Fancy Guacamole

When I think of good guacamole, I think of endless chips and guac at the swim up bars during an all inclusive resort trip to Cancun with my best friend, summer of 2004. I ate so much guac that trip, I'm sure my sweat began to smell of Serrano Peppers and Cilantro. Fast farward a few years to my honeymoon trip with my husband November 2010, and we made new memories together with guacamole at a resort in Jose de Cabo during the swim up bar's 3pm happy hour we were sure to attend every afternoon.

What made their guac so good compared to the stuff you buy in stores? I'm no gaucamole expert, but I have a feeling those resorts in mexico didn't buy pre-made gauc off the shelf at the supermarket, I bet you they used all fresh ingredients, very ripe, local, avocados, and they made it on the spot. 

I may start to sound like a broken record, but I am convinced after taking the real food challenge, really good food comes from organic, ripe, quality ingredients. It doesn't matter how skilled someone is in the kitchen, if the ingredients aren't quality, food just won't have the impact on you that it could. About 6 months ago, I chose to completely cut out all processed ingredients for 30 days (the original challenge is for 100 days), which forced me to cook ALL my meals from scratch, and I realized how much better my meals were tasting, and how much more energy I had. Not to mention, my skin really cleared up, I noticed I was sleeping better, shrinking my waistline, and focusing so much easier...even though I was cooking with more butter, and hadn't cut down on quality cheese, red meats, or organic chocolate :). This experience really opened my eyes to how satisfying of an experience eating is when calorie counting is thrown out the window, and food is eaten in it's natural state, the way God intended it to be eaten!

Talk about satisfying, guacamole has become kind of a staple in our house. We make tacos and fajitas quite frequently, and good guacamole from scratch can really transform a meal! Not to mention, it is a very nutritious snack :). So, I know it takes a few more minutes, but I can assure you, if you take the time on this recipe, you will not regret it! In fact, if the only problem is that it ends up being gone in less time than it took you to make it...than I'm sure it won't be your worst problem ;).

Sooo,  first of all, gather your ingredients. Here in Del Rio, I can't always buy all my produce organically, because it's just not as available as it was in California, and when it is available, it is soooo expensive! So, I try to buy MOST of my produce organic, but I don't worry about buying the items organic that are on the clean 15 list.

Once I gather my ingredients, I scoop the avocado out from the skin into a bowl, and save the pit if I'm not going to eat it right away (keeping the pit in with the guac will help keep it from browning). Then, I dice up the red onion, and tomato, the smaller the better if you don't like your guac too chunky. I also minced the cilantro, garlic, and deseeded and minced the Serrano Pepper. I would throw the seeds away (adding the seeds will make it very very spicy, and I like mine more mild with just a bit of a kick).

Add the red onion, tomato, cilantro, Serrano Pepper, and garlic to the bowl of avocado. Then squeeze the juice from a quarter of a lime into the mixture, and add sea salt to taste. There you have it! A wonderful crowd pleaser that will never let you down :).

Fancy Guacamole for Two

Ingredients

1   large, very ripe but not brown avocado.

1/2   tomato from the vine (preferably organic) diced

2 tbsp   minced red onion

2 tbsp   minced cilantro

1   large garlic clove, or 2 small ones

1/2   Serrano Pepper, deseeded and minced

1/4    of a lime cut into a wedge for juice

Sea Salt to taste

Preparation

Cut the avocado in half and scoop out the meat of the avocado into a bowl. Add the diced tomato, minced red onion, minced cilantro, minced garlic, and minced and deseeded Serrano Pepper to the avocado, as well as the juice from 1/4 of a lime. Stir mixture, and add sea salt to taste. Enjoy!

Source: recipe adapted from Naturally Ella

Thai Coconut-Curried Salmon with Watercress

This salmon recipe is a stress-relieving brain food for the sweet tooth. "Sweet tooth?" you say, "that looks way too healthy for my sweet tooth." Wrong! Ask anyone in my family, and they will tell you I have a sweet tooth. This cancer fighting brian food is no doubt healthy, but it also packs a punch in sweetness, flavor, and creaminess! As well as a whole host of other things, Salmon is an excellent choice for brain function, if it's wild caught (farmed Salmon may include residues of veterinary medicines, and other things your body doesn't need). The coconut milk found in the broth also aids the brain by helping to ward off Alzheimer's, as well as being an immunity booster, and watercress (a vegetable I never thought to try until I stumbled across this recipe), is similarly an excellent immunity booster  and helps fight against certain cancers. If you want to know more about specific foods and how they affect certain aspects of your health, the book Healing Foods, published by DK in 2013, is a wonderful resource. 

To preface, I am not a doctor, I am just a girl that has a huge interest and does lots of research on the topic of food to take responsibility for my own health. To read more about my story, feel free to visit My Story page to hear more about how I became so stoked about local farm fresh and organic ingredients vs. genetically modified and processed foods. The exciting thing about this blog is, you will never find food made with ingredients you can't understand, and I will always try to break down the steps for you to make it as easy to follow as possible. Also, because of my love of food and eating, I will only include recipes I have made several times, and each time they have brought both my husband and I immense joy.

