Round of 16, Day 4 - USA, Belgium, and Tears - World Cup Eating Challenge

As soon as it was announced that Belgium and the USA would be playing each other, Dan sent me a message asking if we could have Chicken and Waffles again. I realized I'd done Switzerland and I really wanted to save Argentina for as long as possible.. that left Belgium and the US again. I tossed it to Facebook and mostly it was Dan still saying he wanted waffles and a couple of people agreeing with him. Ok boyfriend - you get your waffles.

The biggest thing for me is to try new things. Luckily, I'd just gotten a couple of new cookbooks and there were three new waffle recipes! Three!

I decided to go with the Pumpkin Waffles in The Paleo Kitchen. One of the authors is PaleOMG where I got the other waffle recipe so I knew it would be tasty while still being different. The only small issue with the recipe is that it uses a ton of eggs and we had 3 left so I sent Dan to the store while I started the chicken. 

I wanted to treat the chicken differently too. I thought I'd go for more of a "grilled" style. I seasoned the chicken with paprika, garlic salt, pepper, chipotle pepper, and garlic powder and cooked a few pieces at a time in bacon fat. 

Once I got my eggs, I mixed everything together and started making the waffles. 

Waffles are a pretty slow process so there was a lot of downtime during this breakfast prep...

...which is good because despite the way it might seem, I do have a job. I was able to work just a couple of feet away from my waffles and take them out as they were ready. This is probably multitasking at it's finest. 

In the end, it all came together beautifully. The pumpkin waffles were amazing. I like them better than the chocolate waffles although I think they'd be even better with a handful of Enjoy Life chocolate chips. I also added a side of bacon because bacon makes everything better (and it gave me the bacon fat I used to cook my chicken). 

One thing I have to say about paleo waffles - they are super filling. I can barely eat a whole one. Granted, these are Belgium size waffles but I keep making extra mix so we have waffles for like a week. I mean, they're awesome, but it's a lot of waffle. 

At the end of the day, when work was done and the USA had lost despite some badass goal tending, I decided to enjoy a drink. I couldn't think of a better thing to do then open some bubbles and celebrate the USA's amazing run at the World Cup by mixing it with my leftover agua fresca.

In '98, I spent a Summer in Brazil during the World Cup. It didn't take place there but they made it to the finals and lost. Afterwards, they threw a party. I asked why they were celebrating when they lost and they told me that losing isn't a good reason to not have a party. The sentiment was lost on 12 year old me but I never forgot the words and I've since learn to appreciate celebrating despite a loss. Celebrating the US making it further in than World Cup than anyone thought they would (except Americans chanting "I believe that we will win") seemed completely appropriate. Days like that make me really proud to be American and Brazilian and I love sharing the idea of one culture with another. 

Round of 16, Day 3 - Algeria - World Cup Eating Challenge

I knew Monday was going to be a fun day for this challenge. I had two unfamiliar countries to choose from - Nigeria and Algeria. Nigerian food had looked pretty similar to Cameroon so I decided to go with Algeria. I knew this one wasn't going to be full on paleo / gluten free but there were still some Mediterranean flavors that I enjoy and I was looking forward to it.

My search for Algerian food brought me repeatedly to Chicken Tagine. I browsed through different recipe variations and this one seemed to be the most straight forward to me. I started my chicken cooking while I finished my workout because multi tasking is awesome and I knew it woul dhave to simmer for a while. 

Next up was couscous - another item that came up all the time for Algerian food. My mom actually used to make couscous for breakfast quite often so I was familiar with it although I'd never made it myself. She used to steam it but the version I had said it could be made by adding it to boiling water. I assumed it would be a lot like rice or quinoa that take a while to cook and absorb the water so I put it in when I assumed there was 15 minutes left to my chicken and went back to my ab routine. I came to check on it about 5 minutes later and it was completely ready and all the water was soaked up. I was so shocked. I had no idea couscous was so quick and easy!

I saw olives a lot in the chicken tagine recipes but I was wary about cooking them. I love mild olives though and I figured I could just enjoy them raw as a nice addition to my meal. 

Here's where things get a little shaky... I didn't actually see hummus or lavash bread in any of my searches for Algerian food. I just thought of the flavor profiles and the Mediterranean location and thought it was probably likely that they ate it. I really love both of these very not paleo items and I thought it would be a fun chance to cheat with items that aren't really that bad for you. 

Since I was at Whole Foods anyways, I decided to pick up a bunch of craft ciders. They definitely aren't Algerian but cider is delicious and it worked anyways. I think going with wine would have been more accurate but oh well. 

