TheTravelingZipperhead.com

  
When I was working, I would drive home every day through the stockyards and just north of there was a sketchy part of town with bars on the windows, predatory loan businesses on every corner and all the signs were in Spanish. As a white girl who grew up in an upper middle class town, this said one thing to me: the food around here is probably pretty good. (What? Not what you think of?) 

There was one place in particular that always caught my eye. There was just a sign over the door that said “Pupuseria” and I had no idea what it was, but I wanted it. I asked around and none of my mexican friends knew what it was so I had to do a little digging. This was also during a time when I had given up wheat the first time, so I was ecstatic when, on a gluten free blog, I discovered that these are a South American dish, made from masa, and it’s basically a stuffed tortilla. I HAD to try one, but there was still a barrier between me and the Pupuseria: language. My biggest regret in life is not learning more languages. I wanted to talk to these guys, ask questions, but I wasn’t able to, so instead I read as much as I could on the pupusa. I tried making them, but it didn’t work that well, so I forgot about them. 

Cut to me in culinary school and I had to prepare a Latin dish. I figured “what the hell?” and gave them another shot. My instructor thought I was crazy, but that it was kinda cool, this was neither the first time nor the last time he would feel this way about something I was doing.  Anyway, it worked out pretty well this time. It’s almost as if I knew what I was doing.  

I’ve tinkered with them over the years off and on, and to be honest, I don’t always remember them when I’m trying to figure out what to make for dinner. Though I should. And you should too. 

Here’s what you’ll need:

2 Chicken Breasts

4 Limes

4 cups Masa Harina

2 cups Cheese shredded

Salt

Onion Powder

Garlic Powder

Cumin

Butter

Preheat Oven to 350
Chicken:

Sprinkle: Salt, Onion Powder, Garlic Powder, Cumin over top of chicken in a casserole dish

Cover the dish, cook for about 45 minutes or until chicken is done
Masa: Follow package instructions, plus 2 limes, juice and zest, extra salt if desired

While dough is resting, shred/pull chicken, and shred cheese. 

  
Form dough into slightly larger than golf ball sized balls.

Stick thumb into ball to create a well.

   
 Place chicken and cheese into well.

  
Pinch dough closed over the chicken and cheese to seal the chicken and

cheese in.

  
Flatten the ball

Melt tablespoon of butter over medium high heat in a skillet.

Fray two flattened balls at a time, 2-3 minutes on each side until crispy.

Let cool.

Serve with your favorite toppings such as Guacomole, and salsa.

  
You could stuff these with anything g really, left over taco meat, chili, sautéed veggies, whatever your heart desires. They also reheat quite well too. 

The next time you’re wanting to make tacos, try these. It’s just a little bit more work )unless you’re making your own tortillas, then it’s less work)but worth the effort, and you’ll save the effort later when you stick these in your lunch the next morning. 

This country used to be great, and it still is, but there is so much partisan bs that we don’t do anything but fight. We say we are tired of it, yet we STILL allow it to go on, we participate in it too, don’t be fooled. We want all the bs to stop, but we want the other side to magically come to our side. In fact, what we REALLY want is for them to suddenly sit up, open their eyes and yell loudly “I can’t believe how stupid I was!!!” Then proceed to tell everyone who thought that way how stupid they are. We used to agree to disagree and move on about our way, but insecurities got the better of us and we stopped. We needed everyone to agree with us and thus began the spread of false information. This conveniently came about the time the Internet started to take off. No one stopped anyone either, claiming its not seditious libel because it’s classified as entertainment or satire, but in reality, it IS sedition. We started spreading fear and propaganda over facts, then we created fake news sites to make our claims seem legit. And the saddest part of all…. The masses followed. They not only believed it, they spread it. Soon we have Facebook and now, that cheerleader from high school read an article somewhere that said Michele Obama gave Texas to China, and now she has proof! It’s on the Internet, and they can’t put anything on the Internet that isn’t true! Now we have slinging “news” articles back and forth and people ending friendships over things that are not even true and our country is getting ripped to shreds. I can spot a fake news story a mile away and while I love a good “stupid criminal” fake story, the dangerous ones are the ones people believe. 

