Strawberry Barbeque Sauce

It's the StrawBurger!

A few weeks ago I read about a novel concept regarding burgers... or more specifically, barbeque sauce. The sauce recipe included raspberries! I thought that was a pretty cool idea, so I tried a variation for dinner one night.

It was super easy-  I just mixed:

1 TB strawberry jam
1 TB barbeque sauce

and put it on the burger with cheese (I like cheese). Then I ate it paleo-style without the bun; fresh, chewy, juicy burger. It was, to be quite frank... amazing.

If I were totally awesome I would have made my own barbeque sauce from scratch, but I've got to leave room for improvement somewhere. ;)

Pico De Gallo

 Pico de gallo is a loosely defined Mexican condiment. Mine was a loose re-creation of what I had with some of the BF's church friends for dinner one night. This was my recipe:

3 avacados
1 chile pepper
1 pkg. fresh cilantro
2 roma tomatoes
1/2 purple onion
lime juice to taste

Basically what I did was mash the avacados, dice everything else, mix it all together and add lime juice. The pico de gallo I tried was closer to guacamole than salsa, but none of the recipes I found used avacado. So I just made up my own kind of thing. I thought it turned out quite well, though BF said it could have used more cilantro. He's spent a lot of time in Latin America so I suppose he would know. Now me... I think all Mexican food is the same. Tortilla, salsa, beans, chicken, chiles, avacado.... wash, rinse, repeat. Seriously! Go to any good (bad- er, "Americanized") Mexican restaurant and you'll find the same ingredients repackaged as 50 different options. This is encouraging to me, because in order to MASTER Mexican cooking, all I have to do is buy 15 or 20 ingredients and learn 50 different Spanish words for "taco". Or something like that.

Does anyone even know what that white runny "cheese" even is? I'm not sure it's legit...  

Guacamole

Guacamole

I love guacamole. My first ever memories of guacamole happened at the Taco Bell drive thru when I was a small child. After her order, my mom would often say, "no guacamole". I thought guacamole must be bad if she never wanted it. On the other hand, sometimes my dad would exclaim, "Holy guacamole!" (or alternatively, "Holy guacamole Batman!"), which seemed to denote something good.

It wasn't until a year ago that I actually tried the mysterious substance. I'm not sure I would have liked it as a child, but my refined adult palate thinks it is quite awesome. Plus it's so much fun to say. Especially if you shorten it to 'guac'. It just has that cool-cat feel... like saying 'Stang or 'Vette or Strat.

I didn't follow my cookbook recipe for two reasons- 1) there was no way I was going to buy 10 avacados. 2) I was too lazy to weigh out all the ingredients. It's not like the whole recipe is going to flop if I add too many tomatoes. However, I did (kind of) follow the ingredient list, which included avacados, lime juice, salt, pepper, coriander, tomatoes, and hot sauce. I added hot pepper flakes thanks to my lack of jalepenos, but still don't think I got it hot enough. That's what I love about guacamole- the cool, creamy avacado, contrasted with heat. So addicting.

Basically I mashed up the avacado, and then added the other stuff until I thought it tasted right. Since I've had guacamole like four times in my entire life, I know how it's supposed to taste. LOL. I just stopped putting stuff in when it tasted good.

Pesto

I love pesto! Somebody at work gave me some to try, and I fell in love. I made some the other day for a Christmas party, and boy! was it good.

Pesto is basically a puree of fresh basil, olive oil, parsley, pine nuts, Parmesan cheese, fresh garlic, and salt. Basically the best thing ever. I would post a recipe, but I made it for a Christmas party. Which means I had about 15 minutes to work with, not enough basil (because fresh basil in the winter isn't cheap, but I am), and at the last minute found out that the family food processor had been thrown out because of a malfunction. Perfect.

Amidst the frantic rushing around, I found a great recipe... with all measurements in ounces. Great! Let's get out our scale and meticulously measure pine nuts. Like that was going to happen. So I ended up throwing all my basil, a handful of parsley, a few garlic cloves, and the olive oil in the blender. I found some kosher salt and threw that in there too, along with some 'real' Parmesan cheese (not out of the green can). It didn't work great, but still got the job done and I ended up with a great-tasting pesto.

P.S. I got the cool black ceramic plate at the Dollar General for $1. I think it makes my food look 100% better and a whole lot more expensive. What I really want for my photos is a square plate. That would make my food five-star, for sure.