The whole dish was really delicious. I love combining everything - hummus, couscous, chicken - onto the lavash bread and eating it all at once. I'm definitely one of those people that loves mixing together my plate of food and this was just so good. The portion that came from all of it was really substantial too. It all came out to be about 4-5 servings so I've gotten to enjoy the leftovers a few times now which is awesome for me. 

Round of 16, Day 2 - Costa Rica - World Cup Eating Challenge

The games are getting to a really fun place for me where there aren't a lot of countries left that I haven't done. That means I don't have to stress out as much about missing a country (although there are some back up plans for this too). It also means we'll probably be repeating quite a bit in the future. For the countries I don't have any connection to, I find my desires for the challenge tend to dictate how I want a game to pan out. It makes me feel bad but I guess it's better than not having any preference.

Sunday's games turned out how I thought they would. However, I was pretty upset that Mexico lost on that penalty kick though - it felt so unfair. I also was kind of hoping Greece would pull out a win. I was already planning on doing Costa Rica this day, but I was interested in revisiting Greek food. My original Greece post was a little bit of a cop out because I needed breakfast food. I really wanted to do some lamb kebabs and tatziki. I'm definitely going to have to do it anyways when the challenge is over.

Costa Rica gave me a few opportunities to try some things I'd always wanted to make. I kept coming up with a lot of rice heavy dishes. I don't eat a lot of rice, and I wasn't feeling like doing a cauliflower substitution. I decided to look into my other options.

One of the first recipes I saw was for ceviche. Ceviche is one of my favorite dishes. I'm guilty of just about always ordering it, despite the circumstances. This has led me into more than one hangover meal of ceviche. I probably don't need to explain how bad of an idea that was... and I did it more than once. 

It's also something I've always wanted to try making it. I had a lot of the same "raw fish" worries that I had with sushi though. However, I finally decided to just bite the bullet and make it. I used this Costa Rican style recipe and was able to make it with extra sea bass from the day before (I accidentally bought like half a sea bass) and some shrimp. I definitely used about twice the seafood as suggested in the recipe. This meant that I had to go through a Costco bag of limes and a number of lemons in order to cover it all. Oops...

Even though it's not in the ingredient list, it suggests serving it with avocado. My guest,  Shannon, was nice enough to stop and get some so the day was saved.

Plantains came up several times when I was searching for recipes. I'd already used them for Ecuador so I wanted to go a different angle. I found a recipe for baked plantains and I thought this would be the perfect solution and give a healthier alternative. 

I saw a recipe for Agua Fresca on Pinterest as well. The Pinner said it was Costa Rican but the recipe says Mexican. I know it's Mexican but thought maybe they have it in Costa Rica also. In any case, Mexico played Sunday as well so even if it wasn't culturally correct, it wouldn't hurt to tie in a little bit of Mexico. The agua fresca was made by soaking strawberries in water and then blending them and adding more water. Even though I didn't dilute mine as much as the recipe, it still tasted pretty watery. There are a few things that could have improved it. I think sparkling water would have been better than tap and a little bit of sweetener would have helped as well. We added a splash of tequila but because the drink was so watery, it ended up tasting very strongly of spirits. 

Altogether this dish turned out really well. It was nice and light which was perfect because Sunday was one of those super rare really hot days in San Francisco. The baked plantains felt so much healthier than the fired ones and were a nice starchy balance for the very acidic ceviche. The avocado also helped a lot there by cutting the acid with it's natural fat. I think the citrus would have overpowered everything if I didn't have the avocado so thanks again Shannon!

To wrap things up, I found a little recipe for a Costa Rican dessert that I wanted to try - Cajeta de Coco. This recipe is absolutely not paleo in anyways (although I didn't make some subsitutions to get it closer to that), but it reminded me of some of the Brazilian desserts my mom would make for parties and I had a feeling it would be delicious. 

The recipe had me combining sweetened condensed milk, coconut, butter, wafer crumbs (which I replaced with macadamia nuts), and vanilla in a pot and bringing it to a boil. This is similar to how brigadeiros are made and as usual, I probably didn't boil it long enough but oh well.

Once it's cooked long enough, you let it cool down to a manageable temperature. The recipe wasn't explicit on this but I always remember spreading it out on a tray so the increased surface area let's it cool faster. Science! Mine used to always stick to the tray so in my cooking experience, I've learned to put down some parchment paper. This will make it easier to get up and then you can just throw away the mess instead of having a very stubborn tray to clean. 