Isn't it so exciting looking at, smelling, and tasting real, fresh, organic ingredients?! I mention God a lot, because he is my rock, and because like putting sand in a gas tank, if one introduces foods to the body that were not designed for humans to begin with, I fully believe the body will stop functioning the way it was naturally intended to function. Based on what I have read and personally experienced throughout my life, I have come to the conclusion that  this is why Childhood Obesity, Diabetes, Alzheimer's and many other diseases are on the rise... from weird oils and processed sugars we wouldn't be comfortable scooping up and spreading on our toast. Can I hear an amen? I'm sorry, but I don't fully know everything about genetically modified soybean oil and high fructose corn syrup, but if you handed me a jar of it, there's no way that thing is going anywhere near my toast...so why would I eat it in anything else??  I know many of you are fed up with being fooled by food that isn't actually food, so if you are, this recipe is for you... and here's how you make it:

I know you may be confused as to why there is a can in this pile of ingredients after my super long speech, but It is nothing other than pure Organic Coconut Milk (filled with heart healthy fats, contrary to past popular belief), and the jar is pure Clam Juice. So, to start with, I learned once when I took a culinary arts course during my senior year of high school, that the most important thing in cooking is to gather your "mise en place." The "mis en who?" it's just a french cooking phrase for  "pile of pre-measured ingredients."  Gathering and measuring out your ingredients ahead of time, as well as cleaning as you go (which I have still yet to master :)), makes cooking much easier and much more enjoyable, as you aren't scrambling about while the food is burning, trying to look for utensils or chop produce while your water is bubbling over.

After everything is diced and chopped, heat the coconut oil on medium-high heat. Add the onion and curry powder; saute 4 minutes. Add the next 7 ingredients (coconut milk through clam juice) scraping off the the spices and onion on the bottom of the pan as you stir. Bring to a boil; reduce heat, and simmer 3 minutes.

Add fish evenly spaced throughout; cover and cook 4 minutes.

While the fish is cooking, take your bunch of watercress, holding the top of the bunch, chop off the bottom half with all of the stems. The stems are fine to eat, I am just a major texture person, and too many stems get too stringy for me. 

 After the fish has cooked for 4 minutes, sprinkle the watercress tops with all of the beautiful leaves over the top of the fish; cover and cook 4 more minutes or until the fish flakes easily with a fork.

Voila! The first time I served this, I served it over rice...as it isn't a soup, it's more just fish floating in a flavorful broth, so I thought I should serve it on top of rice as I would a salmon fillet...that was a bad idea. The rice soaked up all the flavor, and it wasn't as sweet and creamy. Serve it in a bowl all together like a soup as you see here, and add a healthy starchy carb on the side, such as organic bread with a dollop of butter, or sweet potato to leave you completely satisfied.

Ingredients

2  teaspoons Organic Coconut Oil (non-organic may be partially hydrogenated; Coconut oil is
    much healthier than vegetable/canola oil, and tastes great with this recipe).
1  cup sliced onion
2  teaspoons curry powder
1  cup organic coconut milk (I used mine from a can, and it needed to be stirred).
2  tablespoons brown cane sugar
1  tablespoon fresh squeezed lime juice
1  tablespoon fresh ginger, minced
1/2 teaspoon chile sauce with garlic
1  (8 oz.) bottle clam juice
1  (1 lb.) salmon fillet, skinned, and cut into 3/4 in. cubes
1  bunch trimmed watercress, about 3 cups worth

Preparation

Heat coconut oil  in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion and curry powder; saute 4 minutes. Add coconut milk and the next 7 ingredients (coconut milk through clam juice). Bring to a boil; reduce heat, and simmer 3 minutes. Add fish; cover and cook 4 minutes. Arrange watercress evenly over fish; cover and cook 4 minutes or until fish flakes easily with a fork

Recipe adapted from Thai Coconut-Curried Salmon with Greens, found on My Recipes

Day 7 and 8 of our Italian Excursion: Rome

I can't believe the day has come that I finally finish posting all of my pictures from our Italian Vacation back in December. It took much more work than expected getting my new blog up, editing, and posting all of our Italy pictures, but the work was well worth it, as I will always be reminded of the experiences we had during such an exciting time in our lives.

For the final part of our Journey we ended up in Rome visiting the colosseum, the Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's Basilica, all of which we saw in one very full, very exhausting, but memorable last day. For those of you wanting to travel to Rome as well, I would recommend splitting them up and doing the Colosseum and ancient ruins in one day, and the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica in a second...but they can definitely be done in two days comfortably. We tried squishing a lot into a week, and it ended up working out because we came during the off season, and we didn't have to fight off as many crowds. 

