Back to it now...

What a summer. All told, we were out of the house for several weeks traveling to Palm Springs, Mexico and Michigan and while there was plenty of cooking, there was no time to post!

Palm Springs had NO cooking, but we did find a phenomenal Jewish deli (Sherman's) that makes me wonder why we've eaten anywhere else when we go down there. The pastrami and corned beef sandwiches were a good 4 inches thick with great sauces and a refillable pickle tray. Breakfast was perfect, simple with good coffee. Plus it's VERY old-school Palm Springs with actor photos up on the walls and a flock of regulars every time we went in.

In Mexico we definitely spent a lot of time eating, although very little cooking. One evening we even had a couple of folks there cooking FOR us, rather than eating out. By far the best food came from Eva at Tacos Eva in San Pancho. Her restaurant is a vividly colored paradise with an incredible menu all made from scratch. Luckily my Spanish is mostly food words, so I could actually ask her about what she was making. I think she must be a bit magical though, as the beef in the BEST beef tacos ever was apparently just beef and salt. She also gave me the ingredients in a hot sauce that some of our party claimed to "make the colors brighter". Capsaicin high. Hilarious.

One of our party had a birthday while we were there (lucky girl!) and her husband got her a carrot cake made by Eva (lucky all of us!) This was by far the moistest, tastiest carrot cake I've ever had the pleasure of eating. Just a hint of frosting, lots of fresh carrots and it was just as good two days later as a fabulous breakfast.

At the request of several folks, I made conchas and recruited the amazing Lexi to help me. I've given up on the recipes I've found and written my own, so our house sitter had to email it to me from my scribbles here at home. Then came the adventure of tracking down all the ingredients in a town where plenty of people don't speak any English - I now know that yeast is levadura in Spanish. Lexi got the sticky, messy jobs, carrying on a family tradition of pawning the crap work off on the youngest available labor. We baked them the following morning, at a vast majority of them and then sold the rest at the local outdoor market (Conchas frescas, a cinco pesos! - Hawking them was Lexi's job again.) It was SO much fun!

We visited my family in Michigan, so there was plenty of cooking as we seem to socialize around food. I owed my dad a pecan pie for something... birthday, Christmas... I would have made him one anyway! It turned out wonderfully, even though the pie crust was a pain.

 Since my mom now has chickens too, I had to make some challah. This was one of the few things that worked without a hitch.







There was a lot of food the whole time, since all of us cook. We made one massive, joint birthday meal that took the whole day to cook - grilled chicken, bacon wrapped jalapenos, hasselback potatoes, fresh brook trout, grilled mushrooms and zucchini all followed by lemon cheesecake and chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. Damn good meal!

Anyway, that was my summer. Hopefully now that the temperature is dropping and the rain is setting in I'll get back to my obsessive cooking and will have more to post about!