The Naked Sword

by the by...

2008-09-18T21:06:00.000-07:00

i forgot to mention that i lost my phone in san miguel, which had these really amazing photos of hurricane Ike from just a few miles away, as we were driving pretty much along the southernmost edge. They were incredible, with double rainbows and rays of light coming through thick clouds, they were really something to look at.

thank god they found my phone in san miguel and are awesome enough to give it back. so i'll post those pictures at some point, once i learn how to post pictures here on blogger...

Oaxaca

2008-09-18T18:39:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I know that I have been a little bit out of the loop for a while, but I never promised to write once a week. I do feel bad for kind of bitching at this other dude who has a blog, for not writing in it for more that 5 days... That's just how I roll...

So, here's the news for the past 3 weeks (or so):

I went to San Diego last week to help my mom move to Mexico. I thought we might have fun and make a good road trip out of it... thought. We really just ended up bitching at each other most of the time. I think my mom is bipolar, cause I swear to you, dear reader, that there was a point in which I put a cd on to listen to in the car, and my mom starts whistling along. About 30 seconds later, during the very same song, she starting screaming hysterically to ''turn that goddam shit off!!!!'' (I must insert here, that I swear to god my mom is not white trash, she can just get a little out of character sometimes).

We drove from San Diego until some part of Arizona, I don't really remember, honestly, and then stopped to sleep. The from Arizona to Texas, and during that little stretch of the road is when things started to really suck.

I was driving at one point and all of a sudden, half of the molding around the windshield flies off the car. Then the other half starts to go, but thankfully, we were able to grab it before it was lost in the desert somewhere in Arizona. So we start to call around local parts shops and such to find a piece to replace this molding and get directed to a junkyard in Arizona, not far off of the highway. We go and see, and they don't have it. We are getting back onto the highway when we decide to stop and have something to eat or get gas or something. So, we're pulling out of the gas station and we hear this strange sound coming from the back of the car, like we're running over a parking lot bush of some sort. I get out to check and, god would have it no other way than for us to have run over 2 inch thorns. Not knowing what they were, and admitedly, stupidly, I pull them out of the tire. Now we have a flat tire and a broken molding from the windshield.

I'm not even going to go into the rest of our problems from the trip, lets just say it kinda sucked.

We ended up in San Miguel, Mom's new home, and the minute we got there I went into town to go and find some other people to hang out with. I had lunch, had some beers, found my ex boss, and made an appointment to go and talk to him about this trip that I want to make to Oaxaca.

Its a culinary tour through oaxaca, where we will eat oaxacan food, learn to cook it, se oaxacan people and beaches, and just plain hang out. I talked to my boss, and he said that he is interested in renting me the hotel and helping me do that, so i am pretty ecstatic about that. I even learned to use excel and make a spreadsheet of all of the costs and people coming along...

I haven't cooked in ages, so don't look here for recipes, cause I ain't got none.

ps. if any one is interested in the oaxaca trip, please let me know, I can send you more info about it by way of email.

It's not that I don't want to write, it's that my life is boring.

2008-08-27T15:36:00.000-07:00

I really don't have much going on in my life, which is why I haven't written in a while. The only thing interesting is that I have been taking spinning classes which are supper efficient in the calorie burning area. I also made ravioli yesterday:

flour
salt
spices (like oregano, basil, thyme, rosemarry, garlic powder)
eggs

make a dough, and kneed the hell out of it. then kneed it a little more. roll it out until it is as thin as you can get it. cut it into rectangles and add whatever you want to put inside. I used the leftover ricotta mixture from dad's birthday, and added some proscuitto.

RIP

2008-08-24T23:52:00.000-07:00

http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2008/08/dave-matthews-b.html?iid=top25-20080820-Dave+Matthews+Band's+saxophone+player+dies

LeRoi Moore

Follow up

2008-08-24T20:46:00.001-07:00

Dad's lunch was great, so great, even, that I forgot to take pictures... sorry. Anyway I ended up making some simple bananas fosters alla mexicana, which is to say:

Bananas (try some platanos machos, if you are feeling adventurous!!)
Sugar
Butter
Rum
Canela (MEXICAN, not gringo, cinnamon)
cream.... mexican style, like creme fraiche

saute bananas in butter
add sugar till caramelized
add Canela
Rum, and then flambee
serve on a hot plate with a dallop of the creme fraiche that has been mixed with a few drops of vanilla and a small amount of sugar... it shouldn't be very sweet, its supposed to balance out the sweetness of the bananas, sugar, and rum.

