New Year…

I have been neglecting my blog lately more than ever and it’s going to stop. I’ve been side tracked with my busy toddler and working and it’s going to stop, today.

I need more facets to my life and this is something I’ve been missing. I ran out of creativity and have just let this blog go to the birds…

I appreciate that I still have views, but it’s time to step it up and get back into the blogging life.

So my resolution is to be back here, blogging.

No matter what you celebrate, I hope your holidays are wonderful, happy and bright.

One love.

Tortilla Soup

While the rest of the nation is stuck in a cold snap, I’m over here complaining that it’s just under 60 outside today…

But, winter is winter and here I am with my spicy take on a toasty and tasty tortilla soup!

This is pretty easy if you want to go with canned ingredients. Or if you’re a freezer lady, like me, it’s all out of the freezer or fresh, so it’s still pretty easy… It is soup, after all.

I have chicken broth, black beans, onions, corn, bell peppers and chicken ready to go in the freezer. I went out and grabbed a couple Roma tomatoes and used a leftover can of green chiles I had bought for a dip and never used. (Seriously, canned food is lonely in my pantry. It hangs out with the lingering cans of tuna but even that canned fish I grew up knowing and loving is making it’s way out of my diet.)

So, let’s get some ingredients, which are approximate, because I freeze crap in bulk and don’t measure much as I take it out.

About 16oz of shredded chicken
32oz of chicken broth
2cups of black beans, rinsed and drained
3 roma tomatoes, diced
1cup green bell peppers, diced
1cup onions, diced
2cups of corn, diced
A few cloves of garlic

Directions:

Dump it all in the crock pot. Just throw that shit in there all willy nilly like. You’re in a hurry, aren’t you? That’s what a crock pot meal is for… So dump that shit, turn it on low if you’re not that hungry or turn it on high if it’s time to eat.

While you’re waiting, either open a bag of tortilla chips or bust out a stack of corn tortillas, preheat your oven to something hotter than the pavement in the summer and grab a pizza cutter. Slice up the tortillas, however you want and throw them on a baking sheet. Salt, season, oil, spit shine those bad boys, however you prefer and pop them into the oven until they’re crispy!

Serve it all together, maybe a little cheese on top, maybe not, that’s okay too, but tortilla that soup up and you’re done!

Enjoy, guero.

Aebleskivers

 

What is an aebleskiver?

 

They’re like pancakes, but smaller… And round, and fluffy… And you can’t get enough.

 

I grew up eating these during the holidays. I was lucky enough to have a grandmother who wasn’t far from her tall, pale, European roots. She wasn’t blessed with the culinary gift, but once a year, she got down and we feasted.

 

It’s actually Æbleskiver, pronounced able-skee-ver. In Dutch, it means, ‘apple slices’, which, I don’t quite understand, but it works for me. They’re marketed in America as ‘pancake puffs’… The more you know.

 

 

 

Ingredients:

1 c all-purpose flour
1 tbsp granulated sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 c milk
2 egg yolks
2 egg whites

 

Your pan is very important.

 

I’ve seen quite a few kitschy little pans that won’t do you any good.

 

You need a solid material like cast iron to heat evenly to give you quality skeevers.

 

Don’t cut corners on a good pan, it will last a life time.

 

 

 

Now, let’s make a big ole pile of awesome.

Directions:

In a mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. In another bowl, stir together the milk and the egg yolks until well combined. Add to the flour mixture, stir until smooth.

In another bowl, beat the egg whites with an electric mixer, on high, until stiff peaks form. Now, this can seem like a daunting task if you’ve never done it before, and you’re like me, you might think you’re doing it wrong. Keep mixing, keep that shit on high and things’ll, you know, get stiff.

Gently fold beaten egg whites into batter with a spatula, GENTLY, leaving some puffs of whites. Now is not the time to just mix like a mad housewife, be gentle with the air bubbles you’ve taken so long to beat up, because that’s where the fluff of this glorious puff comes from. You’ll notice that towards the end of this process, your last skeevers of the batch will be flatter than the first. It’s your batter. It’s, deflating… Frowny face.

