Archive | March, 2011

Mexican Dinner @ Devanand Yoga Center

8 Mar

At the Yoga Center, they’re organizing one Saturday a month an International Dinner… I would like to say partly inspired by me, because my mom was who gave the idea. I am always telling her how fun it is to showcase how to make Italian food, French Food, Middle Eastern Food, Greek Food – all 100% VEGETARIAN.

The Devanand GUYS started it all last weekend – Manolo, Gabriel, Joel, Gerardo and Carlos – all part of an all-guys cooking team. They decided they would take on MEXICAN FOOD as the International starting point. They planned the menu, the cooked all the food. They even washed the dishes afterwards… Ladies – some of these are great “catches”. Some of them are already taken… 🙂

The menu went as follows:

Always a green salad with a delicious dressing to start and Nachos with cheese to complement the appetizer lineup…

 

Burritos filled with a mashed potato, broccoli, carrot and black bean filling on a whole wheat tortilla…

Quesadillas filled with cheese, corn, tomatoes, peppers and black beans… and because they were made in whole wheat tortillas, we now know these were actually sincronizadas. Right??

Corn tortilla tacos filled with textured soy protein and topped with shredded lettuce…

Whole Grain Brown Mexican Rice made with tomatoes, onions, cumin and jalapeño peppers, which do not make regular appearances at the Devanand kitchen…

Pico de Gallo, Guacamole and Sliced Black Olives to top the tacos…

The menu was rounded up with delicious and moist vanilla cake with a Guava Glaze and Shredded Coconut on top… made by Manolo, our resident baker, and sweet guava and star fruit natural juice.

We enjoyed the dinner very much… I actually had quesadillas and I made myself my own taco filled with the mashed potato filling on a corn tortilla topped with pico de gallo and guacamole. It was just what my taste buds wanted. Marla got great points by inviting about 10 new people to our center. She gets great THANKS from the whole team.

       

Hope this gets you excited to visit the Yoga Center for the next International Dinner night… especially if you live here in Puerto Rico. I’ll certainly keep you posted via FaceBook. OK??

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Strawberry Mousse

2 Mar

Sorry I have not been up to par lately… and I have not been able to post as frequently as I would like. I have been feeling “under the weather” lately and writing at the computer has been a bit challenging. I am still not 100%, but I’ll try to give it my all. I need to get back to my regular schedule PRONTO. And sharing stuff with you is certainly part of that.

I enjoy reading the food blog Serious Eats… and last week we were given a challenge to highlight or showcase a Golden Gadget – our most prized kitchen implement and the recipes that we use them for.

I debated about this… what do I use in my kitchen over and over again?? I love my microplane grater… which I use for grating cheeses and now I grate garlic cloves to I do not have to mince finely, which has always been a challenge, but I do not have a dish that revolves around my using the grater. I love my mandolin, which I use to make Scalloped Potatoes or to cut my Eggplant Milanese, but I do not use all that often.

But lately, I received a new “blender” as a Xmas gift, The Magic Bullet. I know, I know… we all scoff at the informercial. But my aunt gave it to me as a Xmas present, so I went with it. It took me about 3 weeks to get it out of the box. I mean it… It sat there because it came with so many gadgets that I did not know where to accommodate it all. But since the day I took it out of the box I have not been able to stop using it. I make all my morning breakfast smoothies in it – using the convenient party mugs included. I have made horchata, a cheese mix to make grill cheese sandwiches, sofrito, and most recently I made Strawberry Mousse. It could also be considered strawberry-flavored whipped cream, but hey… it was tasty and I enjoyed it.

I took the general idea from the Magic Bullet cookbook which had a “recipe” for Chocolate Mousse using the same technique. I do not have chocolate syrup in my house, but I did have some strawberry sauce left over from another night. The results were quite delicious… hope you like it too. The Magic Bullet is definitely my NEW FAVORITE gadget in the kitchen…

STRAWBERRY MOUSSE

½ cup heavy cream
¼ cup strawberry sauce or even strawberry jam or preserves I think would do too
A squirt of honey

 

  1. Add all the ingredients to the small container of The Magic Bullet. Screw on the Flat blade.
  2. Whip for about 30 seconds until the cream whips up. The Bullet sound will change when it’s done.

 

I guess you could also do this with a hand mixer if you do not have a Magic Bullet around.

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