I'm exhausted right now so i will write again later.
ps. I am starting my teacher's degree course soon, wish me suerte!!!

I'm back!!

2008-08-21T22:25:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I'm sorry that I left for so long, I won't make excuses, I was just being lazy. But now I'm back and with some yummy recipes to share. I was just reading a friends new recipe blog and realized that I, too, have some sharing to do. So here's whats going on: its my dad's birthday soon and I am making him a Birthday lunch tomorow. I am making some fun dishes that may not have anything in common with eachother except that they are scrumptious. I am starting with Seared tuna tostadas, then crabcakes, then a fig and brulee'd goat cheese salad, folowed by homemade potato gnocchi with pesto on an herbed bed of ricotta, and for desert some sort of bananas and cream dish, which I still havent figured out but i'll let you know.

Tuna Tostadas
about 4 tortillas, cut w cookie cutter into little rounds (like 16 mini tostadas)
chipotle mayo (mayo w some chipotles in adobo mixed in)
cucumbers soaked in lime, salt and a bit of sugar (juliened or shaved at a certain restaurant that i worked at, we used a microplain that left the cucumbers like spagetti. (flexibility is key)
Fresh Tuna, seared w salt and pepper to rare
soy sauce
minced cilantro

fry up the tortilla tostadas until brown and crispy
spread chipotle mayo on each tostadas
swirl cucmber, like you would spagetti, and place that on top
a sliced of the seared tuna on top
just a few drops of soy sauce
cilantro to garnish
yummmmm
due to the raw-ness of the fish, you should consume them immidiately, but ofcourse, share!!

crabcakes!!!!
red bell peper, small dice
red onion, small dice
1/2 stalk of cellery, small dice
old bay to taste
1 egg
breadcrumbs
crab (you can buy it in cans like tuna and it works great, but if you have loads of cash, get the fresh pasteurized cans in the fish section of your grocery store, they are much fresher, but cost like 18-24 bucks each (!!!!))
combine all and broil or fry

Black mission fig and goatcheese salad
mesclun greens
your favorite balsamic vinaigrette
black mission figs
goat cheese, cut into small medalions
sugar
toasted pine nuts

first, brulee the cheese, which is to say, take the medalions and dip them in the sugar, then with a food torch (you can buy these at macy's or williams sonoma or specialty food supply stores) gently with a low flame, brown the sugar on top. set aside to cool.
resist the urge to eat them all....
cut the figs in half and top with the goat cheese, and lay them on a bed of dressed mesclun greens and garnish with the pine nuts. This could be good with prosciutto too, if your into that (which I totally am, but normally eat all of the prosciutto before it gets to the table)

Gnocchi
4 large Ukon (sp??) potatoes
some flour
salt

Bake the potatoes. peel them AFTER they've been baked. mash them as well as you can, or run them through a food mill if you have one. i don't, so i use a bean masher or a fork if i feel extra energetic.
add salt and just enough flour to make a dough. if it gets too dry, use an egg white to moisten it again. Try not to over kneed the dough, the more you kneed, the tougher the gnocchi. (ewww!)
roll into snakes, cut into half inch lengths, and poke with a fork to give them little grooves to hold sauce.
drop them into boiling water, just until they float and then they are done.

Pesto.
Basil
pinenuts
olive oil
parmesan cheese
raw garlic (using sparingly, start with one small clove and work your way up)
salt and pepper

blend or cuise (pronounced Queeze, from the noun, Cuisiniart) until just blended but not pureed.
dress your gnocchi.

Herbed Ricotta
Ricotta (obviously)
Basil, chiffonade(d?)
lemon zest
minced rosemary
pepperoncino (crushed red pepper, like for pizza, ps. this is optional)
fresh cracked pepper
your best extra virgin olive oil
mix it up and spread about 2 tablespoons onto a hot plate.
pile the gnocchi on top
shave some parmesan on top

bananas will come soon, i'll tell you how i make them after the lunch tomorow and i will post pictures of everything and the steps that I took to make them.

stay tuned, friends, I promise not to abandon you again anytime soon.

