Comida mexicana at the campsite - 86 & 85

Last week we went camping for 3 nights. I decided to challenge myself to cooking a Mexican meal over a campfire. Now, I don't mean to say that I was going to drag my whole kitchen along with me and whip up some semi-complicated meal. All I actually did was rummage through the refrigerator and freezer, gather up most of our leftovers and easy things to pull together, and pack them in a cooler.

We have a rule about cooking when we camp: meals have to be cooked in one skillet, in a foil pouch, or a combination of the two. We can pull things like raw vegetables, salads, fruit, etc, out of the cooler to accompany a meal, but we do not spend time with knives, cutting boards, and other kitchen tools "creating" meals at the campground.

Our first night there, we had brought along some Trader Joe's Bean and Cheese Taquitos. Before leaving home Javier had made some guacamole and stored it in the cooler with the other cold foods. Dinner was so simple - muy sencilla. All we had to do was heat the taquitos in a foil pouch over the campfire, and then serve them on paper plates with a side of guacamole. Yum!

Our second night we reheated some steaks that we'd cooked only to medium rare along with some frijoles pintos, chile verde de hongos (see the last post), papas, y un chile rojo - or as it's often called in Spain and Argentina - un morrón. This was a big one, so we were able to share it between the two of us. And, even though we'd brought some whole wheat tortillas along with us, we didn't need them as the dinner was filling enough without them, and we were already using our one skillet / one foil pouch limit.

On our last day of camping, we used the flour tortillas and finished up the beans, chile verde and a few potatoes in some breakfast burritos. It was all good!

Chile verde con hongos (champiñones) - 87

We're having company over for dinner tonight who are vegetarians. There are a number of traditional Mexican dishes we could have fixed - cheese enchiladas, quesadillas, bean burritos, bean and cheese tostadas, etc etc etc - but we wanted to try something new with the Baby Portobello mushrooms we had in the refrigerator. I think Javier came up with a winner...

As I've written about before, he usually makes chile verde with pork. One time he tried it with chicken breast, and it just wasn't that great. So this time he's cautiously optimistic. He says he's going to treat the cut-up mushrooms as if they were cubed pork, and is going to make the recipe exactly as he makes the meat version.

I hope the cut-up mushrooms show up in the pictures, because they are definitely there. It tastes great, and we plan to serve it to our friends over brown rice and/or pinto beans. We also have some guacamole and warm corn and whole wheat tortillas to serve with the meal. They're bringing the dessert.

What's not to love about this meal ???

Eating Out in Bend - 88

The next day - after the tuna salad day - was equally as hot, so Javier and I decided to go out for some Mexican food and tell about our experience.

I'm not sure what the legalities are when mentioning the names of places where we eat, so let's just say that we ate at one of the least pretentious but most popular Mexican food places here in town. They only serve lunch, and they only serve lunch Mondays through Fridays.

We decided to order some pretty routine items because 1) we have already created some of them for our blog, and 2) we wanted to see how routine is handled at a popular eatery. Our three items, which we shared were a chicken enchilada, a taco de carnitas, and a green chile burrito.

Our experience started out with me cutting off a bite of the chicken enchilada and burning the roof of my mouth on over-heated sauce and melted cheese. This has never happened to me before! So, I labeled the enchilada "off limits" for a few moments while I turned to the taco de carnitas, which is roasted pork served in a warm corn tortilla with pico de gallo salsa. For amount of meat served in the taco, it deserves a 10, but for flavor and the practicality of eating so much meat on a taco (the corn tortilla ripped open), it deserves a 7.

Javier started in on the burrito de chile verde and said that one side of the burrito was cool but the other half was warm. (Big difference from the enchilada I tried a few moments earlier). He said it was delicious, although not very picante, and deserved an 8.

When we were finally able to eat the enchilada, we discovered that it was all sauce and very little enchilada, especially in the chicken department. I would not order another one, and feel it deserved a 5.

Will we eat there again? Of course. We go once every year, and some meals are better than others. And, you can't be the prices which are excellent.

Ensalada de atún - 89

A few days ago we had a tremendous hot spell here in Central Oregon, and there was NO WAY I was going to cook Mexican food.

We had recently purchased serrano peppers, tomatillos, tortillas de maíz, salsas, frijoles, aguacates, cebollas, cilantro, and several kinds of meat to get our cooking project going again, but cooking with any of these ingredients was not at the top of my list of "things to do" during record high temperatures.