Place the pan over medium heat, lightly brush or spoon a little oil of your choice into each cup. We used Crisco while I was growing up, butter, margarine, whatever your preference is fine, just as long as the flavor isn’t strong, obviously.

When the oil sizzles, spoon about 2 tbsp of batter into each cup, so that they’re about 2/3 of the way full.

 

They’ll start to form bubbles, get crispy on the edges and look like they want to be flipped over, in about 1 or 2 minutes, depending on the heat.

Use a fork, or like me, two forks, and flip that little fucker in its shell. It’s a tricky little process, but if you mess up, use a toothpick to tuck the excess batter back into ball form and you’ll get the hang of it.

Flip each skeever and cook until shell is formed and they’re golden brown all over.

Pick out and transfer to an oven safe dish, in a warm (300) oven until they’re all finished.

Garnish with powdered sugar and syrup and ENJOY!

 

New Ink–Second Session

For those of you following along, I started a new sleeve last month, check out my first session here.

Today, I went and got a little more done, not much, unfortunately, but some. Honestly, I’ve been having to take my little one with me and it’s SO hard to be in Mommy mode and get inked, for me at least. I’m a pansy and I have to go to “my happy place” or be extremely intoxicated to deal with this kind of pain, so having to be alert, aware and interacting with my son, was a task. He was having a hard day anyway, so I tapped out early this time.

I still got a little bit done and I can’t wait to see what Manny is going to do with this piece!

Stay tuned!

Christmas Came Early…

The decorations did, at least.

I have to go out of town with my son for Thanksgiving and then we’re driving to California for Christmas to see family, so with all this traveling, I feel like I might not get the opportunity to enjoy my decorations this year.

SO, I put them up early.

And I’m not even mad.

I love my around the door wreath thing that I clip cards to. And my good ole Johnny Cash Christmas vinyl album that I scored at Good Will. Solid find. Got to have Santas Sack and a couple sock monkeys up in the tree… If you haven’t noticed, I like a shabby, vintage Christmas.

Next year, I’m going to stay home and make an obscene amount of decorations… Yep.

I hope everybody has a wonderful holiday season!

Beers, Brats and Bicycles! Oh, my!

Being an ASU girl, I love Mill Avenue. It’s an ever-revolving door of food, bars, clubs, shops and people. After my brother moved out here when I was young, I’d come spend the summer with him and he’d take me out to walk around Mill, have ice cream and people watch.

As I got older, it became the party spot, easy bars to get into on a fake ID and again, lots of people. Now, I’m too old to go party down there, it’s FAR from my “scene” anymore, but I still love the ever changing face of Mill.

My favorite new addition would have to be the The Handlebar. They’re an adorable little spot with a GREAT patio that I absolutely love, but haven’t taken pictures of yet, so mosey on over to their website for that! They offer a little bit Hipster vibe with a industrial décor and vintage feel over-all. The patio is full of big shady trees and big wooden tables, perfect to get a bunch of friends together on a gorgeous day. The staff is always beyond friendly, it’s one of my favorite things about the place. Every time we’re in, they let us sample beers, answer questions and offer up little interesting tid-bits about your

Whenever we get the chance, we take a little putt on over there!

My favorite thing to get there is the grilled cheese. It’s cheddar on Ciabatta that’s been brushed with a sundried tomato pesto. It’s delish. Wash it down with a tall Yella Pils and you’re set!

BON APPETIT!

P.S.,

Aren’t we an adorable couple of biker babes?

H2Ocean, FINALLY!

 

Back in 2009, I did a corset piercing for Dan Brailey at the Body Art Expo, in Pomona, California. I slapped an H2Ocean sticker on my shirt to keep it pulled down and away from my corset and a promotional partnership was born without even trying.

I walked by the booth and the guys they had working for H2Ocean, asked me to pass out fliers. I did. A few years later, I got a dermal anchor piercing by Sean Dowdell at Club Tattoo in Tempe, Arizona. He put 12 anchors in my chest and I had NO idea I was pregnant…

I bombed his shoot he set up for me, because I was sick, fat and didn’t know why and to make matters worse, by the end of my pregnancy, my dermals had completely rejected and some had even fallen out! I couldn’t get anybody to cut them out, because I was pregnant and only a handful of shops in that area had just STARTED to give dermals.

