Angel Hair in Garlic Butter

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I'm a nut for garlic. I'll eat it in just about anything. For a long time, the only way I'd eat spaghetti was with butter and a bit of garlic salt sprinkled on top - it's still a favorite snack for me.

Well, I made a stir fry the other night, and cooked up too much pasta, so I'm going to use up the rest of the noodles today for my lunch. I've got spaghetti noodles, but angel hair is perfect for this recipe.

This makes 6-8 servings.

1 kg (2 lbs) angel hair pasta
4 tbsp butter
4 large cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
1/2 tbsp limon juice
2 tbsp chopped parsley
6 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese
Salt to taste

1) In a large pot, boil three liters (3 quarts) of water, add the pasta, stir to separate and let cook for about 5 minutes.
2) Meanwhile, melt the butter in a frying pan on medium heat and add the garlic. Cook until golden, then add the lemon juice, stir, and set aside, off the heat.
3) When the pasta is ready, drain it in a colander, then add it to the frying pan with the parsley. Mix it all well, and serve topped with the Parmesan.

If you'd like something a little more, add sliced mushrooms with the garlic. Add a little olive oil to the butter for more flavor. Serve with Italian Sausage, or a Parmesan fish main course.

Strawberry Vinaigrette Dressing

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I am a huge fan of the Kraft 'Light done Right' Raspberry vinaigrette salad dressing. I used to eat a giant salad bowl full of salad with that on it every night before I ate my dinner. It was the best light dressing I've ever tried. Actually, the ONLY light dressing I've ever liked.

Well, of course they don't sell it in Peru. When I make salad here, I usually whip up something with a mix of mayo, milk, lemon juice, garlic, salt and maybe some black pepper. Creamy and good, but not very light. So, I decided I was going to try something different. I had seen a recipe for a raspberry vinaigrette that used raspberry preserves, so I took that idea and I ran with it.

I started with some olive oil and put it in the blender with some red wine vinegar. Basic vinaigrette, right? However, I don't have any raspberry preserves, so instead I used what you'll find PLENTY of in Peru - strawberry marmalade. I pulsed it on low a few times until it was all really well emulsified, and with no big chunks of strawberry left.

Can I just say - it was delicious! I put it on a salad of romaine and baby spinach with some raisins and pecans crumbled up on top. Oh my - so good.

The olive oil flavor was just a smidge too strong for my taste - next time I might use half olive and half soy bean oil.

Portions aren't exact, but 'pert near' as Jed Clampett used to say. If you try it, you might like it a little more vinegar-y, or perhaps you'll want a sweeter taste, so add more marmalade.

Strawberry Vinaigrette Dressing

1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
2 tbsps Strawberry marmalade (I probably used closer to three, they were slightly heaping)

Put in a blender and pulse on low until well blended.

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What a great Christmas Day

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Probably the best since I was a kid myself.

We had Peruvian style Christmas, which means roast turkey and fixin's at midnight - fairly simple this year, roasted potatoes and ensalada rusa. Of course, in true Peruvian fashion, we also had some thinly sliced red onion to go with it.

Afterwards, we drank hot chocolate and watched TV while the kids opened presents. The radio-control cars were a big hit with everyone, as was walking down to the end of the street and lighting some firecrackers. We finally got to bed around 3am, after going through a bit of 'some assembly required'.

This morning, we woke up and had paneton and hot chocolate for breakfast - around 11am. The boys woke up at 7 (!!!!) eager to play with their new toys again. Paneton (also spelled panettone) is a bread that originated in Italy. It's a sweet bread, the good one's are moist, that has dried fruit and raisins - like fruit cake. Most everyone picks out the fruit, of course, but the bread itself is awesome.


After we relaxed and got fully awake, we got dressed and everything together to go to the park. We bought a rotisserie chicken with fried potatoes, some ceviche (a Peruvian staple I'll discuss some other time) and some snacks and had a lovely picnic in a park that was once an olive orchard. Huge, old olive trees in rows (in fruit!!), a lovely fountain and kids with new toys made it the perfect place to be today. The weather was perfect, as Christmas here always seems to be, and it was just amazing, laying in the shade under the trees.