After that you roll them into little balls that taste like awesome. I'm so happy I went with macadamia nuts. They are definitely the most delicious of the nuts and the tropical aspect of them went really well with this Latin dessert.

Round of 16, Day 1 - Chile, Colombia, and Uruguay - World Cup Eating Challenge

This is how all the magic happens

...also known as the day I almost had a heart attack. My system for choosing countries isn't perfect, I'm not going to lie. I really want to get as many of the remaining countries as possible while still being able to do Brazil again in the future. I had already had a plan to do the other 3 South American countries on Saturday... watching the Brazil game was torture. Not only am I a huge Brazil fan, but this was going to really throw off my cooking plans for the day. There's no way I could do any of the other countries if Brazil lost - I'd want to focus on only them. I sat in front of my TV with my shopping list ready, holding my breath, and hoping for the best. I'm sooo happy for so many reasons that Brazil pulled it out and can advance! Columbia was looking really good in their game though, Friday is going to be tough.

Originally, I was just going to do one of the three countries I was deciding between. I turned to Facebook and instead of getting a vote, everyone had different opinions on how to do all three. My friend Steve gave me some Colombian ideas and I also got the suggestion for "bite"-size Uruguayan items.

In the end, I came up with one item for each country. A lot of South and Central American countries have similar cuisine so I wanted to do something that felt unique to each without using something that I wanted to do for another country. This had some difficulties but Chile ended up working out really well for me. As soon as I looked up Chilean recipes, I got one for Chilean Sea Bass. Done! This seemed so obvious after the fact, but also perfect.

The first step was obviously to find some sea bass. I thought Safeway would have some at the seafood counter but they didn't have it there or with the frozen fish. I'd heard that some of the Latin markets in the Mission had great seafood so I checked there next. I ended up getting a giant piece of sea bass for about $20. While that seems kind of pricey - what is pictured above is only about 1/3 of it. I thought that was pretty good for a fresh, hard to find fish. 

I used the recipe above to make up my own marinade. I obviously wasn't starting the day before (oops..) so I wouldn't have time to cook and reduce the citrus. I also got fresh ginger instead of garlic-ginger paste, and didn't even see the chipotle peppers. I hate capers so I skipped those all together. I basically just ended up blending lemon, grapefruit, garlic, ginger, chipotle seasoning, and olive oil to make a marinade that the fish then sat in for several hours. Actually, it was pretty much a completely different marinade than what's in the recipe. 

For Uruguay, I found some "bite"-size fritters made of swiss chard. Now, it wouldn't be a challenge if there wasn't a substitution error so this time I replaced the flour with tapioca flour as it's the most similar to regular flour. The recipe said to keep adding flour until there was a good consistency. I didn't know what that would be so basically just kept adding it. In the end there was more dough than greens. I think I would have been better off adding more cheese instead. It felt like there was barely any in them. 

For frying, I used avocado oil instead of vegetable oil. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Avocado oil is a "high heat" oil meaning it won't burn in the pan the way butter and other oils might. This makes it great for frying and you can get a giant bottle of it for $10 at Costco.

Columbia was the country I was the most excited about. My friend Steve gave me a few suggestions that I brought together as one. The first part of it were arepas. Arepas are kind of like thick corn tortillas that can be used as a type of gluten free bread for South American sandwiches. I was a little nervous about this because I once again had to get a particular corn flour and last time that didn't turn out so well.  My recipe for arepas suggested white masarepa. This was dehydrated corn meal. Corn meal is what I used last time so this time I went for white corn flour. I could tell immediately that the texture was easier to work with and I had made a better choice. 

A different arepa recipe that I found suggested using carnitas as the filling for it. Slow cooked carnitas is one of my favorite things to make at home. It's probably the easiest thing in the world to cook if you have a crock pot. I just coat mine in salt, garlic powder, paprika, and a little pepper then stick it in the slow cooker fat side down (don't trim the fat) for 6-8 hours on high or 8-10 on low (this is preferred but I was getting a late start). The fat will basically liquefy and become the cooking liquid for your pork. Just be sure to drain it before you pull it apart or it will end up being really salty. 

Steve also suggested a salsa called Aji. I used this recipe for it. My proportions were a little off and I think I put in too much vinegar, but otherwise it was a really tasty sauce. I'm pretty vigilant about washing my hands when I'm cooking. I always wash them after touching any sort of meat (even if I know I'm going to go right back to touching it in a couple of minutes) and after most other things too. I hate cross contamination and also just don't like my hands to be dirty or sweaty or anything. It's pretty safe to say, I probably washed my hands dozens of times before I went to bed but when it came time to take out my contacts, my eyes were burning. This stuff gets INTO your skin. If you feel like you're going to be touching your eyes anytime after eating this, be super careful that you don't get any on your fingers! 

