mexican food made easy

I recently discovered Thomasina Mier's fantastic cookbook, Mexican Food Made Easy, and we have been eating it up. We've tried the tortilla soup, mexican breakfast (eggs, tomato sauce on a tortilla) and mushroom quesadillas. From the a taco for all seasons  section we've been chowing on corn and courgette tacos and mushroom tacos. Black beans have been put into sweet corn and black bean salsas and eaten over baked potatoes. The spinach enchiladas are satisfying and so filling. Perhaps my favourite hot sauce ever is from this book: sweet chipotle paste. Hot, sweet with some lime for an added sour kick, I keep making it and put it on everything. My clothes now have chipotle stains on them but it is oh! so very tasty. Tonight we're trying grilled polenta with mushrooms and greens. 

Admittedly, C hasn't eaten everything I've made but he's eaten most things and loved it. The great thing about the recipes (and this style of cooking in general) is that it is family friendly: you can spice it up or  down without ever feeling like the food is being "dumbed down" or that you are losing any taste. It's written in the UK so the ingredients are easily found locally. There isn't a lot of technique needed and most recipes take around 30 minutes to prepare.

The most impressive recipe I've tried from this book is the grilled langoustines with coriander and pumpkin mole (see the photo, left) which I made substituting king prawns for the langoustines. The sauce is pretty easy to make and seems versatile (I actually forgot the percorino cheese, it was very good but I am curious and will add the cheese next time). Mier gives ideas of other uses and I will be putting it on grilled fish sometime soon. 

All in all this is an amazing cookbook. I had it from the library for an embarrassing amount of time and had to buy it from Amazon. It's already in high rotation in our meal schedule.

all is well

It's been a rough couple of months. No, it's not that. It's been a rough couple of years. I started this blog having just broken up with my boyfriend, on the cusp of running a marathon and starting law school. Lot of stuff has gone down and I wish that I had the ability (the courage? the strength?) to write about it here. But maybe the purpose of this blog is to be a reflection of something else: my attempts to write regardless. To express what's going on despite everything. I wish sickness, loss and sucky jobs didn't exist but that's not where we live. And that's what we do: we struggle on and continue our lives in the face of a whole lot of stuff we don't understand or even like.  I'd like to think that's the brave choice. It isn't really but most of life isn't great acts of bravery. Life is the act of movement and choice: to keep going despite the odds and sadness.

I bought myself a necklace for my birthday, inspired by one that nienie wears (if you haven't been reading the nienie dialogues, well off you go:

http://nieniedialogues.blogspot.com/). The necklace says "all is well". It's sort of a talisman. Not so much a good luck charm or a form of protection but something that grounds me and reminds me exactly where I am. And that's ok. All is well.

I passed!

This is one of those posts that should go something like:

 blah, blah, blah - Life in the UK: Journey to Citizenship 2nd Edition - test -passed. So, yeah I had to write a citizenship test. Of course I completely freaked out: I don't test well, get really nervous and over think things.
I ended up getting there super early and being send away! I ended up wandering around the St. James Centre (tried on some Bobbie Brown lipstick - must discuss) before hoofing it back. Where- I waited for about 30 minutes as everybody's ID was checked again. All in all it wasn't very hard. A lot of the other people had problems with their computers freezing. I didn't and finished in about 10 minutes. And I passed! Am now ready to live Life in the UK! Whoppee! We went to Chop Chop after to celebrate. The business lunch was very tasty (love dumplings and spicy noodles) and wee man ate 2 helpings of the children's noodles! That's a total of 18 dumplings. The kid can eat...

Welcome to 2011

Maltese knight

I had great intentions, really I did. I was going to write from my parents' house like a "real", hard core blogger.

It didn't quite work out that way: my internet access was sporadic at best and certainly not for any length of time. I ended up negotiating familial relations, battling passive - aggressiveness (and on occasion actual aggression) and watching my beautiful baby turn into a tantrum-y toddler (under the watchful gaze of both sets of grandparents) before my eyes. So yeah, blogging wasn't a high priority.

But it's January now - a brand new year. As most people know, I love a good make over and have some ideas about the direction of SadieBelle. We've been dormant for so long and, with the reawakening of the blog, we are experiencing some growing pains and are looking for direction.

Anti Tory sign in Marchmont

Among my blogging resolutions is to be a better or, at the very least  a more consistent poster. Another resolution regarding this blog is keep having local photos of Edinburgh. One thing I've been very proud of is the images I've taken with my little phone as I've wandered around the streets (picture me with a buggy, decked out in my parka and you've got a pretty good mental picture of how that looks: crazy). I'd like to keep up the Edinburgh - ness that this blog is beginning to have, that is to say a real sense of location and of place (all the while acknowledging that I'm very much a newcomer here) while keeping it very much where I started: someone who wanted to rant from the safety of her computer. More to come. Happy New Year!