I kept them in, while I had my son, even having to sign a waver because the uneducated nurses at the hospital didn’t know what they were and caused a scene, trying to say they might not be able to admit me with out my signature. They were afraid that if I needed a c-section, that when they cauterized, the metal would burn my chest. I’m not sure how that all works, but I can’t think I’m the first girl to pop out a child, with an anchor in her somewhere.

So I signed my life away, had my son and quickly after headed to American Made Tattoo (Now closed) and had them cut out by Angela. She did an amazing job, there’s no way to tell I even HAD 12 dermals in the chest, ever, let alone, had them cut out!

And the entire time, I was draining cans of H2Ocean Salt Spray like it was going out of style. I tried everything before. Salt soaks, rubbing alcohol, like you aren’t suppose to, anti-bacterial soap, ew, everything. It was a disgusting mess. H2Ocean was the only thing that kept my chest from getting infected. Sexy, right?

NOW, I use Aquatat on my new ink to keep it right in this crazy desert weather. Especially when I’ve got to go sling dranks with new ink and can’t reapply or fuss with it often.

After I got back into modeling, I had issues with photographers letting me use their photos for H2Ocean, although I’m not sure why somebody would turn down exposure, it’s not up to me to decide, so I had to keep shooting and talking to photographers to find somebody willing to let me share their work! Finally, FINALLY, I was able to get a few photographers on board.

Find me here!

“Don’t be aftercareless!”

Find H2Ocean Models on:
Twitter: twitter.com/H2Ocean
Instagram: @H2OceanModels
Facebook: Facebook.com/H2OceanModels

New Ink!

I started a new sleeve with the incredibly talented Manny Lopez in Phoenix, AZ and I have literally never been so happy with ink in my life!

To tell you the truth, when I got my first sleeve, I wanted to sand it off my arm. I spent a lot of time crying about how it turned out. I had a drawing I emailed my artist, I know tattooists aren’t apt to copying and pasting someone elses work, but I figured he’d keep it the sameish and we’d all be happy. I mean, I drew it myself. It was going on MY body. I couldn’t get my hands on the original drawing my dad did of my mom, with peacock feathers for hair, it was beautiful. I started pulling pictures off the internet and drew one myself. It took a lot of time and I loved it.

The tattoo I ended up with looks nothing like what I wanted. I’ve had it fixed and worked on, but it’s just, NOT something I’m happy with. I’m almost embarrassed. I know that sounds horrible, but it was something that meant a lot to me and it doesn’t make me 100% happy.

I had asked previous artists about getting a bird cage tattoo. Not just any cage, but a Tunisian cage my grandmother brought back from Africa. It hung in our house while I grew up and it hangs in mine now and my son is obsessed with it, just like I was when I was a kid. Both artists I spoke with said it couldn’t be done. There was too much detail, it’s a white cage, so coloring and highlighting would be difficult, blah, blah, blah…

Then, then there was Manny.

He likes a challenge and when I told him what the other artists said, he told me he’d do it. He’d get the whole sleeve I wanted, exactly how I wanted it. So we began…

I made a collage of the inspiration I sent him:

 

The cage is the bottom right picture, the rest are details, birds, feathers, crucifix, that are going to be incorporated into it.

Here’s what I ended up with:

 

 

This was the stencil he used.

 

He used a single needle, which was amazingly painful. I can’t WAIT to finish the rest of the sleeve with that bad bitch… Yeezus.

 

It’s going to be full color and a 3/4 sleeve, when it’s finished.

Red, swollen and bloody, here’s the first photos of it. I know it settles over time, so I’ll post some more when it’s changed and healed.

I loooooove it. I just want to finish it, but I looooooove it.

Go check out Manny’s page Art by Manny 2.0 and like it. Your feed will be more beautifully inked, because of it.

He also decked me out with some tee’s for Inkorporated, his new line he started up. Best believe I’ll be blowing up #inkorporated, on a social network, near you.

