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Posts Tagged ‘Salsa’

Grilled Veggie and Portobello mushroom Tacos

Posted in Recipes, tagged , , , , , , , on June 29, 2012| Leave a Comment »

And the New England weather strikes again!

Dun dun duuunnn

Ok, for all of you who aren’t blessed with Boston weather, this summer has been weird! hot, cold, humid, rainy, dry- it’s ridiculous. It makes planning a menu for the coming week difficult!

Last week was pretty humid so I decided that I would definitely be able to fit some grilling in during the week. Well, Tuesday, when I went to light up the grill, it was drizzling, cool and super windy. Lighting my mini charcoal grill with matches was um, a bit challenging! My roommate, Allie, came to my rescue though and schooled me on grill lighting. After he helped, I had the grill blazing within 5 minutes! Of course, with the wind, I was 92% sure I was going to burn my apartment down. I caught myself staring at the dancing flames with huge eyes, shoulders tense, knuckles white while gripping some fancy tong thingies, just waiting for something to catch fire.  BUT we all survived and I had a wicked yummy dinner to show for it.

Not that these pictures do my yummy veggy tacos justice. The fact is, I failed you in the picture area again my friends. My achilles heel in food photography seems to be mexican food. Remember my chimichangas? yeah…I still blame the refried beans…

Grilled Veggie Tacos

Black Beans:
from Crockpot 356

  • 1 pound black beans, soaked overnight, then drained*
  • 6 cups veggy broth
  • 6 cloves garlic, smashed and chopped
  • 1 (14.5-ounce) can diced tomatoes, or 2 cups fresh chopped tomatoes
  • 1 tablespoon cumin
  • 1 tablespoon chili powder
Use a 6-quart slow cooker. Soak your beans overnight and drain.
 
Put the drained beans into your slow cooker, then add the chopped garlic, broth, tomatoes, cumin, and chili powder. Stir well to combine. Cover and cook on low for 8 hours.
 
*The original person who posted this recipe suggested using the Quick-soak method, which is bring your dried beans to a boil for 10 minutes, cover and let sit for 1 hour. This did NOT work for me. My beans ended up being crunchy after 8+ hours and I had to put them on high for an additional 3 hours. Save yourself the trouble and soak them over night!
 
Guacamole: 
  • 1 avocado
  • 1/2 tsp lime juice
  • 1 garlic clove, minced
Mix all the ingredients together. If you have left overs, store them with the avocado pit. It slows the browning process a bit.
 
Grilled Veggies:
  • 1 summer squash
  • 1 zucchini
  • 2 portobello mushroom caps, stems removed and cleaned
  • 3 TBSP olive oil
  • Mrs Dash Fiesta Lime Seasoning (find it in the spices section of any grocery store)
  • salt
  • skewers (optional)
Dice up the summer squash and the zucchini. Toss them with 2 TBSPs of olive oil and 1-2 tsps of Mrs Dash Fiesta Lime Seasoning (depending on how Fiesta-y you want your vegetables). You can either skewer the vegetables after you are through tossing them or you can wrap them in foil, whichever you prefer. Both ways will give the veggies the smoky taste of grilling but the foil wrapper will take a bit longer.
 
Brush the mushroom caps with the remaining TBSP of olive oil and sprinkle with salt.
 
Place the vegetables on your grill (I have a charcoal grill so I have no settings. I would imagine its about medium heat though). Cook until tender about 15- 20 minutes on the skewer, 20-25 in the foil pouch.
 
Place the mushroom caps on last. They will only take about 5-10 minutes.
 
Additionally you may need:
  •  small taco shells (I used corn this time but I prefer flour. They hold together a little better)
  • salsa (fresh salsa would taste great with this or I used Stir It Up Cuisine’s Pepper Jelly with Lime. I bought it at the Farmer’s market on Sunday and it is seriously delicious! I believe Stonewall Kitchen has something similar)
  • vegan cheese
  • fresh tomatoes
  • lettuce

Slather your freshly cooked beans, grilled veggies, guacamole and other toppings onto your taco shell and enjoy dinner!!

Seriously? Why does that mushroom at the top of the picture look so weird??

This recipe seems long and complicated but the great thing is, it really comes together pretty fast. The beans cook over night and while your at work and the veggies cook up pretty quickly on the grill. While they are cooking you can make the guacamole. And it doesn’t require you to heat your oven up!

Plus, you can substitute  in almost any veggies you find at your local farmers market- peppers, onion, different mushrooms, tomatoes, etc. Yeah for summer food!

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

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Blueberry Salsa

Posted in Recipes, tagged , , , , , on June 1, 2012| 9 Comments »

This has definitely been a week of celebrating! The most fun was celebrating my friend, Melinda’s, birthday.

If you read this blog often enough, you know Melinda is my fellow foodie friend. As such, I feel like I should give a little shout out to her:

Melinda and I have known each other since we were youngin’s in college. We met at a find-a-roommate night: I needed a roommate because my freshman one ended up not working out and Melinda needed one cause she had just transferred. We bonded over her purple vans and ended up rooming together off and on through college and after we graduated.

What can I say, a good pair of shoes can change your life.

We’ve come a long way since we rocked the vans and ate ramen noodles in our dorm room. I think one of the reasons we’re still hanging out (besides the fact that we’re both awesome!) is that our interest in food has weirdly enough followed a similar path. Granted, Melinda is always a step or so ahead of me buuut…she’s a year older then me. So, you know, with age comes wisdom? Or something like that…

Anyway, so it goes without saying that to celebrate Melinda’s birthday, we cooked. Obviously!

