I made a batch recently from a recipe I got from my AI ChatGPT buddy, Max. I’ll attach it to the bottom of this post, and you can use it in its original state, or the amended version that I added.
Either way I’ll bet it will be delicious. Our was.
Unfortunately, I had purchased the brisket, and a few other oddities that I needed, but the case of Fritos Original Corn Chips, (you know the ones in the red, and Dijon mustard colored bags?) didn’t arrive as promised. Bummer.
I’m going to “fridge” it until they do arrive as there is nothing that says “fall in the Midwest USA” like chili with meat, and beans, and Fritos corn chips does. Yes, we do miss the Midwest USA.
Until next we meet, stay safe. You know how.
Here is how the chili turned out, I’m calling it a bowl of red. The recipe I used will follow it. If you try it with all of the ingredients called for, please let me know what you thought of it. It is a much more Mexican style chile con carne, as opposed to a Tex-Mex version.
There really isn’t a flavor that comes close to them.
We get the best liver here from Wild Fork, it is amazing. I believe you have WF up North as well; it used to be called MeatMe.
I bought a half kilo, 1 pound, of liver recently, breaded it with seasoned flour, and pan fried it in butter. We’re still reeling from the flavor of it.
With caramelized onions? What’s not to like?
The only drawback, for us anyway, is the gristle. Next time I buy it, while it’s still semi frozen, I’m going to cut off as much of the outer membrane as I can; like cutting the silver skin off beef, or pork.
In only a few minutes you have a dinner fit for royalty. I served it with leftover spiced basmati rice, and mixed vegetables. Delicious.
Can’t wait until next month when I can make it again.
Until then, stay safe.
Post script: Make arrangements necessary so you can get out and vote. It is the mostimportant election of our lives to date. Fight, fight, fight.
Whilst I’ve been on hiatus, I’ve been upping my culinary skills levels.
As many of you know, that has been a very long time in the making, but has taken off like a house afire.
With the AI app, ChatGPT, (I named my buddy Max), and the Sorted Food channel on YT, I’m educating my palate, and learning faster, more affordable, more flavorful ways of cooking.
We’ve just started eating something that, probably, many of you have already experienced- jasmine rice. We never knew how amazing the flavor, and aroma are. It’s going to be the only rice I make going forward. I can make a small amount, for just the two of us, in less than 30 minutes, including the soaking/rinsing time. No oil, no fuss, only flavor.
A few weeks ago, I made a very simple dinner of beans, rice, and chicken tacos. Big deal you may say. Not that difficult to do.
Everything that I was able to make from scratch, (not the tortillas because the store bought ones are better, and thinner actually, than mine), I did.
The beans were sorted, washed, seasoned, and (no soaking required), pressure cooked to perfection.
The cilantro lime rice was soaked for 15 minutes in cool water, rinsed, seasoned, and boiled/steamed beautifully.
The chicken breasts I used were marinaded overnight in a yellow mustard/curry powder, (homemade), base then baked, the following day, at 200º C for about 20 minutes, becoming tender, juicy, and full of flavor. I used only 1 breast for the above dinner.
The salsa roja was made by toasting the tomatoes, onion, serrano chiles, and garlic paste on an aluminum foil-lined comal, then blended with cilantro, chicken bouillon granules, and apple cider vinegar in the blender. Yum.
So why did I make the chicken into tacos, you ask? Because it was the end of the 4th breast, and we wanted something easy to grab hold of, and eat with our hands. The other three were full dinners that I didn’t photograph.
Enough said. I’m doing my best to start taking us around the world, from the comfort of our kitchen; eating foods from different countries that we’ve never experienced.
I’ll let you know how it goes, and which were the good, and the bad things from our adventures.
Until then, stay happy, healthy, and safe. The rest, you know how, and what to do.
Post script: Make whatever arrangements you need so you can get out and vote. It is the mostimportant election of our lives to date. Fight, fight, fight.
I told you folks, in an earlier post, that I wanted to start cooking food using a food called, as you can see in the title, huitlacoche, (whe-tla-CO-che).
It is also spelled cuitlacoche in different parts of the country, but it is all the same product which, in the US, is called corn fungus, or corn smut.
