Food, Giving Back, Random, Wine and Friends

One year- Part II

Let me tell you the other side of what happened yesterday, Pete had organized for me to leave the house with my cousin Alci while he would prepare everything with Philippe. I left the house around noon and came back at 3. He organized the menu, picked up flowers, choose a bottle (or 2) of magnificent wine, bought me a gift, and asked my brothers to help him with the cleaning of the house, so everything was in order from when I came back.

Fortunately or not, Pete has a great temper, so my brother felt like he was more than invited. He was talking to Philippe about his french classes, how he likes his veal cooked, that he doesn’t enjoy vegetables, etc…. while Pete was pouring a glass of wine, I was looking at him thinking, oh god! why is my brother here!? I wanted to be with Pete… !

Of course I’m telling my friend Ana about my surprise and she tells me she’s eating with everyone in Shake Shack. And that she might stop by and say hi. I told her, that thanks! that would be fun, but she might ruin the moment…. well… her battery died. Yes, everyone came upstairs. I looked at Pete and he was smiling, I looked at Philippe and he went, Merd! I don’t have enough shrimps… when Philippe was ready to serve, my friends where comfortably sitting in the couch with beers in hands. This was our first year anniversary.

I kept drinking wine thinking… THANK GOD I have him by my side.

Color, Food, Random

Petecitas

There are couple of things I can’t pronounce, like for example words in english with “Y” and “J.” It takes me some effort to say jogging or yellow, this is because I grew up with strong sounds like Jesus, Jose, Yaracuy, Yoyo, instead of soft Joseph, Jello, You, Young… I think its understandable and you can blame it in the ESL. However, its funny when I can’t pronounce words that are the same in English and Spanish: Pizza, or Pepsi.

Here comes my little story, I often speak some Spanish to Pete, to see if he gets some words… and I’ll usually add the suffix ita, ito, cita, cito… to make it spanish-ier. this time I was telling him I wanted to make pizzitas and he understood I wanted to make Petecitas…. sometimes you hear what you want to hear right?!

In this attempt to make pizzas, I tried using pizza dough. They were delicious!

Here my Petecitas colors

Color, Food, Wine and Friends

Bomb Burgers

This was the meal Zain and Tusar cooked for us when we went on a road trip! It was delicious and plenty. Chorizo burgers are intense, in fact, the whole plate was intense. I had never had them…. and if you’ve never had them… try them. Those bomb burgers are ridiculously good, we each had one and we were done easting for the day.

The sauce that accompanied the burger was great too, find the recipe they used here

Meal Colors

Here is a picture of the making of the BB!

Zain and Tusar Burger preparation colors

Color, Food

Colorful Meals

Lately, I’ve been eating awful because I’ve been sitting in front of the computer for ever so I decided to reward myself with one of my favorite dishes: this one- I don’t know how to call it.

Its tuna with mango, onions and peppers on the top. Its a great meal because you’re eating your vegetables, fruit and proteins all in one! and no carbs- ha! And its suppppper easy to make, slice the mango, onions, ajies, and green onions… sautee them and them put them on top of the grilled tuna. Done, a beautiful meal in less than 10 minutes.

While I was eating eat, I thought of 2 great ideas….one: this would be a great appetizer. Slice the tuna, cook it fast on both sides, so its still raw-ish in the middle and top it with the mango and onions. Make them bite-size, wouldn’t they be great? Who wants to come over so I can try it?!

The second idea I had came from what my mom use to tell me, the more colorful your food the more nutritious it is, here are my lunch colors:

It looks great right?! I’m going to do this from now on.

Fitness, Food

I love sandwiches

Pete and I like to be spontaneous and make meals that we usually don’t have. I’m grateful to have someone like that by my side because I love trying new things and experimenting with ingredients… if things go wrong, oh well…. we eat something else.

We went to whole foods and discovered some interesting sausages…. artichoke veal sausage and pepper chicken sausage. We grilled them and made this:

Each one got half of the sausages, grilled onion, tomatoes and guacamole.

We’re training and starving! 🙂

Food

Open Grilled Cheese Sandwich

After doing my daily 20-min blog-reading, I was starving. I decided to try this recipe and give it a little twist. I added onions and some greens on the side. After you read my blog a couple of times, I think you start to see a pattern, salt, pepper and LOTS of greens. Here’s my lunch

Couple of summers ago, I went to an greek restaurant and for dessert they were serving Yogurt and Honey, I was in heaven. It was a huge plate of natural, creamy yogurt and honey; we ordered 3 servings. I think I was craving a healthy dessert after having a bomb, so I had yogurt, honey, and a little cinnamon! mmmm!

Color

Pasta

I have to be honest, I grew up thinking pasta was extremely fatting. So as a teenager and skinny body addict, I never ate pasta. It wasn’t until I started running marathons that pasta became a must in my meals. I’d have them the night before almost every long run (you multiply 4 months of saturday dinners… lets just say I ate a lot of pasta). Now even when I’m not training I crave pasta, especially since my boyfriend loves it (he made me say this.)

Anyhow….. this is one of my favorite and quickest recipe I always do. Its super easy and even my brother that doesn’t like any type of vegetables enjoys eating it.

In this bowl I have,

5 Cherry tomatoes sliced in half

1/4 of fresh mozzarella

4 black olives sliced in half

1/4 of a red pepper cut into cubes

At last then I sprinkled with olive oil, salt and pepper. You’re DONE!

The best part of it is that you can eat it hot or cold and take it to work. It takes 10 minutes to make: while you cook the pasta, you slice the ingredients and mix them all together after draining the water, y LISTO! Fresh meal in minutes!

PS: if you want to spice it up a bit more, add corn, chicken, onions…. be creative, pasta goes with almost everything! Just keep in mind the fresher the vegetables the better.

Color, Food