As lunchtime came closer, I decided to take things out of the refrigerator - cold things - and combine them in a cold, Mexican-style tuna salad. The results were amazing!

I grew up in a household where "tuna salad" meant tuna mixed with Miracle Whip and sweet pickle relish - period. For my salad the only ingredient out of all of the above would be the tuna, and a white albacore tuna packed in water. After draining it and tossing it into a glass bowl, I diced tomatoes, onions, peppers, avocado, and cilantro on top. I squeezed a lime onto these ingredients, and had I mixed them at this point, I would have made a tuna ceviche. But I kept going and added 1 TB of mayonnaise and 2 TB of plain nonfat yogurt, and then some salt and pepper. Once it was mixed, I served it on lettuce leaves with some blue corn tortilla chips on the side. The picture might look like tuna and mayonnaise, but it was so much more!

Mexican Menu back at work!

I've been gone for a while. Let me explain.

I teach at a community college here in Oregon. Every Spring as the academic school year comes to an end, I find myself buried in work. It is all I can do to drag myself into my classes each day and do a good job of teaching. There are meetings, tons of paperwork to complete, grades to record, and letters of recommendation to write.

This year I had the added responsibility of planning the college's first community trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina. I had help with the planning, but was also going to accompany the first group of 11 students to the program we'd come up with that included Spanish classes and homestays. So, the end of this school year was a bit more chaotic than others. Mexican Menu 240 ground to a halt in late May while I put all of my efforts into tamping down the end of the school year and revving up the study abroad program.

Silly me...I thought that once I was in Argentina I'd be able to find Mexican-like ingredients and would be able to fix some interesting dishes for the natives. I thought I'd be able to write an interesting addition to my blog about cooking Mexican while in Argentina, a country that generally does not like spicy food. And, it's a country where tortillas are almost impossible to find.

Well, I made mole and rice for some friends of mine out in the suburbs (Adrogué) of Buenos Aires. It was a challenge with only one kind of dried peppers and highly sophisticated kitchen equipment that I didn't know how to use. (My friend, Teresita, is a professional cook) It was also the day of an important soccer match during the World Cup, so everyone had Maradona on their minds rather than Mexican food.

The mole turned out well, and I was able to serve it with a little guacamole beforehand. My very gracious hosts (and now friends), Teresita and Raul, raved about how much they love spicy food, and both ate generous portions.

The next and final attempt I made at cooking Mexican was fixing guacamole over and over for my friend, Alicia, in Buenos Aires. We have a routine: she buys a bag of Doritos and some wine for both of us, and I make the guacamole. We eat the whole bag (and it's really not that big in Argentina) of Doritos and the guacamole and call it our dinner. Argentines eat dinner very late in the evening (between 9-10:30) so the bowl of guacamole and the tortilla chips never seem like they're going to be enough for Alicia and me when we finally get around to eating it after several glasses of wine. It's been a fun routine of ours for the past two years.

There is nothing else that I could remotely stretch into something called Mexican that I ate while in Argentina. I ate the usual diet of meat, chicken, fish, pasta and pizza over and over. I had occasional salads, some grilled vegetables, and 2-4 Asian meals while I was there, but Mexican is not to be found, or at least not easily. Sad because I think they might like some of the varied dishes from Mexico if they had a chance to try them.

So, now we're home and I'm ready to resume the cooking, photographing, and writing about Mexican food. Summer presents some interesting challenges as many well-known and popular Mexican dishes are cooked. Others, like ceviche and certain salads, have already been featured. It looks like we'll be doing other salads, some grilled meats, and simple taco and/or tostada dishes until the temperatures drop here in Oregon.

I look forward to doing the final 90 recipes to complete the 240 that I originally proposed, although the whole plan has been altered. My original intent was to eat Mexican food 6 nights a week for a period of approximately 9 months and see if it was possible to live on foods that are generally spicy, feature tortillas, and are usually accompanied by rice, beans and / or bread (bolillos). By the way, last year I never did get sick of eating Mexican night after night, and rather enjoyed some of the doors that were opening as we tried new things, bought new cookbooks, and found new recipes from family and friends. So, here we go again!

The picture at the top is of me, Javier and Alicia in her living room.