Philly

2008-07-07T09:52:00.000-07:00

So I got back to new york on weds. The flight was fine. I had a stop over in Cancun and had lunch with an uncle who lives over there. So, anyway, i get to NY and I am exstatic about seeing Mario. I am hanging around by the conveyor belt, and I get my pink suit case. I hang out for another 15 minutes watching the same suit cases pass me by. hmmm.... where's mine? another 20 minutes pass by and nothing. I ask someone and of course the jackasses in the JFK airport have no idea whats going on with anything. So I wait another 10 minutes or so and then I go to the lost baggage area and find out that one of my two suitcases is still in mexico. NICE. REALLY NICE....
anyway, I get outside to mario and his face lights up and he says that I have lost weight and look beautiful. We get home and end up talking until 5 am. Oh how I love being in love. The next day we go to the city and go shopping and stuff and then get home around 5 or so and watch movies and stuff and then around 2 am the buzzer rings and there is my suitcase (yeay!!)with a grumpy middle eastern man that says that I must not care about retrieving my luggage because I didn't answer the door on the first ring (could I have been sleeping, maybe?)
Anyway so on Friday we went to Philadelphia to the ball game and stayed in a really cute little hotel called the Society Hill, which was great cause it was right in the middle of where we wanted to be and it was cheap too! We had loads of fun and got to reconnect after two months of separation from eachother. It was a total blast and I would reccomend it to anyone for the 4th of july. There were free concerts (john legend and boyz II men) and free fireworks shows and we had this waiter at the hotel bar that was hilarious and lots of fun. Once I figure out how to post pictures on the blog, I will.

I have all these dreams...

2008-06-30T22:39:00.000-07:00

I want to do so many things that I think my head might explode with emotions. You know that feeling that you get after watching a really deep movie about how someone's life was changed and then they had an awesome life after they did something blah blah blah? Well thats kinda how i feel right now... I really want to go to Argentina to live, and I think that I will be able to do that once I get that teacher's degree I told y'all about before. Here's whats worrying me: I felt almost exactly the same way about a trip (vacation, not long term) to Oaxaca, two weeks ago. And even though i still want to do the Oaxaca trip, I kind of am not as excited as I was about it. Like for example, two weeks ago, I would spend most of my free time investigating Oaxaca and tourist spots and all that stuff, and now I am searching for apartments in Buenos Aires. I think I am getting way ahead of myself. I mean, I still want to do the oaxaca trip and the teacher's degree and argentina, but I feel like i am getting into a pattern where I decide I want something, get excited about it, and then never do it.
I also saw 21 last night and it made me want to work super hard and make a lot of money and be a bawler (baller?), so that was kinda cool cause it inspired me to work hard and work out and make moeny and gamble and try to be smart (like, genius smart) and stuff.
I mostly love movies that cause this sort of inspiration, but sometimes I just end up feeling like I am failing to do anything....
any thoughts?

Salsa Verde

2008-06-27T12:53:00.000-07:00

I made Salsa Verde with the maid today. Its embarrassing to be Mexican and not know how to do this sort of thing, so she imparted upon me, her knowledge of salsa verde. I made a slideshow of my experience, but the blogger won't let me upload it. I can't figure out why, if any one knows, please tell me. here's the link: http://s62.photobucket.com/albums/h120/crissdosamantes/?action=view&current=2192b17f.pbw

ps. I think I'm in love with a girl who lives two doors down. Or so the song says, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2Dl3VQ2K2U

Conversation with Ari

2008-06-27T10:31:00.000-07:00

Christian: reading jess's blog makes me want to start my own
but i'm not really much of a writer
1:37amAri
do it
1:37amChristian
i don't think you can fake it eitherr
plus i can't spell
1:37amAri
practice makes perfect
me either
1:38amChristian
i think this convo will be the start of my blog
i'm just going to copy paste
and maybe edit somethings that could've been fuinnier
1:38amAri
Ha nice
1:38amChristian
to make me look more clever
clevererer?
oops , i meant cleverer
1:39amAri
yeah u use that
1:39amChristian
what does that mean?
1:40amAri
cleverer isnt a word
1:40amChristian
oh
did i mention that spelling is not my forte?
just saying
1:40amAri
especially not clevererer
1:41amChristian
ha, well that was an accident
to aviod me looking like an idiot, i may just delete this whole clever debate
or not-so-clever debate
1:42amAri
ha

The Cheese Grater for Feet Cheese

2008-06-26T09:12:00.000-07:00

Ok, so that might be a really gross tittle, but I find it apt. I can't remember who it was, but there was some way-too-cool-for-school hipster talking about how gross the Ped Egg is. Well I think its really cool, and guess what y'all? My dad just gave me one.
In other news, I made my first attempt at making dumplings today, and I have to say, they were pretty good. The dough around them was a little too thick, but other than that they were delish. Here's what I used:
Dough:
2 cups of all purpose flour
a pinch of salt
Boiling water

