New Name

Temporary name change. Please leave yeas or neas in the comments section.

-Ryan

Things to do in Quito when you're dead....

Well, not dead exactly, but just marginally unemployed. July and August are the months in which your students decide that instead of having classes, it would be better if they went to the beach, or the jungle, or Las Vegas to buy a new iPad. Their justifications are unimportant, I had nothing to do. Since, for the time being, I was an ersatz ward of the state, and since my SNES had not yet to arrive, I read. In the following paragraphs I will recount a small review of the books I read.

Lies INC. - Phillip K. Dick

Well, what can you say that hasn't already been said about a book that places a 100 page,non-sequitur acid trip smack dab in the middle? Skip it. Apparently, the book was originally published without the middle section. Read that book.

Player Piano - Kurt Vonnegut

One man's revolt against a glittering tomorrow, so says the cover. In this story machines have taken over all industry, save for the managers and the engineers. It's kinda like in the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when Charlie's father, who screws in toothpaste caps, is replaced by a robot that does the same task. I suppose that's where the similarities end as, much to the chagrin of me and everyone else, Player Piano does not, in fact, have a chocolate factory. Very different from Vonnegut's later works, but a good read nonetheless.

Slapstick - Kurt Vonnegut

The protagonist of Slapstick is a two meter tall, neanderthal ex-president. The book is written as his memoirs. It's a non-linear non-plot. But, it's thoughtful and funny and interesting. When you can't sufficiently explain what a book is about yet you can't stop reading it, that's a good indication that the writer knows what he's doing.

Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut

Jury's out on this one. I certainly liked it, but I'm not sure what he was trying to say with this novel. Every character in this novel has been used by a force greater than themselves for a purpose to which they were wholly indifferent or adversarial. Beyond that.....? Read it, it's good.

Anthem - Ayn Rand

I'll admit, I went into reading this book with preconceived notions. I have a cursory understanding of Ayn Rand and her "philosophy", and that possibly tainted my experience. That said, this book was the most self-important pile of drivel I have ever read. The protagonist is homo superior, or something, I've only ventured to guess, who lives in the ideal of a communal society. Everyone is forced to be equal, but he's not equal, you see, he can't be, get it? The word 'I' is forbidden and people refer to themselves as 'WE'. How can I possibly express how facile this book was. The protagonist might as well have been a 14-year-old kid, "I'm so great and nobody understands me." Anyway, the protagonist escapes, with the greatest of ease, along with his mate who "gets him" and they run away through the woods and live in a derelict cabin. He discovers 'I' and decides he's going to return to society and bring back those who agreed with him, even though he's a self-involved tool, and no previous motive is expressed for why he would want to do such a thing. Nevertheless.... When I read Kurt Vonnegut's books I can tell he had an insight into something and he's thinking about the issues that were concerning him. Evidently the only thing Ayn Rand thought about was Ayn Rand. Alas, I have promised myself I would read her works, and I am currently 30 pages into her (rather long) novel We The Living. Pray. For. Mojo.

Dracula - Bram Stoker

This book gets an honorable mention as I haven't actually finished it, though Lord knows I've tried. To whom it may concern, this book is about a vampire. His name is Count Dracula. He lives in Transylvania. He's rather pale. The first chapter of the book is very exciting, the rest is, well, not that exciting. Dracula would be, by my estimation, 26 pages long if you were to remove the endless paragraphs of Victorian genuflecting. Look, I understand that so-and-so is a goodly woman, honest and noble, and that what-his-face is truly a steadfast friend....... so, if it's not too much to ask, can we please talk about vampires now? The ending is going to have to involve a lightsaber battle for me not to be disappointed. I don't think it will.

That's all for the moment,

-Ryan

What's Your Favorite?

Just curious as to what is everyone's favorite thing to eat during the fall?

Next up on my TO COOK list is Pumpkin 3 Been Chili! It sounds delicious to me. I'll let you know.