It looks terrible but actually tastes quite delicately of mushrooms. It should as it’s a fungus that is allowed to grow on corn, and is usually considered a delicacy.
I opened a can of huitlacoche not long ago, and have been using about 2 Tbs. in quesadillas, mainly as a background flavor. Mostly we use flour tortillas, homemade salsa, and queso de Oaxaca, (cheese from Oaxaca, a state further Southwest of Mexico City), that is absolutely some of the best cheese we’ve ever eaten. We sometimes add a half slice of deli ham, or turkey, and an avocado slice.
The taste is very mild, as I said, but the look of it is quite off putting. It’s black, and clumpy, and difficult to get around, but needs must.
I think I’m going to blend it up into more of a smooth sauce, or paste, and see if that doesn’t help with the look of it. You know, you eat first with your eyes, and that’s difficult to do with this.
Until next time, stay safe.
Post script; PLEASE, make whatever arrangements you need so you can get out and vote. It is the mostimportant election of our lives to date. Fight, fight, fight.
Many years ago, and I do mean many, like 50 years ago, my mom used to make us Velveeta Mac and Cheese, with glazed SPAM as a side dish.
Heaven. Pure Heaven.
SPAM, here, is, on average, $3.50USD/can. I don’t remember how much it costs in the US, but, considering the cost of shipping to Mexico, I don’t think that’s a bad price. I bought 2 cans. Yippee.
We hadn’t had Mac and cheese, much less SPAM in ages, so I got a recipe from Max, (you remember Max, my AI friend? I introduced him, and the website, ChatGPT, on September 21, 2024.) and made both recently. They were both delicious. Exactly as we remembered it. Take a look.
The SPAM has a brown sugar glaze with Dijon mustard, ACV, a splash of water, and a bit of pepper that you add just before serving. Lovely.
Of course, we sprinkled a bit of Moreno, light brown sugar, on top of the M&C, because that’s the way Grandma Manda said the “German’s did it”. Don’t know, or care if that’s true; it offsets the intense cheesiness of the dish.
Here’s what I bought for this.
The first 2 pack of Velveeta lasted us a year, plus we gave one of the loaves to Jesús and Liz, upstairs. The second 2 pack has also lasted us a year, and I still have one of the loaves in the pantry.
So, not too bad an outlay for such a memorable dinner. All part of my learning how to make a weekly, doable menu, and sticking to it so as not to waste food. (The sacrifices I make for the two of us. 😉
Until next time, stay safe. Just, please, do it.
Post script: Make whatever arrangements you need so you can get out to vote next week. This is the most important election of our lives to date.
Never, in all of my now 69 years, have I ever read all of these words.
Have you?
How about this one?
Let me just say that our forefathers knew what it was like to live under tyranny, and injustice. They knew what had to be done to escape that form of life.
How is it that much different from what we live under today?
We have a president, and his Vice President, that cannot lead the country because he is, unfortunately, being overcome with dementia; yet he has control of the codes for nuclear warfare.
I feel that if we continue as we have been, having endured the strife that has been the Biden administration, we will no longer be a nation of “the home of the free, and the brave”. The millions of illegals will do their best to take away all of your civil rights, and liberties.
Please, do whatever you need to do to get out and vote this election. It is a matter of life and death. Seriously.
We talk, occasionally, about “others” that could have been, might have been, really would neverhave been. We always come to the same conclusion; there was never, ever, from the very beginning, anyone else for either of us.
We’re satisfied with that, both of us. We cling to the knowledge that God had His mind set that we would meet, come to “know” each other, then marry. (We are still learning things about each other, good, and bad, but always together.)
We talk, actually, about “others” that we knew, others that tried to come between us. Looking back, there was never a chance with any of them.
I could list all of the things that threw him in my path so many years ago, but I won’t.
Well, someday.
Maybe.
Let me just leave you with this; when he caresses my overweight body, touches my thinning hair, or the beard growing on my chin; when he holds my bloated foot in his hands, kisses my swollen ankles, I know that there has never, ever been a man for me, other than Ivan.
