that I'm knocking football, it just doesn't float my boat. To satisfy the hungry endless pit of my fiance's stomach, on sundays I resort to quick meals. What's quicker than sandwich? When you find something, let me know.
The other day I tried a sandwich worthy of withstanding sunday football, plus it's like fall between two slices of bread and even said slices of bread are like a walkway covered with leafs in all of the pretty fall colors... Alright enough with the analogies and on to the "sammich"!

What you'll need: Brie, butter, pear, honey and cranberry walnut bread.

Step 1: Slice the pair. With an average sized pear you can cut a total of 8 slices, 4 per sandwich.

Step 2: Cut a slice of brie. To expand your slice I spread it out on the cutting board and

place on bread.

Step 3 & 4: Assemble pears like shown, drizzle with honey (a little goes a long way)

                                      

Step 5: Place other slice of delicious bread over pears and spread butter. 

I use Earth Balance, I've come to find it doesn't burn and it's tastier. win,win!

Step 6: Grill on a skillet over medium heat 1 minute each side. I'm sorry no picture here, the fiance ran up to his room for his game and I was not about to try and burn myself with butter fingers, le sigh.

Here's your sammich! Perfect for a fall lunch, perfect for sunday football. 

Finally, Tostadas For Dinner

This past week has been very much unwanted! I've been mourning a death and recovering from a sinus infection with a side of bronchitis, yay! Not to mention Gigi's grass allergies are firing up and poor thing can't stop gnawing at her paws, so mama has to keep an eye on her 24/7 literally.
Well, I never thought I would be excited to see the weekend and finally make it five minutes without coughing to cook a decent meal. These babies have been very much craved by yours truly, the boyfriend and his nephew have never had the pleasure of munching on tostadas.
They're very easy to make, you'll be wondering why would you pay for poor quality taco bell wannabes.

Ingredients:


4 skinless chicken breast
4 skinless chicken thighs
3 tomatos
2 yellow onions
2 ancho peppers
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/3 fresh squeezed lime juice
1/2 cup olive oil
salt to taste


Toppings:
fried corn tortillas (base to all the goodness)
red refried beans
sour cream
lettuce
hot sauce (from scratch or your preferred bottled sauce)
queso fresco or shredded monterey jack cheese

1. In a soup pot cover all 8 pieces of chicken with water, one onion and boil until cooked and firm.

Place cooked chicken in a plate to cool, save that chicken stock! In a small bowl place ancho peppers and pour two cups of the broth over it, let steep for 15 minutes.

2. Once chicken has cooled a bit, hand shred and set aside.

3. In a blender or food processor place chopped tomatoes, a quarter of onion and chopped ancho peppers. I leave the seeds in for heat, blend into a sauce.

4. In a sauce pan place olive oil, let heat and add remaining onion, let onion cook until semi clear. Add chicken along with sauce, salt, cumin, lime juice and chicken broth used to steep peppers. 

At this point just let everything cook over medium low heat until there's no more liquid. While you wait for that store the left over broth for any future use.

Prep an assembly line of toppings on your dinner table

and let everyone assemble their own tostadas like so

Needless to say we all enjoyed our friday movie night, nom nom nom.

Blueberry Coffee Cake

The boyfriend had been reminiscing about one of his coworkers rum cake that he received this past christmas, " I want something to go with my evening coffee" Ok I get the hint you want me to bake something other than cupcakes.
[side note: I have a small from home cupcake catering business]
So I searched and searched online for ideas and ran across this little gem, Blueberry Coffee Cake.
I love blueberries, specially frozen. It's one of my favorite snacks although I'm not particular to cooked blueberries but there's plenty of them in the fridge so I went for it.
Once baked and hearing the boyfriend gush how delicious it was, he got me to try it. It's so yummy!
Not overly sweet at all and the blueberries with the coconut make it oh so special. I will definitely be baking another pan for the family visit this weekend. I may even switch out the coconut and blueberries for peaches and pecans, maybe?

Best Cook Out Side Ever!

I was going to make this huge post on "tostadas de pollo" loosely translated to "chicken toast". It's basically an open face taco but with less tortilla chip accidentally jamming into your gums.
Moving on, I was going to make a post on that but I recently was informed of a death, I'm still in disbelief but it's one of those bittersweet passing where in your heart you truly feel it was for the best. Not sure if any of you have experienced such feeling, it's very confusing.

Such is life, when I'm down, I cook. So I made a very lazy meal, curry chicken with cilantro lime rice. This post's focus will be on the rice.

Ingredients: serves 4

1 cup long-grain white rice
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
2 cups water
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

1. In a medium sauce pan, pour olive oil and rice. Let warm up for a minute or two on medium heat, stirring to evenly mix oil in with rice.

2. Combine garlic powder and salt, now this you can add or take to preference. I normally add a pinch more of garlic powder. Stir to mix in with rice.

3.  Add lime juice stir, add water and let it come to a boil.

4.  Let it come to a boil for a minute, cover and lower burner to medium low.  Let rice cook for about 12-15 minutes. Once you see water has completely absorbed and you no longer hear a "crackling" sound, turn burner off.

5. Let rice sit covered for 5 minutes, uncover for an additional 5. Chop cilantro and place over top of the rice and fluff, serve while it's still warm.