We're missing fall so much, that we're contemplating getting cable next month so that we can have people over to watch Sunday Night Football and eat fall-ish foods! Pathetic? Maybe! But there are some things that the Mid West just knows how to do right! And fall is certainly one of them.

MULUB,

Taylor

Caldo Xochitl

You all know we love soup. But lately I've grown a little tired of the same old, same old. So I decided to mix it up, kind of. Don't get me wrong I still made a chicken soup, but it tasted completely different. This recipe is from BudgetBytes.com, one of my all time favorites! Seriously, if you're on a budget then you've got to check out this sight. Everything I've made from it has been super tasty and super cheap!

Anyways Caldo Xochitl is a mexican soup and it's fantastic. It was really easy to make, cost a tiny bit more than just the regular chicken soup we've been eating lately, and by tiny I'm talking not even a dollar more per serving!

Here it is:

1 tbsp olive oil

1 head of garlic

1 onion

1 red pepper

2 skinless bone in chicken breasts

1 lb of tomatoes

2 jalapeno peppers

2 tbsp lime juice

3 bullion cubes

1/4 -1/2 cup of cilantro

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

Heat the olive oil, minced garlic, chopped onion and red pepper in a large pot for 5-10 minutes.

Add the two chicken breasts and 6 cups of water. Simmer for 30 minutes. Remove chicken breasts. Shred chicken and return to pot.

While chicken is simmering, dice tomatoes and mix with jalepenos.

After you've returned the shredded chicken to the pot, add tomatoes and jalepenos. Add lime juice. Add bullion. Add chopped cilantro. Mix well, to dissolve the bullion. Simmer for another 5 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve with garnishes of fresh cilantro, raw onions and sliced avocados.

Enjoy!

MULUB,

Taylor

Glazed Apple Bread

This will make your house smell like fall deliciousness and you'll want to eat the whole thing because of that fact. <-- Just a disclaimer.

So I made this Glazed Apple Bread not with apples but with plantains that I've had in the freezer for who knows how long. As a side note, why do people throw away bananas? Just pop them in the freezer when they're about to go bad and use them later to bake with or for doggie treats! Chuki loves them, especially when it's hot out and we're laying out on the terrace.

Anyways this recipe comes from a new food blog that I just found out about through my Google Reader. It's called PassTheSushi.com. I haven't looked around at all on the site, so I'm not really saying anything about it, besides that this bread was fantastic!

The original recipe makes 2 loaves, but because we're only two people and not that big of fatties (although if I had made two loaves, we would have eaten two), I decided to 1/2 the recipe. Here's how it works:

3/4 cup of frozen mashed plantains (about 4)

1/2 cup of panela (similar to brown sugar but earlier in the sugar making process)

1/4 cup of buttermilk (put 1/4 cup of milk and 1 tsp of lemon juice in a cup, stir, let set 5 minutes)

1/4 cup of sunflower oil

2 lightly beaten eggs

1.5 cups of flour (2 cups if you're at high altitude)

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp nutmeg

Mix plantains, panela, buttermilk, oil and eggs. Add dry ingredients. Combine until all are wet. Put in buttered bread tin. Bake at 350 for 50ish minutes.

Glaze -

Note: I forgot I had 1/2ed the bread recipe and made the full glaze recipe. This is dangerous, because now I want glaze on everything. Glaze on eggs, glaze on granola, glaze on you name it!

2 tbsp butter

1/2 cup panela

1 tbsp milk + 1 tsp

1/4 - 1/2 cup of powdered sugar

Melt butter in a small saucepan. Add panela. Mix continuously. Bring to boil for 2 minutes. Add milk. Bring to boil for 2 minutes. Remove from heat. MIX MIX MIX.

Let the mixture cool down for 30 minutes. Put saucepan in a bowl of cold water. Slowly add powdered sugar depending on desired sweetness. (I added about 1/3 cup and it was plenty sweet for me.) Add milk until you are able to drizzle the glaze over the bread. ENJOY warm with butter. Sinful, I know.