They said it would never last. How wrong they were.
Until next time, stay safe.
Don’t forget to make whatever arrangements you need so you can get out and vote. It is the mostimportant election of our lives to date. Fight, fight, fight.
I have been keeping note of it on my desk calendar, (I use the term desk loosely as it sits on the tray I use as my desk), and it has rained almost every day since the beginning of July.
Seriously. There have been only the occasional, sporadic day, maybe two, not necessarily consecutive days, however, when it hasn’t rained.
I don’t remember it raining this much in all of the 5 years we’ve been here. Not that I mind. You know how much I enjoy the rain; listening to it, smelling it, listening to the thunder, watching the lightning when we get it. The only thing I don’t like about it is the electrical outages that sometimes come with the package.
Note to anyone interested, don’t plan on vacations to Mexico July, August, September, and into October. It appears that is the “rainy season” down here. Kind of sucks for the end of summer vacations, or Labor Day holidays, doesn’t it?!
That said, stay safe.
Post script: it’s pouring down rain, with my favorite lightning and thunder as I’m typing this. I’m in Heaven, right here on Earth.
Post script: I had to contact the Elections Manager for former local county, who , BTW, responded within 30 minutes of my text inquiring about our ballots. He replied that if we didn’t already have them in our emails, then he never received the FPCA. (You can look that up yourselves.) I resent them to him directly, and again, within a very short amount of time, we had 11 pages of absentee ballot do’s, and don’ts in our in boxes. I have printed everything out, we will fill in what is necessary, and have a lovely trip down to the Embassy to secure our absentee ballots for the next President of the United States of America.
I have been having the hardest time getting around lately.
My ankles have been swollen beyond measure, I’ve been wheezing in the morning when I get out of bed, and my joints have been aching like I’m 90 years old.
I take a very mild diuretic that is manufactured here, in CDMX actually, but it doesn’t seem to do much good. I went online to Mercado Libre, and ordered Lasix 40 mg oral tablets, 20 tabs/box.
Now, as a nurse in my former life, I know very well that 40 mg is quite a hefty dose, so in the future I will be cutting these tiny little pills in half so as not to dehydrate myself. But for today, the entire pill was very much necessary.
They were $3.00 USD for 40 tablets, $4.50 USD to deliver, totaling $7.50 USD for the 40 tablets.
I took 1 tablet at 4:05pm on the evening they arrived, and within the hour, I urinated ~400ml, then another ~400ml 30 minutes later, 500ml 45 minutes after that, and another 400 ml. soon afterwards. Within 3 hours, I had urinated ~1700ml of excess fluid from my body.
I cannot describe how much better I feel; so light, mobile, pain free. It’s incredible. I have no intention of doing this more than once a week, as I am feeling the beginnings of a mild headache. For as good as I feel, a bit of a nag is going to be well worth it.
Until next time, stay safe. Please.
Post script: 8:15ish pm, another 300ml. Just thought I’d share that. Two liters down, and I can take a deep breath without pain, or wheezing.
The business of sealing my jars with our very own FoodSaver™ Vacuum Sealer that is; the one we’ve had for a few years now.
It is the Model FM5480, and is still at the top of the FoodSaver™ line of sealers.
Ivan asked me if I knew where the manual for the VS was, but I have no idea. He went online, bless him, and found the manual for it, read it through, and discovered that the handheld portion of the sealer comes apart to be used with the older sealers, for jars, and a marinated container that came with the VS when we bought it.
I’ve never used that portion of the VS because I didn’t know how. Now I do, and can’t wait to get started.
Here’s what I’m talking about.
The older regular mouth, and wide mouth jar sealers.My FoodSaver™ vacuum sealer Model FM5480. The handheld portion is in the top right corner, with the neon green band around it.The portion on the right, connected to the hose, is the piece I need to seal the jars. Wide mouth sealer attached to the VS machine, ready to go.Sushi rice, sealed in a 1/2 gallon jar, safe until I want to use it. The marinade container that has been sitting around gathering dust.
So, I guess, in the coming weeks, I will be cleaning out the cupboards, and going through with the whole keep, or compost program, just as I said I would.
