A New World

Thank you to everyone who sent thoughts and prayers to my family this past week. It's been a strange few days. I don't think anything has really sunk in yet. The funeral was today and the whole thing was surreal. As my husband keeps saying, "It's a new world out there." We're taking it one day at a time.

Despite the lack of posts, I've still been cooking here and there over the past week. I'm emotionally drained from today so I'm just going to give a brief description of everything in one long post.

I made Rachael Ray's Macaroni and Cheese with Chicken and Broccoli before, but I used a different kind of pasta. This dish works much better with cavatappi:


I threw this dish together using whatever I had on hand - grape tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, garlic, onions and Pecorino cheese. Unfortunately I also decided to use a package of pasta we'd gotten as a gift for Christmas and it was awful. The flavors were good but when the pasta disintegrates as you're trying to eat it, the dish fails to impress.


During the week Fat Rabbit returned and was close enough to the house for me to get a good picture of him.


SP and I had lunch together on Friday and he ordered a sandwich with grilled chicken, chorizo, tostones, guacamole and tomato. He could only eat half so I had the other half for dinner that night.


On Saturday we had our neighbors over for Cinco de Mayo and I made salsa:


... guacamole ...


... and beef enchiladas. The enchiladas were much better then the last version I made where the tortillas disintegrated in the sauce. These had a nice kick to them from the chipotle and were very flavorful.


I doctored mine up with some hot sauce, sour cream, salsa and guacamole.


My store only sells corn tortillas in bags of 36 so I had quite a few leftover. On Sunday I decided to make huevos rancheros since I had all the ingredients on hand. I fried the corn tortillas in a little oil and then fried two eggs for each of us, sunnyside up so the yolks stayed pretty. Two tortillas per plate topped with some leftover salsa, sour cream, a little Monterey Jack cheese and the two fried eggs sprinkled with cilantro.


And for dinner I made Mexican Chicken Tortilla Soup from Ina's new cookbook. It was incredibly spicy because of the 4 jalapenos I used, but it had excellent flavor. And since the chicken was roasted in the oven it was perfectly moist and tender.