And, we're off ...

Castle in the mist, from Princes Street

 After weeks of whiteness, the rains have started and all the snow has melted. I'm kicking myself for not having taken more pretty pictures of Edinburgh, and particularly the Castle, when it looked all fairytale-like. It still looks pretty, haunted & mysterious but it doesn't look like a magical Winter Wonderland anymore.

Street corner in Valletta

Anyway, Peter's feeling better so we're off to Malta tomorrow!  We'll be meeting up with my parents and Peter's parents and his brother Martin will be there as well. Peter is turning 40 in a couple of days and there will be a bit of a celebration. Hopefully it'll makeup for last year when Calum and then I were both sick and he had to look after us.

Weatherwise, it won't be tropical but there will be some sun and it should be at least a little warmer than Edinburgh right now. I'll try to blog when I can, but can't guarantee how much access I'll have to a computer. Belle will be off at her kennel while we're away. I hate leaving her, it breaks my heart a little. We won't be away too long, and SadieBelle will return in early January. There are some changes planned for 2011 and we're all excited about the new year.

Best Thing This Week - FAIL!

The Only Way is Essex gang

I was so excited for The Only Way is Essex Christmas Special. I started watching the show on the advice of Vicky (who runs the fabulous Frenchy's Beauty Boutique which you should really check out) and was quickly, deeply addicted. I realize that it is similar in a lot of ways to The Hills or maybe a Real Housewives of Somewhere franchise but there was something deeply satisfying about the trashiness of well off people not really working and arguing about relationships. Maybe it was the thick Essex accents which I found difficult to understand which added to the exoticness of the locale. Or, the obsession with spray tans, vajazzling and various beauty treatments that kept me sitting in front of my computer for all 10 episodes. And when I heard there would be a Christmas special (or, the Essexmas special), I was way too excited.

Harry

Now it wasn't a complete fail, it just wasn't as great as the first series. Maybe Christmas is so glitzy that the over-the-top silliness didn't play as funny? It also seemed a little bit like making fun of "slow" people. Most of the characters just don't seem smart enough to carry off the huge amount of dialogue-as-exposition in the casual manner they were trying. Whatever the problem it just seemed stilted and off somehow. I am hoping that the new series will be back to the high (low?) standards set by the first.

Here, in no particular order, is my list of observed good and bad from the special:

• sponsored by a cold sore cream?  of course! Why not just say herpes?
• Sam still doesn't look a day under 25, I don't care how "glamourous" she is. She still looks like she's had major amounts of work done to her face (and no, Peter, that's not "how English people look" - that's skin pulled so tight she can't blink)
• Is it me or are all the women trying out for Lola completely out of (auto) tune? Yikes!
• And speaking of Lola - where was Julien?
• The micro pig as romantic gesture conversation between Arg and Mark was hilarious and for once I agree with Mark. However, I thought the scene where Arg gives the pig to Lydia, made me see that maybe they actually do like each other.
• What was Lydia wearing at the Lola audition party? a cropped pirate shirt? yowza! 

• Amy, Sam and Harry preparing the food! Who had that idea? Did you see Amy's nails when she was stuffing the bird?
• Where was Kirk? I need to know...
• I always thought that Sam and Mark were f*ck buddies and wasn't at all surprised when they went off together.

Here's hoping the next series is better!

Two Recipes: A Christmas Tale

Old Town in the snow.

I got up early (ok, 7:30) with Calum to make Apple Cinnamon Muffins, a Nigella's Kitchen recipe which I'd never tried before. Now, young C really enjoys helping me while I cook, which turns everything into a bit of a mess so I was entertaining him in his playpen as I mixed the batter, which may somewhat explain the mistake. I left out the eggs. So, they turned into a kind of soft, gooey pudding with a fantastic crumble top. I'll try them again though. And I will use eggs.

Awful picture of Tuna meatballs

So, for supper we'd decided to try a Jamie's Italy recipe: Tuna Meatballs in Tomato Sauce, over linguine. I used all the right ingredients (even made bread crumbs) but, with time constraints, decided not to refrigerate the balls for an hour. The cooked easily (I suspect sitting for awhile would make them less crumbly though). Now, Peter thought the tasted really lemon-y, but I love lemon and had no problems with it. The Jamie's Italy uses a lot of lemon, so maybe that's just his taste? Regardless, it could be adjusted really easily.