Stay tuned for more ink coming mid November and find Manny on IG @tattoomanny and #tattoomanny

MUAH!

Beer Bread Wonderland

Never have I ever met a bread with such versatility as I did when I made this little gem. Literally, so many different things you can do with it and this will NOT be the last post on this delicious concoction.

I have no idea how to make bread. I’m intimidated by it, I’m not a 40’s housewife and it’s just too big of an endeavor for me to embark on. Sorry.

So, I found a recipe for this stuff and went for it. The recipes for this stuff are pretty universal. There’s no big differences in them besides the additions, flair and of course, beer. Some vary on amounts of sugar, which makes sense.

So let’s cook some bread.

Start with a six pack of your favorite craft beer. You only need one for the bread, but you’ll need something to do while it bakes, right?

This beer, is not my favorite craft beer. It’s a beer that a friend of ours left behind from a party we had. It’s disgusting. No offence to Sam Adams, the man knows what he’s doing, usually, but this hoppy brew was just not for me. At all.

However, it made some delicious bread. I figured by the taste of it, how much sugar to use, so I’d suggest drinking at least a bottle before you start, so you can make a fair judgment of the other ingredients. It’s only fair.

SO, follow this general recipe and twerk, I mean tweak, it to fit your taste and burr.

From the windows, to the walls, let’s make some drunk bread.

INGREDIENTS:

3 cups of flour
1/3 cup of sugar
1tbsp of baking powder
1/2tsp of salt
1 12oz bottle of beer
3tbsp of butter, melted

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 350, my oven sucks, hence the slightly charred bread. Don’t judge, it was tasty!

Mix dry ingredients, add beer, throw into a greased loaf pan and cover with the butter and bake for about 60 minutes!

I read you can use soda in place of beer, but, pardon my French, but fucking ew. You wanna shovel that crap into your poor kids, that’s on you, but you won’t even catch me cooking with that crap. /endrant

You can freeze the cooked loaf, I’m sure it’ll stay good for a while!

Onion Rings 101

How good are YOUR onion rings?

I ask because, I never knew how to make them. I use to be at the mercy of whatever fast food joint served em up the best.

Not anymore.

You can even freeze these. No joke. Straight from the freezer to the deep fryer, or so I hear… My freezer is too jam packed #apartmentproblems to handle any more goodness.

But, I’ll be experimenting soon and, of course, report my findings. Maybe.

Anyhoo, let’s get to those delicious, crunchy, crispy, hot and sexy onion rings, shall we?

 

 

INGREDIENTS:

1 onion, sliced
1 1/4 cups of flour
1 tsp of each salt and baking powder
1 egg
About a cup of milk
About 3/4 cup of panko bread crumbs. I mix regular and panko, half and half. Just for shits and giggles.
Oil, whatever you want to fry these bad boys in… I use veggie oil.
Seasonings… I use garlic powder, salt, pepper and arbol chile powder, because it takes VERY little to get a lot of heat as opposed to an ass load of black pepper or using red pepper flakes, which would be clinging and killing the sexy look of these precious rings.

DIRECTIONS:

Get your oil heating in a large pot, I use a sauce pan, because I’m ghetto and don’t have a deep fryer, yet. It’s on my Christmas list, don’t you worry. You want about an inch or two of oil in the bottom of the pan.

In a small bowl, mix flour, baking powder and salt. Toss the onion rings around in the flour mixture until well coated. Set them aside.

Mix the egg and milk into flour mixture to make a batter, adding the seasonings, too. Also, in another bowl mix your bread crumbs and get it close by your oil to make transitioning quick and as mess free as possible. The first time I made these, I was like a new born fawn. Fucking bull in a China shop status. I made a mess, burned them, cried and by the end, had a seamless process that worked like butter. Or clock work. Or buttered clock work…

See the above picture for my layout.

Anyhoo, I used a fork and dropped the floured onion rings into the batter, coated them on both sides, shook off the excess and tossed them into a bowl with the bread crumbs. I shook the bowl and grabbed some tongs to get the little devils from there to the oil.

