Mini Vacation

Last week we took a Mini vacation to Denver by way of Albuquerque.  Lauri and I drove over and picked up the kids and rented a mini van for the trip to Denver.  The plan was to stop at all of our favorite restaurants and take photos and talk about them a bit.  Well after the first one the rest just seemed kind of pointless.  Our first stop was our old home town of Los Lunas for lunch at a place we use to frequent every Thursday, Teofilos.  We had not been there in over a year and walking is was like walking into a good friends home, warm welcoming and the smells from the kitchen were almost overwhelming with the smell of fresh chile.  Not the bean and meat Texas chile, we are talking about the green and red New Mexican chile that will warms your heart from the inside starting with your mouth to your stomach.  What really blew us away was our waitress.  Like I said we had not been there in over a year and the first thing she said to us was “Where have you guys been? Did you move to Hawaii or something?”  It was kind of funny and made us feel even more like we were at home.    The first thing that came to the table was the chips and salsa.  Fresh chips, thick and salty and the salsa was just like we remembered, a bit on hot side and just the right amount of cilantro. 

I ordered my usual the Chile Rellano combination plate.    Again it was just as I remembered.  I always had it served Christmas (both red and green chile) I could never make up my mind what I like best, green or red.   Lauri had a beef and been burrito covered with green chile.  It was huge and covered with cheese.    The entire meal was served with fresh hot sopapillias with a thick, dark local honey.  The perfect end to a perfect New Mexican Lunch. 

The rest of the meal we had on the trip were good but none of them were on scale even close to our lunch at Teofilos.  So if you are ever in Los Lunas New Mexico stop by and have a great meal. 

Labor Day Dinner

In honor of Labor Day we did kind of a traditional BBQ at my house for such an occasion. We did Hamburgers.  Yep old fashion hamburgers, well not quite like I use to get when I lived at home.  These had real beef in them and not the frozen patties and they had some seasoning in them.  I use the regular salt and pepper along with soy and worcestershire sauce, garlic and chopped onions.  Then I built the patties with a large amount of cheddar cheese in the middle.   The plan was that the cheese would melt when I cooked them on the grill and it would all stay in the middle until you took a bite and it would run out.  It kind of worked on a couple but they were very juice.  With our love of green chile the hamburgers would not have been complete without one on top.   To go with that, Lauri make her famous baked beans and something new in the Hagen house hold, real German potato salad.   Did you know that real German potato salad is warm and sweet?  It was good, but not something we are going to do again. It sounded good when we read the recipe.  Anything with bacon in it had to be worth a try.

For those of you that know me well you might have been questioning the beer selection that went with this meal.  Well I though since we were doing the kind of old time Labor Day BBQ we would step it back a notch with the beer.  I even have proof that I have been drinking it for a long time.

I still drink it sometimes put I gave up the pipe in the first grade.   

For desert Lauri made up her homemade pie crust with strawberries and rhubarb in a skillet and I cooked out on the grill.  It gave it slight hint of hickory smoke flavor in the curst and the filling was a perfect mix of sweet strawberries and the tart rhubarb.  It was so good we both had two pieces after dinner.      

Well what do we do next week?  Oh yeah we will be on vacation next week.  So the update may be a little late but I am sure we will have something on here as soon as we get back.    

Crab/Shrimp Boil

In honor of Hurricane Irene last week we decided to do a Crab and shrimp boil.    You know sea food. We were thinking of just boiling up a bunch of shrimp, crab, potatoes, corn and sausage.   Sounds easy right?  Not so fast.  You start thinking about it and questions come up like, what do you season it with.  My first thought was beer.  That always works.  Well come to find out we had what we needed in the cabinet.  Old Bay Seasoning.  Yep a bunch of that, along with a 12oz beer in the water did the trick.  Next hurtle was, what goes in first?  You know you just can’t throw it all in at the same time, it all won’t cook at the same rate, right?  Ok, internet here we come.  This is a real science.   Depending on what you are going to use and if is fresh or frozen and shelled or not shelled.  It was a real dance getting all of this right.   So we start with the potatoes then the corn and onions then the shrimp and the sausage.   So far so good.   Next comes the crab legs.  The pot is getting quite full and we still have the crab legs to go.  In they go and the pot stops boiling.  They were frozen.  No worries it starts again and everything finishes.  The potatoes were a bit soft but good and we should have used more beer in the water but I added that separately while we ate.  Lauri wanted to dump it on the table on top of news paper like you see in the restaurants but the table is still kind of new and a bowl seemed like a better idea.  It was a good meal and kind of fun.