“But there was a video!”, “I saw a picture!!” Yes, and I can make pictures like that too, I know of at least thirty people who can also fake a picture and video. This is a huge pet peeve of mine. Otherwise intelligent people reading something from a “news site” that they read all the time so it HAS to be true. Here is an idea, don’t believe all the “the media doesn’t want you to see this” because the media saw it, investigated it, and found it to be false. There are also places like Snopes and the good old fashioned AP where you can pretty much verify what you read. 

I propose this…. Instead of finger pointing, name calling, and believing all the false crap that we read, let’s step back…. Try to see where these are coming from and WHY they are printing them. What is in it for the publication? Then, maybe, just maybe, we can stop losing friendships that we’ve had forever, we can still look at each other as the people we’ve known forever and not some “heartless monster”, “sheep”, or “bleeding heart”. 

Neither side is perfect, and neither side is 100% right, but what made this country special was our ability to have two opposing views come together and make something that works. We have been reduced to the country equivalent of The View. 

  
My little guy loves a slushy from Sonic, and really, who DOESN’T?  I mean, they are delicious, and you can get them in so many flavors. They have a lot of sugar though.  I believe the actual amount is labeled “a crap ton”. I worked at sonic in high school and remember making them, I won’t go into how they were mixed in a large garbage with eight bags of sugar and you had to stick your arm in up to your armpit to stir it.  They don’t do that anymore I don’t think. And if they do….. It hasn’t deterred me one bit from them.  There is nothing better on a hot summer day than a watermelon slushy. Or cherry.

My little guy has figured out that whatever he wants to eat, I can make. It’s both flattering and exhausting, but the challenges are fun. I’ve made Lego gummies, s’mores with fondant instead of a marshmallow (this actually worked really well) a cake in the shape of a lion for “international lion day”. This proved that I can make it, but I can’t really make it pretty, when I showed it to my mom and she asked if my four year old frosted it. 

It was only a matter of time until I was asked to make a slushy. 

I broke down what it was, (sugar, water, coloring, and flavor) so why not? I just needed to freeze it. Then it dawned on me, the ice cream maker!

So I started with a simple syrup:

  
Added some color and flavor:

  
Then let it cool: (I wanted to keep dust out of it)

  
 After this cooled some, I poured it into a container and stuck it in the fridge until it was time to freeze. 

   
 
I went on about my night doing dishes, etc and honestly I wasn’t holding out too much hope until I peeked in and saw that it was working. And working well! Go figure! 

I will say this, I made strawberry flavored by using the flavoring for hard candy, and just a regular simple syrup, but it was sweet. Really sweet. Like, there is no way I’m letting anyone eat this, sweet. I added a little water, lemon juice and a tad bit of salt. It was still too sweet. It tastes good, but it needed more water before I could let anyone eat a whole cup full, but it was already frozen by then. 

So I made one, let every one have two bites, and got rid of it. Next time, less sugar, 

  
But it worked!  If you want to make a slush or a frozen margarita…. Keep your ice cream maker handy. It does more than ice cream. 

 
I have been intrigued with air fryers for a while, and when a friend told me how much she loved the one she bought, I was sold. I just needed to figure out where to store it. I’m running out of room in my kitchen. 

I bought the Big Boss because I got a good deal, and I could see the food cooking in it. I’m not going to lie, that weighed in my decision making.  I wanted to see what was going on. 

The first thing I made was teriyaki chicken thighs. The recipe was in the book that it came with and I try to do things by the book so to speak, before I play. The marinade was soy sauce, (or tamari for us GF folks)  honey,  garlic and ginger. Simple enough… It said to cook on the bottom rack, though I had too many, so I used both racks. 

 
Because of the sugar in the honey and the closeness to the heat source, the sugar burned, I swapped them out halfway through the cooking process. 

Because of this, I was not able to check the crispiness of  the skin, but that was my fault. 