I make this rice obsessively during the summer, it goes great with grilled meats. I like to chop the entire cilantro, not just the leaves. I find that the stems give the rice a subtle nutty flavor. The ingredients double very well according to how much you need. Take it with you to your next barbecue, it'll be a guaranteed hit.
It's still cold in Virginia but any chance it hits 60 degrees and above we fire up the grill out here. What are some of  your favorite cook out dishes? Maybe I can revamp a few ;)

Mother Nature, Take A Chill Pill

Just yesterday the boyfriend and I booked our vacay to Waikiki. Than this morning I'm glued to  my laptop watching the tragic incident in Japan, that's now effecting 20 surrounding countries. It's frightening how we ARE aware that in a split second our lives can change yet not quite mindful at the actual reality. My lack of excitement doesn't really matter anymore, more so because in my head I'm running around frantic, dazed and confused. I'm genuinely praying for the safety of all the people in Japan and the 20 affected countries. In the mean time, I'll be glued to my laptop until the nut bag of mother nature calms down. How do you feel whenever you hear of natural disasters? Also, is there a nursery rhyme for tsunamis to go away??

Little sprouts

I started germination two weeks ago and never would have imagined my sweet peas sprouting so quickly! I planted some while I lived in my old apartment and they always took almost 4 weeks to get that big. While my tomatoes and herbs are right on schedule, I can't wait until the weather warms up a bit. The boyfriend and I decided on a raised bed for our new home. It just seems more simple and fool proof for his first time gardening. I had the pleasure of learning all there is to know from my pops, who used to turn his back yard into a wonderland of tomato, bean, squash, corn, watermelon and eggplants. He gathered all the seeds towards the end of each plant's peak as well. Here's to hoping we can create our first of many veggie wonderlands!
Are you growing your own veggies this year?

Chick Please!

Garbanzo beans (chickpeas), I used to despise them growing up. I'd refuse to eat my moms chicken tamales in fear of running across one of these firm and buttery little nuggets. Over the years I've developed a slight obsession towards them, maybe it's been the years of absent tamales or the interest in everything culinary, which ever it is all I know is that I love garbanzo beans. I found this recipe on epicurious, it can't get any easier. I substituted chicken breast with drumsticks, served it with spanish tomato rice and had the boyfriend and his bff gobbling it up in seconds.

Carne Guisada

Carne Guisada is basically a beef stew, quick comfort food.
It was a rainy sunday yesterday so naturally the boyfriend and I were hankering for anything warm, filling and quick. My dad used to grow masses of tomatoes when I was younger and this dish is perfect for using up some of those tomatoes that we didn't know what to do with. I've changed a few things from my moms original recipe to make it my own and carnivore boyfriend friendly.

(Serves 6)

Ingredients:

1 lb cubed beef

4 medium sized vein tomatoes

2 shallots

2 cups of baby carrots

4 red potatoes

1 cup tomato sauce (or 8 oz canned tomato sauce)

2 tablespoons Adobo

1 tablespoon cumin

1/2 tablespoon paprika

1/2 cup cilantro

1 cup of water

1/3 cup olive oil

1. Cut tomatoes and shallots to your preference, add to a deep pan with olive oil and let sit for a three minutes than add beef.

2. Add adobo, cumin and paprika stir to combine and let your meat simmer for two minutes than add baby carrots, tomato sauce and cilantro. Mean while clean potatoes and wipe them down to free them of dirt, don't peel and just cut them into small pieces. 

3. After 8 minutes of mixing in carrots and spices add potatoes, cover and let cook until both carrots and potatoes soften. Adding water and stirring so not to burn the sauce you've created with all the tomatoes. 

Normally it takes me a total of 30-40 minutes to cook this. I sometimes serve it with a little bit of white rice but eating this alone is perfectly filling and exceptionally perfect on rainy, dreary days.

The Beginning

Food has been and most certainly will always be a big part of me. I grew up in a big family, four brothers, four sisters and not to mention the nieces, nephews and friends that somehow never went home. The only time we all actually caught up with each other was in the kitchen. My father made most of his living working as a cook at a Chinese joint in Arlington Virginia, housekeeper in a hotel and a side handy man job he created for himself. My mother worked a full time job as a care taker and a full time house wife as well. Despite all the absence of both my parents, there was a certain time of day we all would give our hugs, hear lectures, get school work looked at and just enjoy everyone’s company.

It was literally an hour of pleasant laughter and peace of mind, after that, the circus rolled right on out of the kitchen. We never had many proper sit down dinners, their were too many lives all in one place, so the stand and eat routine was just as enjoyable to me as the television dinner around a table.

There’s nothing better than enjoying the talents of my dad’s trained chinese cuisine career and my mom’s traditional Salvadorian/Spanish meals. Very opposite types of cuisine yet they both somehow made it work. 

I always took interest in food, purposely getting in their way while they whip up massive amounts of ingredients into delicious meals. I never cooked a full meal on my own, never. Until I moved out right after high school. As a teenager I felt overwhelmed and lost in the size of my family, wondered how my “american” friend's family lived and how great it must be to see your parents and actually have a full conversation without interruptions or not have a Salvadorian mom screaming at you because you can’t make one good tortilla.

When I stood in front of the stove for the first time on my own, I got the most overwhelming sense of solitude it almost made me break down crying. Never in a million years would I have imagined a stove, a wooden spoon and the sight of a dinner table of guests trigger my desire to be at home in my parents kitchen. I pushed forward, held back the urge to pick up the phone and call my mother and swallowed the ball of emotions forming in my throat. What did I make? Carne Guisada.