The olive trees, as I said, were heavily laden with fruit, and the ground was covered. We laid our blanket down, and it wasn't long before olive oil started seeping through! It smelled so good. Unfortunately, all the branches low enough to reach had been picked clean. The doves and pigeons seemed to have made pretty quick work of all that hit the ground. I would have loved to have been able to get a couple dozen of those olives to take home and use!

We stayed at the park for about 3 hours, until the sun went down enough that it started to feel a little cool. None of us wanted the day to be over though, and we walked slowly through the side streets, looking at the lovely old houses, and daydreaming about one day being able to buy one.

I hope everyone had a Christmas as perfect as ours, filled with peace and love.

Soup is Awesome.

Image by cowfish via Flickr

Despite waking up late, I made grill cheese sandwiches and hot chocolate for the boys for their breakfast. I thought with exams starting today, they needed something a little more substantial than cold cereal.



Even though it's full on late spring here in Peru, my family loves eating home made soup. I decided to nourish that love today with some Lentil Soup. Man, is it tasty. All the 'flavor' ingredients here can be tweaked as you see fit - use more bacon if you like! I don't use a recipe or measure, so all this stuff is 'pretty close'. Nothing has to be exact! Close enough is close enough. ;)

1 tbsp olive oil
4 slices Bacon, cut up in 1" pieces
1 lb kielbasa or similar smoked sausage (1/2 Kilo)
1/2 cup diced onion
3 carrots, diced
1/2 tbsp basil
1/2 tbsp garlic (or crush a couple of fresh cloves)
2 bay leaves
2 cups of dried lentils
6-8 cups water
3 italian (plum) tomatoes - peeled, deseeded and crushed or coarsely chopped.
2-3 tbsp tomato paste
1/2 cup spinach, in thinly sliced
Salt/Pepper to taste

Around 6 servings
It's a good idea to have everything cut up and ready before you start.

1) Start with a 5-6 quart soup pot or stock pot.
Mine looks similar to this:
2) Over medium high heat, put in the olive oil, the bacon, and your sliced up sausage. Cook for a couple of minutes, until the bacon starts to look 'cooked'.

3) Add the onions and carrots, then cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions start to become transparent.

4) Toss in the basil, garlic, bay leaf and cook for another 2 minutes, making sure to stir everything together.

5) Dump in the lentils and tomatoes, and enough water to cover everything + a couple of inches extra.

6) Cook on high heat until it comes to a boil, then lower the heat to a simmer. Leave simmering for at least an hour. I cook mine a couple of hours, because I like my lentils sort of disintegrated. Add more water if needed.

7) Add the tomato paste, and gently stir to blend it into the soup.

8) Taste it - add salt as needed. I don't want to give a specific amount, because it depends on your taste and how salty your bacon and sausage are. Here in Peru, the bacon isn't super salty, and neither is the sausage I use. I ended up using about 4 tsps of salt. Add pepper if you like that sort of thing. ;)

9) Right before serving, add the spinach and stir until it's wilted.

Enjoy this delicious soup! And don't eat the bay leaves ;)


Some changes you can make:
-Try using bacon flavor cubes (like chicken bouillon cubes) instead of bacon to cut a little fat.
-Instead of tomatoes and tomato paste, stir in 1 can of diced tomatoes. Hunt's has some good flavored diced tomatoes that can make some really subtle but tasty changes to the flavor.
- Leave out the meat completely and use vegetable bouillon cubes for flavor to have a really hearty vegetarian meal.
- Cook it down to a thicker stew consistency, and serve over your favorite rice for a complete meal.

I'm really sorry I don't have pictures of this, but my camera has decided to stop working. Sometime after the new year, I'll get that taken care of and start putting pictures of all the food we eat.

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