In the end, it came together into this wonderful arepa sandwich! I also ended up putting some Monterey Jack cheese on it because as we've discussed, cheese makes everything better. I was really happy that I had some leftover arepas and pork for lunch the next day too. However, I made a lot less pork than usually. Generally I make about 5-8 lbs of pork, but this time I only did 3 lbs knowing that I'd be making another dinner the next day. This was a huge mistake, Dan and I were both wanting the last of the pork and it would have been great for us to have for lunches and snacks. The moral of the story - you can never have too much pork. Ever. 

For the fish - in the middle of making the arepas and fritters, I put it in the oven at 350 for about 15-20 minutes. After that I broiled it for another 5 minutes. I made two notable mistakes with the fish. First, since I used fresh ginger instead of the ginger-garlic paste - I had no idea how much to put. I ended up putting wayyy too much and it's didn't really get cut up small enough when I processed the marinade. I ended up eating a big chunk of ginger which was really unpleasant.  Second, I should have drained the marinade before cooking the fish. It was a strong marinade and the flavor got in well enough that it didn't need to cook with it. It also kept the fish from getting that nice brown color I love in cooked animals. The broiling helped with that but more would have been nice. Otherwise, it was really tasty and I think my alternate marinade turned out really good.

All in all, this was a great meal. I will definitely be making the Columbian portion of the meal again. The fritters ended up having a weird texture (probably due to all the tapioca flour). The fish was ok. I'm sure I could fix my mistakes and it would be awesome next time but I feel like for the effort, there are other things I'd rather attempt instead.... like more arepas.

Day 15 - Portugual and the end of Group Stage!!!! - World Cup Eating Challenge

The last day of group stage!!! I'm exciting for the knock out rounds even though that's going to be a little harder for me to plan ahead if I want to catch the countries as they are being eliminated. Luckily, being on the west coast, I can always wait until after the matches and then go shopping. Work hasn't been too busy so I've been able to do some research on all of my options. I am also so excited that each round will give me a couple of days off in between. Hopefully that gives some ability to catch up on posts since I don't like to put things up on weekends. 

But anyways - let's talk about food. Thursday's dinner was one of my favorites so far for so many reasons. For starters, I'd known for a while I was going to do Portugal regardless how the games went so I was able to plan ahead and make sure I had everything I needed. My Portuguese friend, Joey, sent me this site with tons of Portuguese recipes that helped me brainstorm as well. It also was just a really straight forward dinner in terms of cooking. While I got ideas from recipe sites, I didn't need to look up or follow any recipes to make these dishes. After the Honduras disaster, it was nice to have something straightforward. Lastly - it all tasted really, really good. Some of these dishes have not been good, and others I've liked but have been out of Dan's comfort zone, but we both loved all of this meal. So let's tell you how it all came together...

 I knew I was going to cook some linguica I found at the supermarket so all I had to think of were side dishes. 

Getting pre-made sausage is a nice easy way to get a meal together. The hard part has been done, you don't have to worry about getting under cooked meat, and hopefully whoever made it seasoned it well. All you have to do is throw it into a pan until they get hot and crispy.

The potatoes and bacon was instantly a no brainer. I'm definitely a bacon fanatic. I freak out if there are less than two packages in the house. I use it for everything and if I'm just eating it by itself, I save the grease for cooking later. It's so full of flavor that it imparts on whatever you cook in it. Obviously not all bacon is created equal though. The bacon in the picture above is my favorite. I get it from Costco in a two pack. For Costco, a two pack is tiny. They sell a 4 pack of mediocre bacon for the same price so a 2 pack seems like a rip off... until you notice that they are the same weight but one is juicy amazing awesome bacon and the other is thin limp meh bacon. I mean any bacon is better than no bacon, but trust me - we were buying both for a while and there was a noticeable difference. Bacon is good. Great bacon will change your life. I promise. 

Now that you have your awesome life changing bacon, the rest of the steps for this dish are super easy. I cut up the bacon into little bacony pieces and get them into a hot pan. It takes a little while but I try to put them in the pan so they aren't overlapping at first. This helps the fat melt down better and they'll be crispier. 