Next up I found some sweet potato fries in the freezer. These came out perfect. Not mushy like they can be from the oven. I’ll try fresh cut fries in the near future. 

  
Even my ever skeptical husband was impressed, but next came the clean up. Which was basically two wire racks, a mesh pan, and a giant glass bowl. I hate washing mesh and wire racks. So much more surface area, so many more nooks and crannies. It wasn’t to bad though. I got them cleaned pretty quickly, and basically I just wash the big glass bowl (and worry that I will drop and break it) then I use it as a big basin to wash all the other stuff.  

The next day I was like a little kid, looking for things to cook in it. I made a pork roast, corn on the cob, avocado fries, roasted asparagus, and heated up a frozen pizza in it.  All of them turned out great except the frozen pizza, but that is hardly the fryer’s fault. 

As someone with a high maintenance baby, an almost four year old, and someone who doesn’t always feel great, I don’t always remember to get something out to thaw in the morning, and if I do, it’s wishful thinking because cooking is a luxury these days. If the stars align when the kids both nap in the afternoon, haven’t whooped me down, and I feel good all at the same time, AND I remembered to thaw something…. I should buy a lottery ticket.  With this, I can pull a frozen roast out, rub it with salt, and throw it in there to be done in 90 minutes. Now it’s not fall off the bone tender, but it’s not shoe leather either. Plus, it browns the outside as if you were cooking it on the stove. I have a lot more experimenting to do, I’ve read that taking a frozen steak, browning it with a torch or some other high heat, then baking it will give an extremely tender steak. I want to try that in this. I also want to bake with it. I want to make donuts, turnovers, maybe a cake in it. I’m glad I bought it, and can’t wait to experiment more with it!  

(This applies to these two yahoos as well)

I truly don’t. If my kids want to grow up and have average jobs and live a life in the rut of mediocrity, that’s just fine with me. If they are happy, I’m good with that. They don’t have to do great things, as long as they do good things. My job as a parent isn’t to get them into a top school, or get them to land that once in a lifetime job, if that is what my kids want, then that is their job to reach for those things. My job as a parent is to teach my kids love, compassion, fairness, and how to do good. If they do well too, that’s up to them. 

You can have all the intelligence and money in the world, but if you’re not a good person, then you’re kind of a waste. Now don’t get me wrong, they are both smarter than your average bear, and my son knows it. I think he may fall into the “gifted underachiever” category that he is genetically predisposed to.  He is a human sponge, always learning and picking up on things, but when you ask him something straight out that you and he both know that he knows the answer to, he pretends to not know. He plays dumb or makes up an answer he thinks is funny. As frustrating as this is, it’s ok. My success does not rely on his brains. I will consider my job a success if he thinks of others. If he sees a classmate hungry so he buys him lunch that day. If he sees someone in need and he helps them out. If my kids think of others, I don’t care if they go to Oxford or Whataburger university. 

There is so much going on in the world now, it truly is a small world. You can no longer turn a blind eye to things that don’t affect you. I recently read where a student was planning on making a bomb to take to my former high school. A school where some of my friends’ kids go. It knocked the wind out of me to think this could happen where I grew up. I was so glad to see that his friends stopped him, not by trying to tackle it themselves, but knowing when something was beyond their capacity and alerting the right people. These kids are heroes, and I hope mine can learn from them. Did anyone, even once, ask what kind of grades these kids being home? No, they were too busy thanking them. 

We put a lot of pressure on our kids to succeed, but is anyone teaching manners anymore?  Or common sense -don’t get me started there. We have the world at our fingertips, the answer to any question we can think of, but are we losing the connections that make us human?  We don’t treat each other like people anymore. In the quest for perfection and the right college application, we have thrown out common decency and manners. It’s easy to do with a phone full of “friends” and “followers” whom we never actually see face to face. 

Feelings are an afterthought in this world, and I hope, our kids rebel against us. I hope they see that their mom has posted over a thousand pictures of them on Facebook before they even turned one, and yearn for privacy. I hope they reject the technology that numbs them and reach for actual interactions and compassion that were the first things abandoned when we were shuttling kids to all the activities they need as preschoolers to get into an Ivy League school. 

