Like the new look? Hmm?

This morning, as I woke up and completed my daily food blog reading ritual, I had a thought: I cook good food (most of the time) and I can take a decent picture (some of the time). Why can’t I have a food blog? But then I got distracted by my hungry belly so I snuck quietly past my homestay mom’s room and down a block to the little café on my street for some coffee. Then I came back and quietly enjoyed a bowl of copas de maize with radiated milk in a bag.

When I returned to the apartment, the lights were still out, not a sound could be heard. What if Celeste wasn’t there? She actually has something to do today? I have the apartment (read: kitchen) to myself? So, I drew back the curtain that encloses her part of the apartment ever so slightly. And she wasn’t there.

Bounding the three steps over to my room I grabbed my computer, placed it on the dining room table, turned on the iTunes, and cranked some Clapton Unplugged.

Glorious.

But what to cook? I decided on Randy’s Rice plus whatever else I could find to put it in. Oh, and guacamole, because I had an avocado. And, ok get ready for it: I FOUND CORN.CHIPS THIS MORNING. They only sell them in health food stores, and they're marketed solely for consumption by celiacs. Go figure! Lucky bastards.

OK. Randy's Rice. For those of you who don’t know Randy, he’s my pop, and he’s a damn good cook. Apparently he’s been making Randy’s Rice for 30 something years, which is good, because it’s delicious.

So here’s Randy:

And here's how my version of Randy’s Rice turned out:

And here’s my “recipe”:

1 cup brown rice

some olive oil

salt, pepper

half a yellow onion, chopped

some red pepper, chopped

some golden raisins

some toasted almonds, chopped

1 can garbanzo beans

unknown spicy red powder substance I got in Chinatown (what?! It said, picante and cost less than a dollar, so I bought it!)

Per pop’s instructions I wrote down on a post-it a few days ago, I sautéed the rice in some OO, salt, and pepper, and then added the chopped onion, pepper, raisins, and almonds. I let that all hang out for a bit in the pot, and then added 1 and ½ cups of hot water. Then it all came to a boil, so I turned down the heat and let it simmer for about 20 minutes.  While it simmered, I pan-seared some garbanzo beans in some more olive oil, an idea I got from a recipe on 101 Cookbooks.  When the rice finished cooking, I added in the beans and mixed in some of the hot pepper powder stuff because I forgot to add it before. It all worked out great and tasted absolutely delicious!

Now for the guac:

I think this is a pretty standard guacamole recipe, though I couldn’t add cilantro because I don’t have enough cash in my wallet at the moment and CLEARLY I’m not going to spend my hard earned monedas on some silly cilantro. And I still had some more red pepper that I didn’t use in the rice, so that went in there too.

1 perfect avocado (all the avocados here are perfect, so this part’s hard for me to mess up), chopped—not mashed

¼ of a yellow onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, chopped up real small

some red pepper, chopped

juice of one small lime

salt

Mix it all up, but don’t let the avocado turn into a big globby mess. No one likes a big globby mess, especially when it’s green.

 

Alright friends, this is my first food blog style post. How’d I do?