South of the Border, Segundo Parte

Crap, this is what happens when I don't post immediately. I forget. I think I will remember but my memory is certainly hazier than when I got back a month ago, 6 weeks ago? Good Lord, this month FLEW!

Anyway, we found this taco place on the main drag, Taco los Arboles I think it was called. Blew Urge out of the water! They were open at 6am and so two mornings in a row, I ate tacos for breakfast and it was glorious. The first day I went a little nuts with the hot sauce though, hot sauce in Mexico is realllllly hot! We had shrimp and fish and chile rellenos (yes, in a taco!) and my favorite was a sort of stewed pork in a green sauce. MMMMM. Washed down with some deeply colored flor de Jamaica, which I believe is just dried hibiscus flowers soaked in water. The color is like loganberry, so intense! I plan to make some of my own to make a fancy cocktails. I couldn't ever take pictures here though because I always had pork juice running down my hands and that's bad for the camera.

So after eating at all the town's taco stands and lollygagging on the beach, Ben and I rented a scooter and that was an excellent choice. I have no words for it but riding was one of my favorite moments in Mexico.

We went to some ruins, I'm not really a fan. But Ben enjoyed it and after we spent the day in the unforgiving sun at a dusty ruin with thousands of tourists and vendors trying to hawk you crap, we stopped to go swimming here.

The cenote, as they are called, was cool and deep and when you swam out into the middle and floated on your back, you could stare up at the sky and admire the treetops dancing above.

Our last night in Tulum we spent walking along a street parallel to the main drag but completely off the tourist grid. Well, not completely of course, it was only a block away but it was a stark contrast to the shops and restaurants that catered to visitors. It felt like we were another place completely. And there was street food! I went crazy when I saw a sign for churros but our attempt to procure them failed, the churro lady was having issues with her batter. But then we saw a guy making marquesas, which is like a slightly sweet and crispy crepe with cheese melted inside and rolled up. Good, but my heart belongs to churros.

I have one more installment from Mexico and if I'm lucky, I'll write it up by Christmas. Adios!

Tonight on Our Table

Pork roast, butternut squash and spinach salad. Blueberry sour cream crumb cake with vanilla frozen yogurt.

I think I'm going through a beer phase

I've never been much of a beer drinker, I like it sometimes but generally, it's too filling and too carbonated and the taste gets overwhelming to me. However, lately I've been wanting to try different beers and I've been enjoying them and I'd like to keep track of them. I should really do that with wine too and I started doing it with cheese a few years ago and never followed through. The story of my life!

Anyway, I think it started this winter when I went home for Christmas and had something brewed by Goose Island in Illinois. It was dark and coppery, with caramel and coffee undertones and I still haven't gotten it out of my mind. Goose Island doesn't distribute in Louisiana but I heard that they were bought up by Budweiser. This initially made me sad until someone told me that it won't change anything except they will have better distribution. Fingers crossed for Louisiana!

Yesterday I got a bottle of Saison Dupont, which is from Belgium. It had a nice, blond color although on first sniff, it smelled like Heineken to my unrefined nose and Heineken smells like funky skunk. But it tasted really crisp and refreshing, I even felt like there was some banana lingering. I did not much care for the aftertaste, which I am too beer-ignorant to place. Hops? Malt? Not sure. I did a little sleuthing to see if someone else could more eloquently describe it and I found a lot of very amusing descriptions like;

"Nose is a very dense earth, soil, it feels like fresh tilled dirt. Mild chlorophyll and resin, with a big giant lemon zest."

"Hazy straw yellow with 2-3 finger stark white tightly-bubbled, frothy head with good retention with numerous blobs of lacing."

These guys clearly drink more beer than I do and for the record, I don't really know if I could place the taste of resin. I sipped mine some Havarti cheese with caraway seeds and I thought the combination was mighty fine.

Be aware that the alcohol content is somewhat higher than an average beer, which I think is usually about 5%. The Saison Dupont I think is about 6.5%. That coupled with the fact that one of them costs almost $5, makes it a perfect beer to sip on leisurely and then call it quits.

Adventures South of the Border: Part One

My Fox and I just got back from a lovely week in Mexico and of course, I wanted to share with you all of the food that we tried and tasted! The week got kicked off really right when we got all the way to the front of the customs line in Cancun and they promptly booted us (me really) back to the US. It's a funny story and I'll tell you if you ask me but suffice it to say, when we finally got admitted onto Mexican soil two days later, I was ready to put the hurt on some food.