The oil is ready when a drop of batter sizzles like crazy and floats to the top, immediately. Fry a few at a time, so they don’t stick together, you’ll have to flip them to ensure they fry evenly on both sides. It takes about 90 seconds per ring. I keep a pie plate with a paper towel on the back of the stove, obvi not on a hot burner, duh, and when I get a pile of rings in the plate, I dump them onto a cookie sheet, in the oven, which I’ve pre-heated to about 200. Just to keep everything warm and crispy until you’re ready to eat.

That’s it!

Now, you can stop at the bread crumb part, lay the onion rings on parchment paper in your freezer, and when they’re good and solid, chuck em in a bag.

Enjoy this recipe while it’s up. If my venture on Kickstarter.com is successful, a lot of these will be coming down as I’ll be the proud owner of my own food truck. Boom.

Chicken Noodle Soup

No frills, nothing fancy, just down home, delicious, hearty, hot and sexy, chicken noodle soup.

 

I have this all ready to go in the freezer. I literally unpack the appropriate frozen ingredients, add to the crock pot and let it hang out as long as it wants.

 

I use my own chicken broth, I don’t buy it, ever. I’ll attach the recipe for that, I’ll be posting it soon…

 

I keep chopped onions, celery, carrots (I don’t blanch I just use small portions, they stay good in the freezer for about a month, but no longer.) shredded chicken and frozen broth in the freezer.

 

I add the veggies and chicken right to the crock pot, with about two cups of hot water and some frozen broth, which is about 16oz.

 

INGREDIENTS:

Since it’s soup, why pinpoint measurements? I never understood how you need, “3 carrots” or “1 onion”. How do YOU know what I like in my soup? So, I use about 16oz of each… I do all my portioning for freezing in solo cups, so the amounts I freeze of everything is about 16oz. It leaves enough head space in the bag for expansion for foods which do that and keeps all my portions the same.

White onion, always diced, usually frozen.
Carrots, coined and frozen.
Celery, chopped and frozen.
Sometimes, I use potatoes, diced, not frozen. That’s when I know Boo will be using it for lunches and I want to bulk up the soup a bit.
Chicken, cooked, shredded and frozen.
Broth, again, frozen.
About 2 cups, maybe 3 of hot water.
Egg noodles, about 2 cups.
Thyme, rosemary, basil, oregano, salt and pepper.

Add everything except noodles to crock pot, season well and let it simmer. It’s soup, you know how it’s done.

 

I serve it up with either homemade cheddar biscuits, which I’ll post a recipe for soon or these delicious garlic and herb biscuits.

I also got a few loaves of artisan bread at Sprouts and have kept it sliced in the freezer for quick garlic bread.

Enjoy!

San Diego Wedding…

My best friend got married on the beach in June and we all road tripped to San Diego for the most beautiful beach wedding…

Her wedding was featured on a blog about wedding bouquets in San Diego and the Maid of Honor shared it today on Facebook so I figured I’d share the link here.

http://sandiegoweddingflorist.wordpress.com/2013/08/01/hot-hot-pink-wedding-in-pacific-beach/ 

Check it out!

Pork Chile Verde

The culmination of the last two posts, I bring you the Pork Chile Verde plate!

For the sauce, click here.

For the pork and pork stock, click here.

For the refried beans and Spanish rice, click here.

Directions, assuming you’ve got your sauce ready, pork chopped, beans refried and rice is a simmerin’ are as follows:

In a medium sauce pot, depending on how much you’re making for this particular dish, combine cubed pork and the chile verde sauce and simmer on low. That’s it. Let the pork get tender and let the reduce…

Serve, plated like this with corn tortillas, or in a flour tortilla as a burrito!

Enjoy!

Chile Verde Sauce

In my last post I showed you how to make homemade pork stock from a big ole honkin’ pork ass. You can find that, here.

Today, we’re going to take that ass stock and make a whole bunch of chile verde, for the freezer.

Chile verde is a green, chile based sauce that is served over pork, usually, but is great over beef or chicken and is usually served plate style, or in a burrito. The sauce can also be used to make soup, like green chile chicken soup, which I’ll be making, soon…

The sauce can’t get any more simple. If you want to use boxed stock, feel free, it should work just fine but I’m all about the bone broth here.