I will never be impressed by what school your kids get into, it doesn’t matter. I will, however, be highly impressed to watch you teach your son to give your seats at a funeral so an older lady can sit and say goodbye to her friend. In the end, when it comes to your own funeral, what do you think will matter, how much money you made? Or how you treated the people in your life?  

I promise I’ll get back to cooking soon, there are just a few things I need to get off my chest as I’m up in the early morning hours with the baby…

It’s been a while, I know, but I finally had baby girl, and she’s beautiful of course. I won’t go in to how I saw the whole Csection in the reflection of a light, or how the spinal block messed with me and made me think I was losing my mind because it messed with my spinal cord, I’ll write about that later.
Right now, I’m looking at my baby napping in her swing and thinking how it’s all going to start now. Continue reading →

Every Wed, my little guy and I head over to a goat farm to pick up our CSA. It’s not the farm that grows the food, but it is a farm that my farmer takes our shares to, so we can pick them up without driving all the way out to his farm.

Continue reading →

Every once in a blue moon, I have to admit that I am not in control of my own health. I have to hang my head and succumb to the fact that as much as I like to believe it, I cannot will my body to behave. I do stand by my beliefs that I can sense something is amiss and that I clue in to things much more readily than the average person, but I still am not a doctor, and I need to consult with a professional.

Continue reading →

In an attempt to give my little guy a head start on school, I’ve been working with him on a curriculum that I bought from The Learning Box. A friend recommended it to me, and so I figured I’d try out a month to see how it works out. To be honest, we both really enjoy it.

Continue reading →

I realize that beans in chili is a very polarizing argument. I also know that here in TX, beans in chili is not only just not done, but goes over about as well as Ted Nugent at a PETA convention. And still I do it, and I do it unapologetically. Here’s why: I want to. Yep, that about sums it up.
If you want more reasons, I can give you three:
1) beans are good for you, and anytime I can get fiber in a meal that my husband and kid will eat, I’m going to, cultural traditions be damned.
2) I’ve lived in Texas for roughly 12 years now, it is my home, but I’m not technically from here, I’m from Wyoming originally, where its common to put beans in your chili.
3) I love Texas food, I do, but whether you are PETA, or the ‘Nuge in this scenario, it’s just food. Go ahead, break the rules, go against tradition… It’ll be ok.

Here is how I made this one:

Chili Recipe

Ingredients
1 lb Ground Beef
1 lb Ground Pork
2 cans diced Tomato
1 can Tomato Sauce
1 can Black Beans, rinsed
2 cloves Garlic
4 sprigs Thyme
3 small fresh Bay Leaves
1 Tbs Cumin
1 Tbs Chipotle Powder
Salt
1/2 tsp Anise
1/2 tsp Oregano

Instructions
1. Brown meat in pan
2. Add in diced onions
3. Add minced garlic while onions are cooking
4. Add spices
5. Stir in tomatoes and sauce
6. Add Thyme and Bay Leaves
7. Simmer for 30 mins to a couple hours
8. Remove Thyme and Bay Leaves
9. Serve with Shredded Cheese if desired

Salt generously, usually every time I add an ingredient, I add a pinch of salt, but that’s with everything I make. If you want to play with the rations of seasonings, or add, take out, whatever. If you want to add paprika, knock yourself out. I don’t do paprika.

Another thing I don’t do, is play into the whole mentality that chili needs to be as spicy as you can stand it. While I can tolerate a great deal more heat than the average person, I would prefer to taste my food, and not blow out my palate. There have been many of times when eating something that people say it’s too hot, and it’s not a blip on my radar, I have no one to impress, though, is anyone really impressed by another’s ability to eat spicy food? Chili should taste good. At the very least, you should be able to taste it, not tolerate it. Again, though, I’m a rebel, and break the rules.

Long story short, play with your food. Enjoy it, and add whatever you want. What’s the worst that could happen? You end up making a PB&J?