While the bacon is starting to cook, you can get to your potatoes. Sweet potatoes are paleo but white potatoes aren't really. They're not particularly un-paleo but there's kind of a paleo grey area that the paleo community doesn't agree on and it's full of white potatoes. My personal rule on them is about quality. For example, the big cheap russet potatoes that are about $1.50 for a ten pound bag - those are really starchy and lack a lot of nutrients. I try to go for other potato options like red skin potatoes, blue potatoes, or the yukon gold potatoes that I used for this dish. These came from Front Door Farms but Trader Joes has a ton of potato options that will be more nutrient filled.

I cut up my potatoes into little approx. one inch squares. My potatoes were all sorts of shapes and sizes but I used about a whole two pound bag of them. Once the bacon was close to crispy (you don't want it all the way there because it will keep cooking with the potatoes, just not as fast) throw the potatoes in. They'll need a while to cook - about 20 minutes so you don't have to be too vigilant but definitely mix them up every few minutes. This should get them pretty even but allow them to brown a bit. 

For seasoning - the bacon does a pretty good job but I also added some garlic powder and pepper. You can also salt it to taste. I love salt and probably have horrible blood pressure so I did a sprinkle of garlic salt as well. 

One recipe saw a lot was kale soup (actually just about everything had potatoes, kale, and/or linguica in it). While I wanted to be traditional, I didn't want an overly heavy meal so I decided to swap soup for salad and use the kale that way.

Since the potatoes and linguica had to cook a bit, it was the perfect change for me to prep my kale salad. I had tried looking for some Portuguese salad recipes but wasn't too successful so this one is probably not super authentic. 

This salad is super easy and simple. I just cut up a few kale leaves. I removed the stems since those can be kind of chewy. I cut up my last kumato and threw in some Parmesan cheese and almonds. I probably would have preferred goat cheese but I was out. I think sprinkled it with balsamic and olive oil and then mixed it all up. I went really light on dressing so the little bit leftover stayed really crisp the next day too. 

Next I had to pair wines. Ok, I'm lying, this was actually the first thing I did and put off starting to cook for as long as possible... Portugal has some AMAZING wines. Last year I went to an awesome Wines of Portugal tasting and I got to learn a lot about different Portuguese varieties. Most people are familiar with Vinho Verde and Port but there are so many more great grapes that just haven't taken off (yet) in the US. So we're going to have a little Portuguese wine lesson!

Loureiro - Loureiro is a type of Vinho Verde. Vinho Verde is actually the region in Portugal. Some of my favorite whites from the tasting were Loureiro but it's not really being exported now. Most whites are lumped together and just called "Vinho Verde" so my guess is that they're probably blends of several grapes in the region. The wine is crisp and almost spritzy with a hint of effervescence. It's the perfect hot weather wine and is just super refreshing. 

Alvarinho - Alvarinho is more commonly known by its Spanish counterpart - Albarino. It's a light white wine with high acidity and fruity aromas. It's becoming more popular among wine makers in California so maybe you'll bump into it more.

Touriga Nacional - This is another wine that's slowly becoming more popular in California. It's a pretty intense wine with a lot of berry flavor. It's probably comparable to Tempranillo. 

Touriga Franca - This is Touriga Nacional's milder counterpart (think Cabernet and Cab Franc) and is the type of Touriga I had above. It's still a pretty meaty wine but not quite as overwhelming.

Alvarelhao - A little milder still than the Touriga Franc, it's more of a medium bodied wine that can stand up better on it's own. It's really uncommon and the wine above is the only time I've ever seen it, and not recently.

Port - Probably the most well known Portuguese wine. It's known as a dessert wine and it's very rich and flavorful. Most Ports are aged as well which adds to their complexity. They are fortified with grape spirits causing them to be higher alcohol than traditional wine.

So there's a little run down on a few Portuguese wines. There are obviously a ton more and if you're interested in Portuguese wine, Wines of Portugal is a great place to start. Fenestra is also a winery in Livermore with lots of Portuguese varieties so that's also a great spot to go taste some of them. 

Anyways, I wanted to figure out what wine to have with dinner and I got really upset because I thought I didn't have any Portuguese wine. I was thinking only about Alvarinhos and was almost debating checking Trader Joes for some wine when I remembered that I had a couple of awesome Portuguese wines from Fenestra that I was saving for something special. Well, how much more special could Portuguese wine for Portuguese dinner be? I just couldn't decide which one to pair...