We decided to have lunch in Cancun before jumping on the bus to Tulum and that was the worst mistake I made the whole week. Cancun pretty much sucks as a city and we ended up at a crappy buffet with sour lasagna and some funky beef skewers. They didn't even make margaritas. Thanks for nothing, Fodor's Yucatan 2011!

After that debacle, we boarded our bus and I was very glad to see the LOVE PINK sweatsuit-clad American tourists fade away in the rearview mirror. Seriously, if I saw one more girl wearing that godawful Victoria's Secret pre-fab shit emblazoned on their ass cheeks, well, it's no wonder we're not always well-loved abroad. Because we look like this. Yeah, I'm judging, so hate me.



Tulum is a dusty little town about 80 miles south of Cancun. We got off the bus and immediately stopped somewhere to cool off with a margarita. We had some that were darn tootin', as well as some fantastical shrimp ceviche. After that,we got a cab to our new home, Papaya Playa, our little cabana on the beach! Once we settled in, we went and sat in a palapa hut that overlooked the beach and had a couple more margaritas. I think perhaps I overdid it with the margaritas but after getting deported and suffering the indignity of spending a night in a motel in Indianapolis, I thought I deserved it.

Back to our cabana (27). We could open our door and lay back in the bed and watch the waves crashing in! There is nothing quite like sleeping with the sound of the sea and then wakening to the first rays of the sun stretching across the sky. The water really is a most perfect turquoise and the sand was as white as I've ever seen it.

Ai, I didn't mean to make this a play by play, let me just get to the food! I read about this place called Urge Tacos from some food writer who said they had the best fish tacos she has ever had. I don't know about that but they were good. What was really notable was that they had this salad bar that was really a taco bar with all kinds of accouterments. So I got my plate with tortillas and fish and then went and loaded up with a sweet and tangy tamarind sauce, pickled red onions, radishes and jicama, avocado-habanero sauce and so on. Their octopus ceviche was super but the horchata was just okay.

I skipped dessert because the waiter made a face when I asked about it, as if to apologize for a meager offering, not a promising sign! Now that I think of it, maybe he was grimacing at my gringa accent. Anyway, by the time we walked from the taco place to town, we were drenched with sweat and parched. Luckily we stumbled upon this great little place called El Flor de Michoacan. It had the sweetest little courtyard with flowering trees and white cast iron tables. They also made several different kinds of paletas(popsicles) to soothe weary and overheated travelers such as oursleves. We visited this place pretty much every day we were in town, it was that good. My favorite was called gazacho moreliano and it had pineapple, mango,jicama, lime and chile. So incredible!

More to come....

Blueberry Cobbler

I posted recently about my forays in ice cream making and I believe I also mentioned the blueberry cobbler that went with it. A few weeks ago, we trekked up to Franklinton, LA to go blueberry picking. I was imagining some large, industrial farm but instead there was one table with some buckets, a metal cash box and a sign that said to please leave $8.50 for each gallon in the box and to have fun. I was instantly in love.

It was July in Louisiana and we had to wear long pants to avoid ticks so needless to say, we got to picking quickly. I think I sweated out stuff I ate in 2007. All told, I came away with about 2 gallons of blueberries and I probably consumed just as many in the process of picking. I couldn't help it, they were so fat and juicy and all warmed from the sun!

It was a blueberry bonanza weekend. I made blueberry cobbler and blueberry pancakes and I also made some blueberry vodka, which has turned a brilliant, violet hue and I look forward to testing it on my NEW PORCH of my VERY FIRST HOUSE! More on that later. I brought this cobbler to a party for the 4th of July, along with the lemon-ginger ice cream.


6 cups blueberries, rinsed and dried
2/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1 cup flour
4 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons cold unsalted butter or lard (Yes, I did!)
1/2 cup buttermilk or cream

Preheat oven to 400°F.Toss blueberries, sugar, flour and lemon juice in the bottom of a 2-quart ovenproof dish or 9x13 baking dish. I actually didn't have any lemons so I used grapefruit juice. Worked just fine.

Stir together the flour,sugar, baking powder and salt. Cut the butter/lard in with a fork or pastry knife. Stir in buttermilk/cream (or what the hell, soymilk) until the dough comes together, it will be wet and shaggy. Cover the berries with the dough, I did this "rustic-style," which means that there were big blobs of it in some places and less in others, it doesn't need to be perfectly smooth. Blobs are A-okay. Bake for about 20 minutes or until you smell it. You will want to eat this warm and with ice cream.