INGREDIENTS:

4lb Hatch chiles
2lbs Tomatillos
1lb/4large Onions
Jalapenos, to taste, depending how spicy you want it
1 head of garlic

DIRECTIONS:

Roast all the veggies.

 

Remove the tops and stem scars from the tomatillos and chiles.

 

I usually just do an assembly line of cleaned, prepped veggies with two casserole dishes alternating in the oven, with the oven on broil.

 

As one is roasting, the other is getting blended, the empty dish filled with veggies to roast and popped in the oven by the time the other is ready to pull out, dump in the blender and repeat.

 

Blend as well as you can, don’t worry if your veggies are still crunchy, you’ll be simmering the hell out of this in just a bit…

Once everything is blended. Add it to your stock pot and grab a whisk…

I like to simmer this, on medium low, until it has no “crunch” left to it when you taste it. Uncooked, even blended veggies will produce a “raw” taste to a sauce like this. Only after you cook and reduce it for a long time, will you taste the difference when the veggies get softer and the flavors get sexy… I add pork stock, about two cups or so, as I go along to improve consistency and richen the flavor.

Add cumin, salt, black pepper and oregano to taste.

You can add cilantro at this point, but I’m not a big fan.

 

 

 

This gets bagged, tagged and frozen as well.

I use it in Pollo Verde Enchiladas and of course, for pork green chile.

That will be my next post, but here’s a little preview:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Enjoy!

Homemade Pork Stock

This entry is going to kick off a bigger picture. Pork stock to make chile verde sauce to make pork chile verde from the pork that the stock was made. The stock is used in the chile verde sauce as well. It’s like the culinary circle of life…

 

This, is step one.

 

I went to the store and got my hands on a pork shoulder, on sale!

 

I brought it home and baked it up in the oven.

 

Shredded what was shred-able for bbq sammies and what couldn’t be shredded was cubed for chile verde. The big piece of skin was saved to flavor beans, as they cook, to use as refried beans. The bone was kept for step two!

 

Nothing went to waste!!

 

Step two is simple… Take the bone you’ve got left, with any undesirable fat, tendon, waste that was left and put it in a stock pot.

 

Since I was making chile verde that day too, I had veggies on hand to use in the stock. Onion pieces and such. Normally, I don’t use a bunch of veggies in my stock. You can use the granulated versions, because they’re only there for taste, but it’s up to you. I find cooking the seasoned skin and all that stuffs is enough.

I used the ends of the onions here, that’s what’s floating along with the bone, skin, fat, ect.

Fill the pot with water and boil away. As the water level goes down, I refill, tasting as I go. Once I have the desired amount and flavor, it’s done!

Quality over quantity!

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry for the shitty photo quality on the end here, but I didn’t Instagram the finished product for obvious reasons…

Maybe not so obvious, after all, I ig’d a shot of bones boiling in water.

My life… Is riveting.

 

 

 

Anyhoo, bag it, tag it and freeze it.

End o’ story! Enjoy!

Vanilla Granola & Chocolate Chip Cookies

 

The other day we made a trip to Sprouts, because they have like, THE best sales, EVER and a ton of bulk product.

 

I got my hands on some delicious, organic, vanilla granola. Think of it as the honey bunches part of Honey Bunches of Oats. Just vanilla granola and some almond slivers. Yum.

 

The other day, my Boo asked me to bake some cookies and so I tried something new and threw the granola in, where I’d usually throw in oatmeal or whatever else. And, of course, chocolate chips.

 

You’ve gotta have chocolate chips.

 

 

INGREDIENTS:

1c margarine/butter, softended
1c granulated sugar
1c brown sugar
2 eggs
1tsp vanilla extract
2c all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1tsp baking soda
1tsp salt
2 – 3 cups of granola, depending on what kind, how dense and so on
1c chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS:

Cream butter and sugars until smooth; beat in eggs and vanilla. Combine and blend thoroughly flour, cinnamon, baking soda and salt; beat into creamed mixture. Stir in granola and chocolate chips.

Bake at 375 for 7-9 minutes.

 

Enjoy!