I decided to go with the Touriga. It's a meatier and fuller bodied wine and I knew with a dinner focused on sausage and bacon, I needed a wine that could stand up to it. A key in pairing food and wine is to keep in mind that the wine is more likely to lose a battle with food flavors. There are a lot of amazing light, beautiful wines that taste great on their own. Buy them and love them but don't eat them with an intense meal. There are wines that do great with food and it's a good thing to keep in mind while tasting. 

So finally it was food time. I really loved how this plate came together. It even ended up being Portuguese colors! Everything about the dish was amazing. 

Dan and I both went back for seconds. I seriously could have eaten all of those bacon potatoes. There was so little for me to take for lunch the next day and I was so sad that I didn't make more. I could eat this for dinner once a week. I could probably eat it more often but I love it so much I wouldn't want to get sick of it. Just everything about this meal was great - it was easy to make, the flavors were good, it had bacon, there was a fresh salad, and of course - I got to open one of my treasured bottles of Portuguese wines. 

Rocco knows all about getting seconds

After we each had our two plates, we had to keep ourselves from getting thirds and instead cuddled up on the couch like fat Roccos and watched Lost. Yes, Lost. I don't like watching good shows until long after they are cancelled so we're on Season 5 of Lost right now... 

And now I get a day off and I can go eat all of the cheeseburgers in San Francisco. Yes - unpaleo greasy awesome cheeseburgers because "everything in moderation" is the best.

Day 14 - Honduras and Bosnia-Herzegovina - World Cup Eating Challenge

I hope I don't offend anyone, but I'm only referring to it as Bosnia from here on out...

Anyways, I'm starting to break a little bit. This challenge has been super fun but Wednesday I had a case of nothing-is-turning-out-the-way-I-want-it-to and let's just say that I really need the break between group stage and the first knockout round. After two straight weeks, I'm excited that I'll get some spaces between rounds from here on out.

In addition to the struggles that come with trying out a new recipe most days, I've also been going grocery shopping almost every day. I know that can be chalked up to poor planning, but this past week I've really tried to wait it out and see what teams get knocked out before deciding on my recipe. It's helped me maximize country exposure but grocery shopping can come with all sorts of frustrations and between dealing with cat calls from supermarket employees, inefficient cashiers, trouble finding rare ingredients, or just staring down an aisle of corn flours trying to get the right one (I did not...) - I'm a little over the grocery store.

Anyways, moving rapidly forward to the food and not so much of my griping. This is going to be a picture/ word post hybrid because about half way through cooking everything went wrong and I could not manage pictures also.

My original plan was to make this tilapia recipe. I was thinking of doing a healthier version that just used the spice flavors and not frying it. However, after doing my ab challenge for the day and running 2.5 miles, I realized I hadn't had red meat in a couple of days and wanted some steak. I did a little search while doing my walk cool down to the store and saw that carne asada was a good option for Honduras. Done! Carne Asada is actually something I make at home quite often so I knew exactly what to do. 

This is probably the only worthwhile feature of G+

I normally just season my carne asada with a mix of spices, but I had just flipped through The Paleo Kitchen and saw they had a carne asada marinade. I was already home at this point so I adapted it to what I already had available - garlic, olive oil, cilantro, and tons of lime. Then I tried to get the perfect picture of lime squeezing (btw if you don't have one of those tools and love citrus - GET ONE). My phone automatically backs up all my photos to Google. This is awesome because it's super easy to then grab them for this blog. The other awesome side effect is that Google will sometimes decide to "auto awesome" some of my photos. They've taken to making gifs out of any series of matching photos I have. It's kind of my new favorite thing.

Anyways, I put all those delicious things in the food processor until it was a nice chunky mess. It maybe could have used more oil and garlic and less lime but I'm not complaining. 

I then put that pretty green sauce all over my steaks and stuck them in the fridge. 

Featuring the smallest avocados ever

I took this opportunity to prep my avocado mango salsa also. This is pretty similar to the one I made for Ecuador last week with a couple of tweaks. There was a better avocado - mango balance, a little more lime, some cilantro, and no tomatoes. I thought it turned out a lot better. I could go either way with the tomatoes but the extra lime and cilantro made it feel more like a salsa. 

Here's a finished picture for you because things are really going to start falling apart soon. Boy, was I happy that I made this early...

So probably the most Honduran thing I saw when looking for recipes was pupusas. They're made of corn so definitely not Paleo but I'm ok with cheating in order to try something from another culture and they're still gluten free! So originally I was just going to do cheese like in the recipe. However, as I mentioned above, my workout had me hungrier for meat than a Velociraptor in Jurassic Park (Bam - this post has a gif and Velociraptors. I told you guys there was room for improvement!) so I tried to figure out a meat option that I could add to them without making too much more work for myself and would still feel Latin. Obviously, the solution was chorizo. Another good option would be pulled pork but that's about 10 hours of slow cooking time that I didn't have so chorizo it was!

