recipe

recommendation: Texas Caviar

On May 29, 2010, in Food, it's the little things too, recipe, recommendations, by Lori

I used to maintain a food blog, and had a lot of fun doing it. This salad, or dip, or whatever you want to call it, was always a favorite of the blog visitors, few of whom had ever heard of it. At room temperature, it’s tangy and spicy and fresh and meaty (from the blackeyed peas) and limey and hot and you think this is the last bite, but you just have to have one more. I present you: Texas caviar.

Ingredients:
4 cups of cooked black-eyed peas (or 2 16-oz cans), drained and rinsed of all juice
1 bunch scallions, thinly sliced (i use the green and white parts)
1 tablespoon fresh oregano
1 tablespoon Tabasco sauce
1 tablespoon Worchestershire sauce
1 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 bunch cilantro, chopped
3 canned or fresh jalapeño chiles, chopped (or more, add a habanero if you really like heat)
1 can Rotel tomatoes or 1 ripe, chopped tomato
3/4 cup olive oil
Juice from one lime
1 yellow bell pepper, finely chopped (red bell peppers are good too)
3 cloves fresh garlic, pressed or minced (or more….I usually use 6)

Mix everything together, and taste and adjust as you wish. Chill for four hours. Serve at room temperature with tortilla or corn chips.

It’s really, really, really good. Do you have a go-to dish like this, one that’s cheap and easy to throw together, that everyone always loves?

and p.s. If you want to print out the recipe, look down at the bottom of the post, where all the social bookmarking icons are. The second one opens the post in a new window in a print-friendly way. It allows you to remove any parts you don’t want to print, such as the photo, or the post title. It’s pretty cool!

Tagged with: blackeyed peas • cilantro • dang good stuff • dip • Food • recipe • salad • texas caviar

diary of a V-Day Eve

On February 13, 2010, in Food, baking, frogging, knitting, lace, recipe, shawl, sweets, by Lori

It’s been one of those 2 steps forward, 3 steps back kind of days. I spent the morning redoing things on the blog – things like tracking down plug-ins, finding dumb API keys, rediscovering the widgets I’d used, rewriting my “about” page, stuff like that. I’d been happy with things the way were, so I wasn’t working in the spirit of doing it right/better this time, but rather trying to recreate what I’d had. Ah well. I’m mostly there, just minus all my posts.

On the knitting front, I made it through the entire part of the shawl chart with the big set of nupps. And they were fun! I definitely learned how to do them better by the last row of them, but I was happy enough. Then, knitting the last set of lace rows to complete the chart, and *clunk*. Something was way wrong. After each row – partly due to overweening pride – I’d stopped, stretched out the lace, admired it, looked for problems, found none. After each pattern repeat, I rechecked the stitches. If each pattern repeat was correct, and each row was correct, I’d be in good shape, right? And yet I’d really screwed up something, somewhere. How hadn’t I seen it in all my looking?! Too much pride, too much “look, isn’t that cool what I did?” I guess. And so I had to pull that whole section out. Had I put in a lifeline? NO.

So I held my breath, got out a small tapestry needle and a roll of dental floss, and tried to put one in, below the nupps chart. A tiny little stitch at a time, through the cobweb-weight lace. plink. plink. plink. plink. plink. Across the row…..and then pull pull pull pull, unknitting. It worked, and so now I begin again. At least this time I’ll do the nupps pretty well from the very first row. So with the shawl too, I’m back where I started.

My sweetheart and I have been dieting – him on Atkins, me on low-cal – but here it is, Valentine’s Day (tomorrow). We’re going out for dinner at our favorite Ethiopian restaurant, Awash, and then we’ll come home for something sweet. He really loves blueberry coffee cake, so I just popped one in the oven. Photos of a slice tomorrow, but for now, The Making of the Coffee Cake, followed by its recipe.