Last Weekend

Fall semester classes start this week.  On one hand I am looking forward to getting back into the classroom.  On the other hand I have enjoyed all of the reading and cooking I have been doing. If I were independently wealthy...  Anyway here is what I did to enjoy my last free weekend for a while:

Had pizza and beer at Classic Italian Pizza.

Read while sipping an iced mocha at Solo Cafe.

Had jerk chicken at Taste of the Caribbean.

This lunch was awesome!  Too bad the place is run very inefficiently.  That probably won't stop me from going back though. The sides are rice, cabbage, and fried plantains.

For dinner I made a shrimp po'boy and some french fries.  Tasty!  I think I am finally getting the hang of frying things.  Usually when I try to bread and fry anything, what-ever-it-is usually sticks to the pan and the breading peels off. I forgot that I had okra pickles, but I ate them when I used the leftover shrimp to make another po'boy for lunch on Sunday.

Since I had buttermilk left over from last week's muffin making and Saturday's shrimp battering, I made another batch of soda muffins.

It is hot and icky here so what do I do on Sunday?  Make baked pasta so that I have to run my oven for a while!  Good thing the baked penne with vegetables is so tasty.

Heading in to late summer means that is also green chile season.  I picked up a couple of pounds and roasted it and packed it up in baggies.  I now have frozen green chile to turn into green chile stew
when the mood strikes.

I certainly ate well this weekend.  Overall I made about half of what I had in mind to make while on vacation this summer.  I will still plug away at the list because I have yet to do things like make salsa and a summer vegetable stew.  Guess there is always next weekend.

Green Chile Stew

Last week I saw green chiles had arrived and knew I would soon be making green chile stew. Living in New Mexico in the early 90s I had eaten green chile stew a few times. Pork? Chiles? What's not to love? Some years ago I found a recipe for green chile stew and tried it out. The stew was tasty but I didn't remove the skins from the chiles before cooking so removing them after cooking (from my mouth) ruined the experience a little. Several years passed. Last year I tried the recipe again, this time roasting the chiles and removing their skins before adding to the stew. Again, the stew was tasty, but I thought the so-called extra hot chiles I bought could have used some more heat.



This year's green chile crop has found its way to a local grocery store and snatched up a couple of pounds to produce stew. Last night I roasted the chiles and wow what a wonderful smell. I remember being in Albuquerque around this time of year and I swear someone was roasting chiles on every corner. Good smells.


The recipe for green chile stew I have is

1 lb cubed pork
1 large onion diced
3 diced garlic cloves
2 tbsp oil
1.5 cups of green chiles, roasted and skins removed
3 medium potatoes
1 cup of chopped canned tomatoes
flour for dredging
1 Tbsp salt
4 cups of water

Dredge the pork in the flour and brown in the oil, adding the onions and garlic. Cook the onions until transparent. Add the remaining ingredients and simmer for about 1 hour. Easy!



I picked up the extra hot chiles again. This year's verdict is HOT! Yeah, these were extra hot. The stew was tasty and very spicy. If I am able, I will be grabbing another load of chiles from the store and freezing them after roasting so I can enjoy this year's crop a few more times.



Enjoy! I did.