We are already starting to think about next week.  We could use some ideas.

Jason and Lauri

Prep, Prep and more Prep.

This one took a bunch of work to get it done.  The dinner turned out very good.   We did lettuce wraps with peanut sauce, fried rice and egg rolls.  Everything was fresh and not frozen out of the box, like we normally do our egg rolls.  Yeah, we cheat but not on Sundays.  The peanut sauce was different. Like I said a lot of prep but, it was tasty. 

I think next week we will do sea food.    

Chicken under a Brick (ok two bricks)

Why would you put a chicken under a brick?  To cook the other side.  Ha.  Ok not funny.  It is suppose keep the chicken moist.  It turned out great.  The hard part about this was turning a whole roasting chicken into a flat piece of meat on the grill.  Two words "good scissors".  The technique is called Spatchcocking.  Fancy term for “ cutting out the backbone and laying it flat.  It was kind of yucky but it worked well.  It laid flat on the grill and cooked up nicely.  I used olive oil, salt, pepper and some fresh thyme to season it with.  It looks kind of strange. 

To go along with this we grilled some sweet corn and baked some fresh squash from a friend’s garden.  Thanks Cecilia.  It was good.  The dinner turned out a bit yellow looking but was very good.  For the second week in a row I was able to have a good beer to go with this.   Stone IPA.  It went very well.   

Lauri and I were taking about next week and what to do and we decided that we are going to start doing a regional theme dinners.  Asian, German that kind of thing.  Let’s see what we come up with next week.  

The best so far

This meal turned out just perfect.  We are starting to get good at this.  First off we had two very nicely marbled rib eye stakes that we let age in the frig for a few days.  A little rot adds to the flavor.  We seasoned them with a burber rub, no not carpet, first thing that came to my mind.  It is sea salt cracked pepper, paprika, onion and garlic.   I grilled them over some hard wood along with onions, bell peppers and a couple of whole garlic cloves.  Lauri lightly toasted some bread and  olive oil.  We used the garlic cloves as a topping for the bread.  Great stuff for some bad breath.   To accompany the meal I found some barley wine ale that complemented the meal perfectly.  It was just enough to cut the garlic and really bring out the flavor of the steak.  It was a great paring of food and beer.  

For Desert Lauri baked a yellow cake and served some fresh strawberries over the top.   Just enough to top of a perfect meal .       

I think next week we do something with chicken.  

Until next week.

Good Stuff!!!

Enough with the grill, well almost. Sunday was baked ziti with hot Italian sausage and three types of cheese. Rich and hot.

Lauri and I made a deal a few weeks back. She was cooking whole wheat pasta. I know it is good for you but it tastes like the inside of a feed bag and never seems to be done. It ends up like paste in my mouth, no matter what is on it. Leftovers, forget about it, it has to consistency of paste again after being heated. Our deal was when we had Pasta, it would be the unhealthy normal starchy stuff and when we had rice, I would have to deal with the brown stuff from now on, except for with Sushi.
Any how the Ziti was great and so were the left over’s. We had it with a tossed salad and garlic bread, slightly burnt and a good bottle of Merlot.


Here is where the grilling came in. I BBQed Ice cream. I did it. Yep, we have pictures. It works. It took a lot of prep work and a trip to the hardware store for the bricks, but it worked. The sad thing was it was not really that good. Kind of bland with a hint of hickory smoke. I used vanilla ice-cream and coconut. It was not very flavorful. Next time I think I will use something else. Not sure what. Suggestions?

We are having a lot of fun doing this and it gives us something to kind of plan for the week ahead.
We are still looking for dinner guests to share this with. Next week I think we will do something with beer and beef. MMM beer..