National Ice Cream Month

In one of his very few policies I ever agreed with, Ronald Reagan declared July to be National Ice Cream Month. Now there's a holiday I can get with! According to Wikipedia, the third Sunday of July is actually Ice Cream DAY and Reagan implored to nation to celebrate with "appropriate ceremonies and activities." Word.

I haven't busted out the ice cream maker since last year because, well, I was using it a bit too liberally if you know what I mean. I made two flavors this weekend and they were both hits! I actually did take pictures but ice cream is such a fussy model and besides, there are always pesky things happening with homemade ice cream around, like bowls getting gobbled up in no time at all. So no photos, just imagine though and then make them because they turned out better than I was hoping for.

The first one was a lemon-ginger ice cream that I made to serve alongside a blueberry cobbler for a Fourth of July Party. That cobbler was also very good but let's talk ice cream first. I love lemon desserts and I especially love how they complement blueberries but I had never had lemon ice cream. Should I make ice or perhaps sorbet? No, by golly, it would be un-American not to eat ice cream on July 4th. I made this recipe from Epicurious, I just added ginger and next time, I'll add more.

Lemon-Ginger Ice Cream

zest of one lemon
1/2 c. lemon juice (this took about 2.5 lemons)
1 T. chopped ginger, will up it to 2 T. next time!
2/3 to 3/4 c. sugar, depends on your sweet tooth, original recipe called for a cup!
2 cups heavy cream, half and half, milk or any combination of the three
3 egg yolks
splash of vanilla, maybe a teaspoon or so

Bring all ingredients just to simmer, whisking constantly. It will probably look curdled because of the lemon juice reacting with the cream but never mind it. Cool in the refrigerator, strain through a fine sieve and then process however you make ice cream, coffee cans, the old crank or new-fangled machine.

STELLAR. I wish I had made a double batch but it would overflow my wee ice cream maker, don't make the same mistake!

Next, since I brought all the ice cream to a party and my freezer was feeling forlorn and ice cream deprived, I made a batch of cardamom. It was good but I made it last year and remember it being ethereal. I wanted to amp up the cardamom flavor so I used 40 pods instead of 20 but it just wasn't quite right. I ate it a few times before it came to me that I used to work at this pan-Asian cafe in Portland long, long ago and they had only one dessert; a chocolate-cardamom cake. Well, let me tell you, I just stirred some Dutch-process cocoa powder in the little bit that was left and BA-BAY, it was GOOD! Yes, it was! This is actually a good theorem for any of life's problems. When in doubt, add chocolate.

Now, I've got to gear up for July 17th and see if I can top either one of these winners. It is my patriotic duty. Thanks Ronnie!

La Boca: Run, Don't Walk. Just Get There.

Incredible. It may not be fair to give them such lavish praise but after our failed dinner attempt at Cafe Adelaide, the comparison between the two for service, food and drinks was night and day.

We were immediately acknowledged, sweet! Given four menus for all four people and told about specials, thank you! Thursday is service industry night at La Boca, even better! We just looked at that menu, which did not include the pastas and salads but had all the cuts of meat, empanadas etc.

We got our cocktails immediately, God, I'm really loving this place! Fresh watermelon and vodka, which was really tasty and not watery like I feared. For starters, we ordered the morcilla, provoleta and bruschetta. I didn't really dig the bruschetta but it wasn't bad. The provoleta, I maybe expected more, it was just cheese to me. A really good cheese appetizer is the fried cheese with lemon at Mona's. Also, it had oregano sprinkled liberally all over it. I used to think I wasn't crazy about oregano until I went to Sicily and tasted their oregano and had an epiphany that what we have here in the US is just stuff they sweep off the oregano factory floor. I don't even like fresh oregano that I've tasted out of many gardens so maybe Sicily has the advantage with all that volcanic ash in the soil or something, I don't know. This was definitely factory floor oregano but not everyone is an oregano elitist like me. The morcilla though, oh, well, the morcilla. Fan-flipping-tastic. Just order it and get over the fact that it's blood sausage. It's pretty much just like boudin so if you like that, you should really try it.

The steaks were out of this world, some of the best steak I've ever had and I have eaten bife de chorizo in Buenos Aires. Fried brussel sprouts are the most genius thing ever. Asparagus and fries are also not to be missed. The brussel sprouts even taste good cold for breakfast. I can't wait to go back and try the empanadas and the gnocchi and of course, dessert! Love, love, love La Boca!