The ingredient I knew would be the hardest to find would be the harina de masa. I had a roommate once who was a pro at making tamales and she'd said she had no problem finding the harina de masa at the nearby Latin grocery store. It took me a while to come close but I finally found the aisle with harina de maiz. My Spanish isn't perfect but I knew both those words meant corn so that was probably the same ingredient right? WRONG. Back at home I just could not get the consistency to feel right. There was no way I was going to make this follow what the directions were telling me to do. 

It was too late to go back to the store so I made it work... ish. I was able to make the corn meal I had into some crumbly patties and put the chorizo, cheese, and cilantro filling on it then sprinkle it with more corn meal and gently scrap them into the pan. The pan frying in avocado oil was enough to get them to crisp up but they definitely did not have the right texture. I was pretty sad because I was looking forward to these a lot. 

Meanwhile, I was also busy cooking my steaks. Here came another rookie mistake - I overcrowded the pan and didn't let it get hot enough. The trick to carne asada is to cook it hot and fast on each side because it's so thin. Otherwise, the meat gets really chewy. Cooking it fast and hot on each side will sear the outside but leave the inside a tiny bit rare. The first two definitely got a little chewy but the third steak was cooked properly so at least that was ok. Then I cut up some onions and cooked them for a couple of minutes on the hot meat pan so they'd still be mostly raw but get some meat flavor. I feel like that and the salsa were the only things I didn't mess up in some way.

I also had an extra mango so I processed it and mixed it with some lime juice and tequila for a little mango margarita. There was accidentally a little cilantro in there since I only rinsed out the processor from the marinade so in the end every single aspect of the dish had cilantro in it. Cilantro goes a long way - for $0.50 it had a big part in all areas of my dish and I only used half of the bunch. No wonder it's so prominent in Latin dishes!

Dinner ended up tasting ok despite all of my missteps. I obviously know it could have been better but I was so hungry and tired and frustrated by that point that I was happy to have some delicious food. It also made a pretty good bunch of leftover meals the next day.

I still wasn't done though... I really wanted to make something for Bosnia as well. I've become a big fan of doing two countries at once and when I found this Bosnian cake recipe - I knew it would be a great dessert that I could easily make paleo. That would be if, you know, I knew the actual way to make paleo substitutions for baking. Guess there was still time to make more cooking errors in one night!

So here are my modifications and the corresponding judgement error:

1. I replaced cooking oil with coconut oil. Coconut oil is amazing for baking and totally natural. I love it. Guess what though? It's way oilier than normal oil. I used a 1:1 replacement ratio. I ended up taking a cake out of the oven that was literally drowning in oil. I had to hold it over the sink and pour out the extra oil. Hmm.. I just tried looking for information on how much to actually use and it says 1:1 is correct so maybe this was just a really oily recipe. Either way, it could have used half the oil.
2. I put in wayyy more coconut. This wasn't an error, it was actually awesome. I've done enough paleo baking to know that a recipe like this with no "flour" can turn out to be overly eggy. Maybe that's how they like it in Bosnia, but I like something a little more cakey. It was clear that the coconut flakes were the "flour" so I decided to make it more of a star. Who knows, maybe this added to my oil issue but I don't care, coconut is delicious.
3. I added honey to the cake as a sweetener. I maybe but a tad too much but this was also a nice addition since the cake otherwise didn't have a sweet element in it and would have been more of a bread. Probably the real error was also putting honey on top of it since there was supposed to be sugar in the frosting.
4. Everything about my frosting was a disaster. I decided to use coconut milk instead of heavy cream. I was certain I'd heard that you could whip coconut milk. So I take to aggressively beating my coconut milk... nothing much happening. I decide to take out the hand mixer... and it seems to thicken but definitely no where near the "stiff peaks" needed. I then turn to the interwebs for more instructions. It turns out you can whip coconut milk. It suggests only using the fatty part and not the watery part. That was fine - I was using full fat coconut milk so even though it was too late to worry about the separation, it should have had minimal coconut water. It also suggested the can be chilled. It was too late for that but I stuck my bowl in the freezer for 15 minutes to cool it down then went back at it with my hand mixer. It definitely got a little thicker but I was still a long way away. Maybe it was just too warm in the apartment but at this point it was almost 11pm and I was pretty tired of all my mishaps. I just poured my liquid coconut milk over a piece of cake and dribbled on some honey and called it a day. 

