Month: March 2011

The kids and I have been busy cooking this week…. yesterday, we made cod fish bites. The kids had fun dipping in flour, egg and bread crumbs. They ate them all up before I could take a photo. We ate them with a slice of broccoli and cheese quiche for dinner.

Today, Lucas and I made chicken empanadas. I love, love empanadas. I tried to save some time by buying the already made pie crust that you just unroll but it wasn’t worth it. It cost $3.79 for the Pillsbury Pie Crusts and it was only enough dough to make 24 small empanadas, which sounds like a lot but only uses up half of the chicken filling. There is still lots of filling left over so now I’m going to make my own pie crust to finish it up. Besides, the ingredients in the Pillsbury crust are horrible with bleached flour and partially hydrogenated lard as well as other strange ingredients and preservatives. I was hoping to find a natural/organic alternative at Whole Foods but no such luck. I’m open to any other ideas for a natural/organic dough alternative that I could just unroll.

In the meantime, I just made my own pie dough, courtesy of Martha Stewart, and it only took me 5 minutes in the food processor and used only 4 basic ingredients, flour, salt, sugar, butter and ice water! Here is her recipe for Pate Brisee (Pie Dough).

Well, for tonight’s dinner, we’re having some beautiful Swiss Chard with a homemade garlic and tomato sauce mixed with Barilla Plus spaghetti. So easy to make, so delicious and so very good for you. Swiss chard is a leafy green, similar in taste to spinach but even better. Swiss Chard is packed with vitamins, beta-carotene, potassium, fiber and iron. It’s also rich in phytonutrtients like anthocyanins. It is awesome, you have to try it out.

Talking about food, cooking food, eating food… it always gets my mind off other matters in life. Food is fun, food is delicious, food is exciting, food is simply wonderful.

I love food, especially Portuguese food. Since my husband is vegetarian, I don’t cook it as much as I’d like, basically because most of Portuguese cooking involves meat or fish. But, that is about to change!

I’m going to start with dessert, which is always the best place to start! I’m going to attempt making Pasteis de Nata, which is a traditional Portuguese dessert. These are delicious, soft puff pastry cups filled with custard. The recipe is three pages long so let’s hope that they turn out as yummy as the ones we buy at the Portuguese bakery. I will showcase these pastries at Lilliana’s International Festival next week, along with some Pasteis de Bacalhau.

My father has a reputation for making the best, Rissois de Camaron, which are Shrimp Turnovers. I’m going to “steal” the secret recipe from him and attempt to make those soon too. These are really, really, the best Rissois ever. Ask any of my friends or family. I just hope I can make them as good as he does, or at least up to par.

Lastly, I’m going to learn to make the all-time classic, Carne de Porco a Alentejana (Pork with Clams and Potatoes)… Let’s get cooking!

The kids love it. The adults love it. Breakfast for dinner is DELISH! I would eat it all day long. Wouldn’t you?

Tonight, we made stuffed french toast (using the homemade bread that I baked yesterday), yum, alongside eggs over easy and tofu sausage. Oh, and for dessert, Lilliana made her own Butter Cake! Yes, she did the entire cake all by herself, with some help from her brother Lucas, who rubbed his finger all along the batter that fell on the table and licked it up.

Just looking at it makes me so hungry, but I am still on the cleanse so I can’t eat anything like this for another week!

There are no words to describe the yummy smell of fresh bread coming out of the oven and then smearing it with butter….. wow! Lilliana probably ate a whole loaf all by herself. It was a simple recipe (I got it from a kids cookbook), but baking bread still takes time. Here are some photos of our bread right before everyone devoured it.

My sister in law told me about a simple bread recipe from “Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day”  http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/. I’m going to try that next. I mean, just look at this beautiful bread. Who wouldn’t want to eat that fresh out of the oven? Let’s just see if it really only takes five minutes!