Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone!  In honor of this fun, yet often American abused holiday I thought I'd stay away from the bars and instead share a collection of some of my past favorite Mexican recipe posts. If you've been following SavoryGirl at all you likely know by now that I think I may have been Mexican in my past life.  It's hard to go two weeks without one of my weekly dinner menus including something Mexican inspired and it's almost guaranteed that I am making some version of Huevos Rancheros for breakfast on the weekends.  So let's take a spin through SavoryGirl's Mexican past creations...

First up is my all-time most popular post...Eva Longoria's Chicken Tortilla Soup.  It's a little hard for me to swallow that a once in a blue moon recipe that I ripped out of a People Magazine while traveling has been the most popular post on my blog for the past 2  years, but I can indeed stand behind the recipe.  This soup is better than most that I have in great Mexican restaurants.

I love camping...partially because it is so amazing to completely disconnect, be dirty and just not care for days at a time. But I also love it because I get to leisurely cook outside with the sun streaming down over me and a margarita in my hand. In my opinion, everything cooked over a campfire just tastes better so that's the only way we cook dinner when we camp.  I do allow a little camp stove for breakfast sometimes, but usually I'm a stickler about campfire cooking.

Since we're heading up to Lake Tahoe to go camping for Labor Day weekend I thought I'd share the SavoryGirl approach to camping. If I do say so myself, we eat pretty darn well!  We keep it relatively simple so clean-up isn't too intense but we've certainly moved beyond the typical burgers & hot dogs every night that most people associate with camping.

First things first, you have to go camping prepared if you want to eat well.  What you see above is my camping spice rack.  My spices at home are in these little magnetic tins hanging on a wall in my kitchen so when we go camping I stack them up and bring them along. Luckily (or unluckily) we live in bear country so pretty much everywhere we go camping has a nice big metal bear locker that works just fabulously to stick my spices to.  Seasoning at your fingertips!

We also bring along our good knives, cutting boards, can opener, wine key, aluminum foil, pot holders, tongs, camping pots/pans/plates/cups etc... so that we essentially have a fully stocked kitchen with us.  Essential if you want to cook well over the fire...so what exactly are we cooking?

How I love visiting markets in foreign countries!  It's like a glimpse into the way the locals shop, eat, cook and really helps you understand their culture's perceptions around food.  Do they use the whole animal or mostly prime cuts?  Do the vendors want you to sample and try things you've never seen or are they more reserved and focused primarily on the business aspect of their stall? Are there fully prepared foods to eat or is it just an ingredient marketplace?  You can learn and understand so much from one quick stroll!

The San Pedro Market in Cusco, Peru is no different...it's like you can feel the pulse of the city as you explore row after row of fresh produce, just squeezed juices, handmade scarves and wares, freshly cut meats, handcrafted cheeses and breads and brimming bowls of just made Peruvian soups. If it wasn't for Christian I would spend a full day at this place, but at the very least let's take a quick tour:

The produce at the San Pedro Market is incredible!  Each row you walk down smells of another sweet, intoxicating smell so finally we gave in and tried Sweet Passion Fruit for the first time, which is shown above.  We immediately fell in love with this new fruit...you can read more in my post all about the sweet passion fruit.

Beyond produce there is an amazing array of freshly baked breads, artisan cheeses and of course the staples of the Peruvian diet; corn, potatoes and coca leaves!  Coca leaves have a similar effect as caffeine but more mild. You can chew them directly (kind of like chewing tobacco) or have them as tea, candies...the options are pretty limitless.  I'm not 100% sure that they actually helped our altitude sickness but if nothing else they certainly had a nice placebo effect on us!

When we first moved to the Marina almost two years ago we were pretty happy with our decision after 3+ years of noise & shenanigans in the TrendyLoin, TenderNob or whatever you wanted to call our old ‘hood. However, there were two things we really missed...diversity (of both cuisines and people) and the fabulous Heart of the City Farmer’s Market in the Civic Center that we used to walk to each Sunday.

  For our first 6 months in the Marina we were shocked to find that there was no Farmer’s Market at all within walking distance (with all of us yuppies? what gives?!) but then last summer the Fort Mason Farmer’s Market opened up on Sundays from 9:30-1:30 for the summer only. Lucky for us it was such a success that they decided to keep it open year round and it is still going strong 1 year later.

Christian and I have been making our own pasta for about 2 years now...but the start of that coincided with the purchase of our Kitchen Aid pasta attachment, so needless to say we’ve stuck pretty closely to the lasagna noodles, spaghetti and fettucini varieties.  Which is great...I don’t know many people who can say that they haven't bought dried pasta in two years!  But we LOVE Italian food, so have been ready to branch out for a while...enter the opportunity to learn how to make hand-cut Italian noodles with a former pasta maker of Quince, Andrew Pimlott!

This was our first year attending TAPAS Grand Wine Tasting (TAPAS = Tempranillo Advocates, Producers & Amigos Society) and I have to say, we found it to be quite a fun time!  So what exactly was this event?  Details below:

 
• WHAT: It is billed as the most extensive annual tasting of domestically produced Spanish & Portugese varietal wines in North America.  While Tempranillo was certainly the star, there were plenty of other wines to taste such as Albariño, Verdelho, Graciano and more.

If you haven’t been to Omnivore Books it’s a must for any foodie...particularly if you like to cook.  It’s a small bookstore housed in an old butcher shop (the back room is actually the “walk-in freezer”) and all of their books are food-related with a heavy emphasis on cookbooks.  Since it’s a small shop they don’t always have tons of copies on hand but they’ll happily order it for you if needed and they have lots of rare, older cookbooks as well, like a traditional Bahamian cookbook from 1975.  Fun.

Omnivore Books also has a great monthly events calendar with food authors coming in for talks and book signings...this is how I was able to hear David Downie of Terroir Guides speak about food travel writing this past Wednesday.

 

Ah, Barrel Tasting Weekend...nothing quite marks the start of Spring in the Bay Area as much as this event to me.  It’s always so festive and fun and it’s a nice easy way to explore new wineries and get a sneak peak to some truly delicious wines.  It’s also a fantastic wine education, because, you see it’s a bit of an art to taste a yet unfinished wine from the barrel and be able to truly imagine what it will be like finished to be confident enough to buy futures.  But the wineries are extremely helpful with this, allowing you to taste from the barrels and taste some finished products to compare and contrast.   Really though, the only way to learn is to jump in and buy some futures!  My first year doing it I was a bit disappointed with my wine once I did get it but I’ve gotten better over the years and it really allows you to form a bit of a deeper connection with the winery as well. If you didn’t make it this year, mark your calendar for March 2012!