Our first stop was the Colosseum. We made sure to get there early in the morning to allow for St. Peter's Basilica and the Sistine Chapel later in the afternoon. To be honest, I never did very well in my history classes growing up, but if we could have come here to see all of this, I would have payed much more attention! I knew violence happened in the Colloseum, but I wasn't aware of the extent of it. It was so chilling and real being surrounded by the original stone walls, some of the original staircases, and the archways people would sit in to watch the atrocities that played out. We got the audio guide to try and get some more of the history of each section, which I highly recommend! It was nice because you can choose to go at your own pace, and skip around to hear what you want to...plus we were pretty short on time.

One of the original ancient archways

Some of the original ancient writing in stone, I'm not quite sure what it says, but it was neat to look at!

It was so eerie seeing all the corridors that they used to keep the animals used to fight criminals and such for entertainment. Apparently they somehow lifted them up from underneath.

The Arch of Constantine

Ancient Ruins: The Roman Financial District - Many of the old original buildings from the center of commerce during the ancient
Roman Empire have been preserved.

St. Peter's Basilica - The line was hours long, so we paid for a private tour, we thought it was worth it because we only had a day to see everything.

The Famous Stefaneschi Tryptich by Giotto di Bondone- I took pictures of many other famous paintings, but already had so many pictures to choose from, I just included the one on my blog :). After all my art history classes in college, they were really neat to see.

St. Peter's Basilica

The Basilica was just lined with statues like these, I can't quite tell you which one this is, but I wanted to capture a few at least to get an idea of how
neat they were!

I was shocked at the size of the Basilica, we would have surely been lost without the tour guide, and all the ceilings were as ornate as this one!

The Holy Door of the Papal Basilica of St. Peter - I remember studying this door in Art History and remember the tremendous amount of work and resources it took

The front of the main chapel - St. Peter's Basilica

The ornate details inside were just astounding!

Day 6 of our Italian Excursion: Napoli

Two months later, and I'm finally getting to post day six of our trip to Italy. Whew, life has picked up here on base in Del Rio, and life is by no means boring, but it hasn't left much time for editing pictures. The good news is, I'm almost completely finished with them, and ready to make a book. I'm so excited to see the finished product!!

After our Journey out to the Island of Capri from Sorrento, we packed up our luggage, and got back on the train to Rome, making a pit stop halfway through in Naples. The original plan was to stay a night in Naples, but after visiting, I'm rather glad we hadn't, as the city itself has deteriorated greatly in the recent global economic downturn. Unfortunately, in recent years, this great metropolis of grand cuisine, art, and culture has been overrun by the crime, and the economy only continues to decline. Ornate buildings stand like ancient dinosaurs, and exquisite restaurants and museums are tucked away like hidden treasure amidst streets cluttered with trash and overrun by gang violence and shady dealings in narrow alleyways. 

Though I was rather content not staying the night in this chaotic city, I was so glad we stopped to check it out. Naples has so much culture, it's like a whirlwind of sites, smells, and tastes that hit you in the face and knock you over the second you step foot in it's bustling streets. Every nook and cranny had a new experience tucked into it, and I really do wish I could have at least spent another day visiting some of the famous museums here, such as the museum that contains a bulk of the artifacts found during the excavations at Pompeii. 

Our one mission, and our absolute favorite part of visiting Naples was the pizza. If you want to find the best pizza in Italy... or the best pizza in the world for that matter, you will find it here. We opened up our travel guide, and read about this place known as the "Home of Pizza". Apparently this restaurant is where the Margherita Pizza started. I can't even express to you the explosion of flavors in my mouth. Stephen and I took our first bite (with a knife and fork, as it's too thin and saucy to eat with hands), and we immediately looked at one another with the biggest smiles on our faces! What makes a Napoli Margherita Pizza is the wood fired oven it's cooked in, the dough that remains paper thin, soft and stretchy even after it's cooked, sweet tomatoes crushed into a fresh and juicy sauce, globs of fresh mozzerella, and finally topped with fresh basil leaves. The flavors just light up every sensation in my mouth, and are incomparable to any pizza I've tasted anywhere else I've visited in Itally, let alone anything in the states. Buonissimo!

The pizza we had at the "Home of Pizza" in Napoli. It was so dark inside, it was hard to get a picture!

This little hole in the wall restaurant was very rustic to say the least! It was so busy, I have to say the service wasn't the greatest. Order all the wine you want up front, because chances are they are not coming back! Might as well just order a pitcher, because the wine was cheap, and they served it in cups rather than wine glasses, which we thought to be so interesting. In fact, the wine was cheaper than the water!! However, it didn't taste like cheap wine, and one bite of the pizza and you will definitely forgive the service!! After all, you can only do your best as a waiter when the people are literally causing the place to burst at the seams because of it's popularity!

More pizza just lining the streets in hole-in-the-wall eateries all over.

Handmade Pasta hung from rustic walls on almost every corner

Fresh tomatoes practically lined the streets

I had to somehow capture the busyness of the city, the chaotic manner of crossing the dangerous streets, with fast cars intertwined with lots of people, and a serious lack of organization!