Creature of Habit; Or the Most Important Meal of the Day

When it comes to breakfast, I’m a creature of habit. Oatmeal with honey and cinnamon Mondays through Thursdays and Huevos a la Mexicana at La Reyna after the farmers market on Saturdays. Then, I make breakfast tacos on Sunday mornings.

The ingredients change, but almost never the ritual of Sunday morning tacos itself. So, I certainly wasn’t going to let a little thing like staying in a cabin and roughing it change anything. Luckily for me, we had a full kitchen. But we did forget the onions.

Rough Sunday Breakfast Tacos

Ingredients:

4-6 eggs depending on your hunger level (Ottmers Family Farms)

4-6 tortillas (the ones from Margarita’s that you have to cook yourself)

(Onions if you don’t forget them- Ottmers Family Farms)

Mushrooms (Kitchen Pride Mushroom Farms)

Wild Boar Chorizo, as much or as little as you’d like (Dai Due- I also suggest the Verde Chorizo from Kocurek Family Charcuterie)

Olive Oil, if needed (Texas Olive Ranch)

Cheese (whatever you have on hand; I like the caraway cheddar from Veldhuizen Farm)

Hot Sauce (May I suggest Extra-Terrestrial IV by the W. Ross Pepper Company out of Albuquerque?)

Brown the tortillas and put them in a tortilla warmer. Set aside.

Put the chorizo in the skillet. I use a large serving fork to break it up for crumbles.

As the chorizo cooks, add the sliced onions. Cook all until almost done, then add the sliced mushrooms.

When you’re happy with the cooking results, add the mixed eggs. Cook until done.

Split the ingredients up on your tortillas. Using a microplane, shred the cheese over the top.

Add a bit of the hot sauce of your choice, and you’re good to go.

If you’re able, enjoy scenery like as this while eating your tacos.

Boo’s Difficult Gazpacho

Boo's lunch-time gazpacho

I’ve been trying a few different recipes for gazpacho. Lisa is not the biggest fan of chunks in her cold soup, so I’m trying to make a smooth, creamy and, of course, delicious gazpacho. No chunks.

My recipe looks like this:
8 medium very ripe tomatoes, cored and halved
1 sweet onion, peeled and ends cut off
8 cloves of garlic
1 large, fat cucumber, peeled, seeds removed, and diced (the larger and fatter the cucumber, the more juice in them)
1 jalapeno, seeds and ribs removed (carfully)
1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon of fresh ground pepper
2 pinches of salt to start
3/4 cup of Knudson’s spicy very veggie juice
2 tablespoons of rice vinegar
more salt to taste

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Mix the tomatoes, onions, garlic, 2 pinches of salt, pepper, and olive oil in a baking dish and bake for 40 minutes.  Remove dish and let the contents cool.

Once cooled, peel and discard the tomato skins.  (I usually eat them.)  Transfer contents from baking dish to blender and liquefy.  Add cucumber jalapeño, and vinegar, and liquefy again.

Now this is the difficult part:  strain the liquefied mixture into another container.  I pour the mix in a metal mesh strainer, and then use a spatula to force the liquid through.  I push all the edible soup through and leave the pulp behind.  This is a tedious possess that will take at least fifteen minutes. If I do this right, my back will hurt.

Add the Knudson’s juice.  Stir, salt to taste, stir, and then chill before serving.

This is an excellent summertime meal and we like that it can be made from mostly locally grown food.  Of course, we like it when we can have a meal made from all local sustainably grown foods.

This leads me to some questions:

Is there such a thing as Texas salt?  Is anybody extracting it from the Gulf and selling it.  Would that salt be safe or have we polluted the Gulf to such a degree that the salt is poisonous?

Rice grows in Texas: why can’t I find Texas made rice vinegar?

If all the stuff in the Knudsen’s juice is stuff I can get at the farmers market, why don’t I just make my own juice?  Do I need a juicer?  What’s a juicer?  Why can’t I use my blender to liquefy the stuff and then strain out the pulp in a wire mesh strainer to make juice?  Why don’t I have a juicer to make my gazpacho?

I’ll keep you informed with answers as they come my way.

–boo

Sunday Afternoon Micheladas

Using what we already have in the fridge, we each made a michelada to order.

Lisa’s version:
2/3 beer (Sierra Nevada Pale Ale)
1/3 Knudson’s spicy very veggie juice
couple-10 splashes of Tabasco
couple grinds of pepper

Boo’s version:
1/3 beer (Sierra Nevada Pale Ale)
2/3 Knudson’s spicy very veggie juice
couple-10 grinds of pepper

I like the spice of the Tabasco– makes my lips and gums burn.  Boo likes the spicy of the vegetable juice, so he uses more.  Both are yummy and refreshing.  This afternoon we bought Pearl beer at Wheatsville Co-op.  We’ll be experimenting with that tonight.