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Finca Cielo Azul

Finca Cielo Azul

Monthly Archives: October 2018

Dinner!

31 Wednesday Oct 2018

Posted by Alex in cooking, Dinner, food, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

books, chef, chicken, cookbook, cooking, cooking recipes, costco, dinner, food, harissa, pasta, recipes, salad

I’ve never been a lover of cooking, I’ll start there.  My grandma cooked some great meals when I was little, but I never helped enough in the kitchen to actually learn what she was doing.  My mom is a cook of specialty dishes: she makes amazing tamales, potato salad for EVERY family function (the family is not usually happy if there’s no Achi potato salad at any given event, ha!), and amazing traditional Guatemalan dishes, like pepian.  But being just the two of us when I was little, I also wasn’t in the kitchen much for the day to day cooking.

When Jeff and I first moved in together to our little apartment in Irvine, I’d venture to say he was the main cook.  Or he’d make the main dish and I’d make the sides.

I’m not exactly sure when the shift happened, but I’d say it was after we had Jake – when going out to dinner became less and less of an option, haha.  And having to buckle down on finances.  When we moved into our Lake Forest apartment, we’d been living with Jeff’s parents for a couple years, and I got to observe my mother-in-law cooking some really great meals – when I wasn’t busy sleeping on the couch…

I think all of those things combined forced me to start cooking more at home.  I’m by no means a natural chef…I’m a cook-by-the-recipe “chef” (not sure you can call someone that follows a recipe a chef…but I’ll give myself that title for now).  I think I’m just recently getting comfortable enough to improvise here and there – but only in small ways.  Jeff and I joke around about me messing with recipes – my experiments rarely work for the best, haha.  But I’ve come up with some good recipes for veggies and such small plates.

Anywho, a little over a year ago I was at Costco waiting on a cake order, and I gravitated to the book section to kill some time (everyone gravitates to the book section, right?!), and found this cook book:

I’ll admit, I’ve become quite a skeptic of cook books because I end up buying them and then realizing I don’t like any of the recipes in them (we’re not adventurous eaters…).  [How am I a recipe chef without cookbooks?  Most of my tried and true recipes come from allrecipes.com, but I digress again.]  But I kept skimming this one and finding several recipes that caught my eye, and after a good five-minute hesitation I decided to buy it.

I’m not exaggerating: this book has changed our life, haha.  The harissa chicken recipe is seriously our favorite dinner, and it’s my go-to when I want to impress family/friends.  It’s also easy to double and make for larger crowds.  A couple things I’ve learned from making it several times:

  • I use skinless chicken thighs rather than skin on
  • I add lemon rind to the yogurt sauce (I did it by accident the first time, as the lemon rind is also used for something else, but now we love it)
  • I cut the harissa in half since it can be pretty spicy.  Trader Joe’s used to carry an amazing harissa sauce but has discontinued it (we were heartbroken).  We’ve found a different version at a local Persian store – it’s not the same but it will do.
  • Harissa sauce spoils quickly, so it was a bummer to buy a jar and have it mold in my refrigerator before I had a chance to make it again.  A coworker who I shared the recipe with came up with a brilliant idea that has worked great for me: freeze a couple tablespoons in snack-size ziplock bags and freeze!  I can take it out just before using and unfreeze pretty quickly.

I also love the pizza chicken recipe.  This one I’ve paired up with angel hair spaghetti and it goes great.  I also freeze extra sauce and use it for a second spaghetti night – it’s a perfect spaghetti sauce!

The other recipe I make regularly is the chicken salad – with crispy skin!  It’s such a light and refreshing meal, but I do cut the sauce out (I made it the first time and realized it’s just not our taste).

What are your favorite recipes or cook books?

Life Updates

15 Monday Oct 2018

Posted by Alex in family, updates

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Tags

family, updates, vacations

Well, I know you’ve all been on the edge of your seats waiting for a life update from us.  WAIT NO LONGER! Ha!