So ugly it's delicious

Despite everything, the cake was really tasty. Definitely a little oily, very coconuty (not a bad thing), and very ugly. I'm hoping now that my cream has been in the fridge over night I can go home and fix up the rest of the cake. 

Next up - Portugal!!

Day 13 - Italy - World Cup Eating Challenge

I've had a recipe for Italy in my back pocket since I started this thing, but I keep moving my "Italy" day becasue I was certain they'd advance. WRONG. So after spending all day Monday plotting out some English options and spending Tuesday morning debating between fish & chips or a "Sunday" roast, I went to check Fifa... and saw that Italy got eliminated. I'd like to tell you that I then spent a few hours debating between Italy and England but I won't lie to you. I wasn't planning on doing Italy yet, but there is no way I was going to pass it up.

Also... I had so much fun making the picture post the other day that I decided to take a million pictures for this one too. I really like these so I think they'll be popping up a little more often the next few weeks. All the pictures!!!

Since everything comes from Pinterest, it won't surprise you that my back pocket Italy recipe came from an awesome Pin I saw. I was following it mostly from memory so there were some changes but that's the fun thing about Pinterest - it's often just a nice Pinsperation and I can take the idea and make it my own. Anyways, this was a recipe for spaghetti squash in butter with Parmesan and parsley. The first step with spaghetti squash is always to bake it to soften up the inside. You can nuke it too but I think part of the skill of cooking is using down time to prep other parts of the meal. The microwave feels like cheating unless I'm in a rush or heating up leftovers. The squash needs to cook for about 40 minutes at 350 in about an inch of water so I stuck it in the oven and got cracking on the rest of dinner. 

Since the "pasta" part of this dish was going to be pretty heavy, I thought it would be great to have a little side salad. When I think of Italian salads, Caprese instantly comes to mind. I thought I'd take it to a slightly fresher level by deconstructing it and adding some spinach to make it a little bit of a leafier, greener salad. Before we get to the healthy stuff though, we started with the most important part of caprese - lots of fresh mozzarella! 

For tomatoes, I used these lovely greenish Kumatos. They're like the watermelon of tomatos but they have an amazing flavor. They're a little less acidic than a normal tomato so they are really good for just snacking on. I also used vine tomatoes to fill in the salad.

For greens, I used spinach and of course, basil. You can't have caprese without basil, but the spinach was my little addition to make it fresher. I also have a ton of veggies in my fridge. I did my bi-weekly produce order before thinking about this challenge and a lot of veggies haven't overlapped with the countries I was doing. It's sad though, because my veggies (which I get from Front Door Farms) are always fresh and awesome. 

I tossed the mozzarella, tomatoes, spinach, and basil together and sprinkled pepper on top. It looked awesome, but most of the tomatoes and cheese are on the bottom. 

My plan was to dress it in balsamic and olive oil. I did this on the plate though because I didn't want the salad to get soggy in the bowl. Balsamic is a great healthy salad topping. I always make sure to check the ingredients though because a lot will slip in additives or food coloring. My olive oil is from Campovida where I am a member of their wine club. I also opted in for olive oil and honey and they are awesome. 

Now that the salad was done, it was time for the squash to come out of the oven. 

When spaghetti squash is cooked, you can use a fork to scrape it out and it comes out in strings that look like... spaghetti! It's a popular healthy alternative to noodles if it's done right. 

Next, it was time to prep the other ingredients starting with fresh parsley.

For butter, I use Kerrygold grassfed butter. It's delicious and a little leaner than normal butter. I love it and they sell it at the best place ever - Costco.

...which is also where I got this tub of Parmesan cheese. I would like to tell you it lasts a long time but in my household, we love cheese so it really doesn't. 

I sauteed the noodles in the butter. 

And then added the parsley and a heaping handful of cheese... and then another handful of cheese after I took this picture. I maybe went overboard on the cheese. Cheese is awesome though so it's ok. 

Of course any good Italian dinner needs some wine. I pulled out this lovely Babera from Imagery. The lightness and acidity of it was great with my cheesey awesome dinner. 

It all came together so well! The pasta was a little heavy so next time I think I'd put a little less cheese, but the fresh Caprese salad was perfect to balance it out. I also realized that there was no meat in this. I'm a true carnivore so I was shocked it took me halfway through dinner to realize there was no meat. I think the pasta would have been AWESOME with some panchetta and it definitely would have made it more filling.