Homemade veggy burgers, grilled veggies and potatoes and almond joy cake truffles. Yes, please! Oh yes, there was also dancing in the rain, some speeches, drinking and Melinda as grill master. All good things!

Of course, I’ve already made and posted most of what we ate which meant I need to incorporate a recipe that I hadn’t shared with you.

Introducing Blueberry salsa aka, our appetizer:

Blueberry Lime Salsa
 from How Sweet Eats (aka, the queen of fruit salsas)

  • 1 cup fresh blueberries
  • 5 medium strawberries
  • 1/4 red onion
  • 1 teaspoon lime zest
  • juice of two limes
  • 1/3 cup fresh cilantro leaves
  • 1 avocado, chopped
  • salt and pepper to taste

put blueberries, strawberries, onion, lime zest, lime juice and cilantro in a food processor. Pulse 5-6 times for a chunky salsa or longer if you want it smoother. Pour into a bowl and fold in the chopped avocado. Season with salt and pepper.

Basically, this was just an excuse to feed my new lime addiction. It’s weird because I loath lemons and anything with lemon in it. But limes? Limes I can’t get enough of! I had a ton lying around because I’ve been drinking lime water like its going out of style (and possibly margaritas…)so obviously, blueberry lime salsa was just begging to be made.

Anyway, you will notice there aren’t any action shots with this salsa. It’s because someone who was in charge of the chips *cough Amelia cough* took their sweet time arriving. By the time the chips did arrive, we were so famished and weak from hunger that we bypassed the photo sesh and just dug right in.

And it was delicious! Totally worth the excruciatingly long wait for chips and it was the perfect light, summery appetizer!

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Cinco De Mayo recipe round up

Posted in Life, Recipes, tagged , , , on May 4, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Remember me?

This is the first week in a long time I haven’t posted at least one recipe and I’m feeling pretty bad about it. But it’s been a crazy 2 weeks. I’ve:

-Served jury duty. I was on the bench and then at the last minute got removed cause the defendant didn’t like me.  I was still there ALL day though!

–
Saw the Wombats at the Middle East in Cambridge. I can’t remember the last time I danced so much. They were awesome! Check out their song above. Also, their CD is on sale on amazon for $5 this month so definitely check them out.

– worked a lot at my real job

–

Saw the Celtics play the Bucks. We won! Woot!

-worked a lot at my second job

–

Did A LOT of crafting with Rachel for our craft fair, which was yesterday. We got together at least 3 times before the fair. We didn’t do too bad, either. We sold cute map coasters, reusable coffee cup sleeves, wrap bracelets, wristlets, head bands, etc/ She will be posting some tutorials of things we sold on her website soon so check her out.

– baked a Trail Mix seven-layer bar…which was consumed so quickly last Saturday by my friends and roomies that I didn’t even get to snap a picture. I’m hoping to bake it again for you this weekend, though!

With all this running around I did, I forgot Cinco de Mayo is this weekend. Which is unacceptable since it’s practically a day to celebrate my favorite drink- margaritas!

But I couldn’t neglect you completely, so here is a few mexican inspired recipes on my blog that you can make for this weekend if you want to do something a little different. If you only make one thing, make the fresh strawberry margaritas! I’ll be making a pitcher tonight =)

Black Beans and Quinoa Burritos

Crispy Margarita Tofu Tacos with Strawberry Avocado Tacos

 

Fresh Strawberry Margaritas

Black Bean Salsa

Spicy Black Bean and Quinoa Soup

Enjoy your weekend and check back next week! I have a full day free with nothing planned this weekend so you can bet I’ll be cooking you up some yummy posts!

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BLACK BEAN SALSA

Posted in Recipes, tagged , , on February 5, 2012| 6 Comments »

IT’S SUPER BOWL SUNDAY!!!

My roommates and I are having people over and I still need to:

– Buy a few more things to make another batch of this below bean salsa (like, um, the beans! Totally forgot those yesterday on my shopping trip)

– Make and decorate cupcakes (they are seriously the best cupcakes ever. I’ll give you the recipe tomorrow)

– Clean up the kitchen a bit and tidy the house, find enough chairs, etc.

Oh yeah, and do all this in the 90 minutes I have after I get out of work and before the game starts. Really? Whose going to go to a book store today? It’s practically a national holiday in New England people. Grocery stores? clearly need to be open.  Packies? Definitely! (though I bought my beer yesterday just in case! I forgot the black beans but hey, I remembered my beer!! Priorities!)

Anyway, so here is my last recipe for the super bowl. This was suppose to go to you last week since I usually don’t post on the weekends but after I talked about how I had no life and went to bed at 8:30, suddenly I got a life again. How annoying!

Black Bean Salsa
from Cooking Light

*the measurements for this recipe were weird. Who measures out 2 TBSP of chopped out jalapeno? If you do actually do that, please see the Cooking Light recipe above. 

  • 1/2  red bell pepper, finely chopped
  • 1/4 red onion, chopped
  • 1 cucumber, chopped
  • 1/2 plum tomato, diced
  • 1/2 – 1 seeded jalapeño pepper, chopped (depends on how much heat you like)
  • 1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
  • 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons minced fresh or 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
  • 3 garlic cloves, minced
  • 2 (15-ounce) cans black beans, rinsed and drained

Combine all ingredients in a medium bowl; stir well. Cover and chill 2 hours. For best results, chill over night.

As you can see, my chopping skills are a bit lacking. I had about 15 minutes to throw this first batch together so it could chill overnight before heading to a friends. So, my tomatoes are more chunky then chopped BUT it still tasted delicious. You could also throw in some chopped avocado if you wanted because, really, what doesn’t avocado make better?

Oh yeah, one last thing:

GO PATRIOTS!!

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