Between the boys getting older and being more and more independent, and me stepping down from a couple volunteer positions, I see more and more pockets of time opening up for me to get back to some of the things I really enjoyed doing in the past.  Blogging being one of them.  I do feel a certain lack of inspiration on WHAT to write about – maybe because it’s been so long since I blogged regularly, or maybe because the topics that do come to mind are ones that I should be sharing with a therapist instead of the whole world – HA!

So, I thought I would just start with a little recap of our year so far.  As I predicted, 2018 has been good.  Nay, GREAT.  We rented a cabin in Arrowhead in January with my cousins, and had a wonderful family weekend.  We even got some surprise snow – it was the perfect amount too: enough for a snowball fight and a mini-snowman, not enough to trap us in or hinder us in any way.  Jake still talks about that cabin and the snow, and his nina.

arrowhead group picture

We haven’t made a lot of progress on our family goals, but we did go apple picking, and damn have we worked on some home projects.  We FINALLY finished painting most of the interior of our house, which had been on a hiatus for a good 1.5+ years.  It felt SO GOOD to finally get that done, and I think it’s motivated us to work on other projects around the house.  Every little section of our house that we add an element to, I feel like it instantly makes that section of our house our home.  We’ve added frames to our hallway, a border to our planter box, many many indoor plants, a couple new pieces of furniture to our little living area, homework baskets and backpack hooks, and just this weekend we added a new plant to our bedroom.

 

 

bedroom plant 2
homework corner
homework corner 2
planter box
white table

It’s also been a pretty big year on getting to know my dad and his family a little more.  My dad flew me out to Arizona in May so I could be at my sister’s graduation party, and I got to meet the extended family during that party.  All the aunts and uncles and cousins.  I also went without the kids, so it was nice to have some “alone” time with everyone.

sisters

I went shopping with my three sisters and I just kept thinking of how many times my mom has mentioned going shopping with her sisters.  I’m usually a solo-shopper, and I don’t go shopping just to shop.  I need something, I go out and buy it.  But I have to say, it was nice.  It was nice to just walk around with the three of them, look and compare, and buy shit you don’t need (although in this case, the two pairs of shorts I bought got me through the Summer, and the dinosaur jammies I got the boys are their favorite ones – because the dinosaurs on their knees end up biting daddy every time he puts them to sleep in those jammies).  It made me a little jealous of how often my sisters get to do those things together, of how often my mom has had those moments with her sisters, and of how often my cousins have those moments with their siblings.  Looks like I’m blogging anyway instead of talking to a therapist, ha!

For mothers day we finally made it to Carlsbad to see the flower fields.  I’ve been wanting to go for a while now, and Mother’s Day was the perfect reason to make it happen!  We went with both of our mom’s and papa, and had a great day.

 

 

carlsbad flowers
carlsbad flowers 2

This summer we also spent a long weekend with my dad and his family at a lake house in Show Low.  Jake and Josh got to go fishing for the first time – and Jake was a pro!  It was also great to not have to DO anything – just hang out!

_JCA5919

The last couple of weeks I’ve been waking up extra early and going on walks around the neighborhood.  I gained most of my pregnancy wait after Josh stopped nursing, and I’m finally feeling like I really need to do something about it.  Work also has a health incentive all year and if you walk 50,000 steps a week you get entered into a raffle for one of the grand prizes – so now I have a defined goal and I’m shooting for it this week!

After all that…I thought I would start doing what all bloggers seem to do: just share links of stuff that I want, haha.

  • I’m ready to jump on the booties bandwagon with these beauties.
  • I finally found the style of handbag I like, and bought one at Target that is already falling apart.  This one would be just a liiiiiiiiiittle step up.
  • I’ve had this Obama photo book on my Amazon list for a while.  Not sure why I never pull the trigger and just get it!
  • Reese Witherspoon also recently came out with a book/cookbook.  I’m a sucker for cookbooks and all things southern.  I’m afraid that if I buy and read this book though, I’ll just be depressed that Reese isn’t my BFF.  That’s kind of how I felt after getting The Magnolia Table – why doesn’t Joanna love me?!?

Does anyone have a number for a good therapist?  :)

 

All the great photos are thanks to Jeff Armstrong.  The non-great ones…are most likely thanks to me.

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