I’m always looking for a new mocktail recipe to serve poolside during the summer. After all, you can only drink so many diet sodas or lemonades . For some reason, I can’t get the lime sherbet punch served at summer weddings out of my mind. You know the punch I’m talking about. Just about everyone from the local Church Lady to Paula Deen has a recipe for it. We don’t have a lot of weddings in the summer here in Phoenix (like we always say, “If the wedding can’t wait until October, it’s not really love.”) So, it looks like I’m going to have to make it myself. The only problem is… I forgot to invite two hundred of my closest friends over to swim today.
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I know what you’re thinking, ”Crepe recipes? On a Southwest food blog?” That’s what I thought. Until I tasted fajita steak and chipotle chicken wrapped up in a crispy crepe, that is.
We found a great little restaurant in Irvine, California last month called the Crepe Maker. The menu is built around a basic crepe recipe filled with just about anything you can imagine. Savory, sweet, Southwest, Italian, they have it all. My husband was skeptical, to say the least. ”Crepes aren’t really food. Are they?”
These crepes certainly are! I have never had a crepe like this. The crepes I have eaten are usually small and soft… delicate little things. The crepes at Crepe Maker are large and crispy! Think pizza sized. They are folded in half and rolled into a cone shape in order to hold such hearty ingredients as fajita steak, marinated chicken and even Tex-Mex combos with corn and black beans. My favorite crepe turned out to be the one I tried on a whim. It has marinated chicken, melted cheddar cheese, tomatoes, spinach, walnuts and… wait for it… raspberry jam! It was delicious! The raspberry jam added tartness and just a little sweet to the dish. The jam melted slightly in the warm crepe and spread itself around on the spinach greens. I’ve been craving the crepes ever since we returned home.
The cooks at the Crepe Maker shared their tips for making the perfect crepe. So, get your filling and your crepe batter ready and cook along.
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I have come up with my very own fabulous frugal food tip! I made a pesto recipe out of a wilted spinach salad. I think it is a rather brilliant way to stretch the delicious spinach salad recipe with strawberries, goat cheese and candied walnuts into another dish. Bruschetta!
I was so disappointed when I went to the refrigerator to get some left over salad for lunch and realized that I had dressed all of the spinach the night before and now, it was wilted. The spinach, goat cheese and strawberry combo from the day before (don’t forget the walnuts) sounded so good to me that I just had to figure out a way to finish them off. I decided that if pesto is made by just chopping up basil and smothering it in oil anyway, why not start out with spinach that was dressed in olive oil already?
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Ahhhhh – Mexican Chorizo. It is one of those foods that – when it’s good – can be heavenly, but . . . when it’s bad, it can be a greasy and nasty nightmare. So, I thought, how about making it at home so I could control the ingredients?
Mexican style chorizo is made from ground pork, vinegar and spices. I decided not to bother with trying to put it into casings because I always wind up removing the casings and using it like ground beef in recipes anyway.
First I did some research.
The Homesick Texan posts a fabulous chorizo with pork, vinegar, chiles and spices. Thank goodness HT agrees with me to skip the casings! The Spicie Foodie made a chorizo with less heat. Diane at The Whole Gang adds tequila to her chorizo! Wow! Must try this next time. Menu in Progress makes an Oaxacan style chorizo with five different chile powders.
And, the King of Mexican Cuisine himself, Rick Bayless, adds pork, pork fat, chiles, spices and garlic to his Chorizo Toluqueño in his book Authentic Mexican. He recommends refrigerating for 2 days before using.
Many of the recipes call for using a meat grinder, but, seriously, who has a meat grinder these days? I found that pulsing the pork in my food processor works just as well.
Chorizo is surprisingly easy to make and is very lean, depending on the cut of pork you use. I had to add oil to my pan to cook it because it was so very lean. And, I loved the flavor of my homemade version. So delicious. I have some stashed in my freezer right now for our next leisurely breakfast with chorizo and eggs!
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I’m not usually a “salad for dinner” kind of girl. But when summer hits full boil here in Phoenix, salad recipes are all I can think about. Salads are quick, easy and there are no rules to follow; you just throw in what ever sounds good at the time. This Strawberry and Goat Cheese Salad with Candied Walnuts is not only what sounds good this time, but it’s all I have this time.
Apparently, I didn’t do that great of a job shopping before I went into the hospital for knee surgery. I found a strange collection of ingredients in the fridge when I got home: left over pizza, dried out chicken nuggets and really smelly chinese food. All signs that my family survived any way they could… by eating take-out. The big bag of salad greens I purchased is still sitting there, looking a little sad. I must have been under the influence of pre-surgery medication when I bought it. I had these images of my husband sitting around, munching on salad and marveling at its crisp, summery, freshness while I was in the hospital eating reconstituted beef bullion and rubberized pork chops.
However, there is a big patch of really fresh strawberries in the fridge that wasn’t there before. He probably picked them up at the grocery store on one of his “emergency runs” for ice cream (the evidence is in the trash can). So, I mixed the strawberries and bag of greens with creamy goat cheese from the fridge (every Southwest cook has goat cheese in the fridge) and candied walnuts from the pantry for a fresh summery salad that made me feel so happy to be home.
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Tags:
candied walnuts,
cheese,
easy dinners,
goat cheese,
healthy,
low carb recipes,
low fat recipes,
low glycemic recipe,
meatless monday,
pantry,
salad,
southwest recipe,
spinach,
strawberry