Filling:
Ground pork
Ginger, minced (I so nearly wrote ''Ginger, minge'')
Garlic, minced
Scalions
an egg
some corn starch
cabbage
salt
soy sauce

and what i did was this:
I made the dough using the flour, salt and boiling water. Then I needed it. Or did I kneed it? Whatever, I massaged the hell out of it. It was very relaxed by the end of the session.
Then, I combined all of the filling ingredients in a bowl. I made flat circular pads out of the dough and then filled them with the pork. I steamed them in a wok with a steam screen covered in cabbage leaves, for about 10 to 15 minutes.
Oh, I also made a dipping sauce out of a clove of garlic (minced) and the same amount of minced ginger and soy sauce.
It was a quite tasty meal, accompanied by Nopal (cactus) salad and coconut shrimp with orange chipotle sauce.

Thats what I did today.
I also found out about taking a course te get a teacher's degree to be able to teach english to my fellow mexicans. That should be fun.

Don't Expect This Much Blogging Everyday

2008-06-24T17:40:00.000-07:00

I just feel kind of excited, now that I have all 3 of you as an audience, (that's right, I checked to see how many people had read it since I created the blog a few hours ago), so now I shall write a lil more before I do other things... The truth is that I don't really have much else to do right now. Its a Tuesday night, and frankly, I don't have that many friends right now. Not that, you know, I'm a loser or anything, its just that I just came back to Mexico a month and a half ago, and my best friend is kinda giving me the silent treatment right now cause I got drunk and peed somewhere I shouldn't have. And, no it was not her bed or any part of her anatomy.
Anyway, back to the point of me not having much to do... so yeah, it pretty much gives me lots of time to surf the web and watch lots of lubetube, um, I mean youtube. Recently, I was searching San Miguel Allende, a small town to the north of Mexico city, on google. I often search this town when I am really bored because I used to live there, and I feel like I am still very connected to it. Honestly, not really because of most of the people; there are very few that I would still consider friends. I don't really know why it sticks in my head. Anyway, so I was searching and I looked up this guy that I knew, who's father I dated (shut up), and found out via his myspace, that the dad had gotten married just a few months ago. Hmmm. I don't know how I feel about that, really. I mean, its not like we were dating for long (I guess about a month), nor did I feel such great attatchment to him. It just felt wierd. I think the reason it was wierd for me was because he got married to a girl that he had met THROUGH ME, who proceeded to steal him from me, really. I mean, she had been my friend, while I was dating him, and I introduced them, and the next thing I know, I see them out at a bar together.... yeah it hurt, but whatever, its not like I was in love with him or whatever.
So here's whats been on my mind: Why am I still thinking about it? I have been thinking two different thoughts; the first one that pops up normally is ''I wish they had broken up soon after they got together, and she had felt heartbroken,'' just to spite her, and then the second one goes something like ''No, I'm glad they are married, at least when it hurt me, it was worth it for them,'' and ''Now she won't be doing that to anyone else now (hopefully).'' I keep saying to myself that I should think positive thoughts like the second ones, because that will make me a better person and karma and blah blah blah, but does the first thought cancel out the karma of the second thought?

I don't know, You tell me, my dear (three) readers.

For Starters

2008-06-24T14:37:00.000-07:00

OK, so I am new at this whole blogging thing, and I have only read one before, that of my foodie friend, Jess. So to start you off slow, I will tell a little bit about myself:
I am half mexican, half american, but you wouldn't be able to tell just by looking at me.
I went to culinary school for natural and healthy culinary arts.
I just turned 22 (happy birthday, me!!!)
I just moved back to mexico from new york, where I had been for about 3 years.
I like all sorts of music, including, but not limited to pop, rock, alternative, country (shut up), just a tiny bit of classical, some fun jazzy stuff(but not allot), among other types.
I am a drinker, although watching the real world hollywood has given me the biggest fear of turning into an alcoholic, (which, in turn, makes me want to drink even more).
I am a recovering quiter of the ciggarrettes.
I can't spell, and I am no good with grammar. (Maybe you can't tell from this first entry, but that's just cause I am trying to make a good first impression).
I can't think of anything else to write, but check out my myspace for more about me for the moment.
www.myspace.com/christianalin