MULUB,

Taylor

Red Sauce

It kind of looks really gross in this picture. Sorry.

I've been making red sauce for a while now and have never thought to look at a recipe. You know just put some tomatoes in the pot, season, simmer. Done. But with my new Google Reader I saw that a while ago my favorite food blog, smittenkitchen, had posted a recipe for red sauce.

Apparently, this is a hotly debated topic, especially amongst Italians. Who knew? I followed her instructions, which were much more labor intensive than mine. But the sauce turned out great. Before, my sauce was really chunky, more like a ragout instead of a sauce. And what I needed today was a sauce, something pourable and spreadable to cover a lasagna that I had made a while back.

So here it is: super simple red sauce, that's actually saucy.

4 lbs of tomatoes

1/4 cup olive oil

one onion

1 head of garlic

1 red pepper

1/2 head of broccoli

1 tsp salt

a pinch of aji flakes

1/4 cup of basil

Remember I said a little labor intensive - but don't let that scare you. I had done all of the prep work in 20 minutes, max.

Boil a small pot of water. Wash your tomatoes. Cut a X in the bottom of them. Place them in the boiling water for 30 seconds. Immediately put under cold water. Peel the skins off your tomatoes and set aside.

Cut tomatoes into quarters and de-seed. Dispose of the seed in a strainer over a bowl. You want to keep the juice that comes out.

Rough chop tomatoes.

In a food processor put your onion, broccoli, red pepper and garlic. Process until paste like.

Heat olive oil in a medium pot. Add paste like veggies. Cook for 10 minutes. Add tomatoes. Add aji flakes and salt. Simmer for 30ish minutes. While simmering mash your tomatoes periodically to help break down the chunks.

Add basil. Simmer another 5 minutes. Taste, re-season, eat out of the pot like I did. It's really good.

Pretending it's Fall

Now that we're half way through September, Ryan and I have really been missing fall at home. The thought of Edward's Apple Orchard just makes me sick with yearning. What I would give for a peck of Honeycrisps, a liter of cider and a whole dozen, yes you heard right, a whole dozen of donuts! Meanwhile, back in our reality, it's been hotter than hades here! I get so hot that I feel like my skin is made of plastic. Usually it's in the afternoons when I'm on my hour bus ride to my little kids class and there are 50 million people on the bus and of course every single one of them doesn't even notice the heat, besides me! Geeze people! I think this is the reason people put their infants in snow suits here, because they want them to be accustomed to being hot ALL OF THE TIME during these weeks!

I've been meaning to have an all day cooking day for a while now. But I've been really busy with classes, which is a whole other post! As you know, it's quite a tight month and it's only exasperated when there seems to be no food in the house. So I've been meaning to cook a ton of food so it's one less thing to worry about! Combine that with my few found obsession: Google Reader (more to come). And I have all of my food blogs in one easy place with about a billion containing the tag TO COOK.

So today was the day. I made red sauce to cover the lasagna from last week that's nakedly sitting in my freezer. I made Glazed Apple Bread, except with bananas because I live in the ex-banana republic. And I made Caldo Xochitl, a mexican soup. Plus I started soaking the beans for the Pumpkin 3 Bean Chili I'm going to make tomorrow.

And wouldn't you know it that as I started to cook my fall-esque foods, the temperature dropped to darn right chili. I had to put on a long sleeve shirt over my shorts and tank top! I turned on some David Gray (the epitome of fall music and such a reminder of sophomore year of high school!). Once that bread was in the oven, it really felt and smelt like fall! For all I knew, I could have been at home in the midwest. Except for those big Andean mountains outside my window! It was glorious and good for the soul!

I'm happy to report that EVERYTHING is DELICIOUS! Of course, I made some tweaks to the originally posted recipes based on what's available here in the South of Americas. So please, enjoy!

MULUB,

Taylor