Spanish Recipes 1st Bloggiversary!!!!!!!!

WELCOME TO MY ONE YEAR OLD BLOG!!! Thanks for dropping by :D. I'm so excited to share this with you all... and when I say this, I mean: a cocktail, some fiesta balloons and a handmade video where you will finally see my face! Taan!!!! Hear the drums?

I had a video made, but as you may have guessed it's pat of the data inside my PC, so I managed to perform another video with photos, not the same, I know, because in this one I'm not singing... lol, but I wanted to show you all the face behind the cartoon :D

I'm so excited Spanish Recipes is one year old!!!! Please head to the terrace and have a drink: water melon+mango+rum, or vodka if you choose so.


Ok, let me tell you that I've been working like a maniac to have this ready for you on Friday :D. All my data is still in the Pc and it stays in the IUC (intensive unit care). I know I promised a Cava's Sangria... but, I'm soooo sorry I didn't have the time to prepare it, but the promise stays and maybe during August you'll get it :D. I've been taking photos, editing recipe pictures, trying to get the movie together and of course there's always problems... have you ever started something in a hurry and came out ok at first instance?

I've tried to make it funny... and silly! and informative in just one day... just hope you like it :D

Let me take a sip! Hey, don't be shy, help yourself, there's only three on the table but the kitchen counter is full of them!


Click my profile cartoon image to see the video. Thanks!

Hope you all have a wonderful summer holiday!!! I might be posting or I might be not, I might be cooking or I might not, I might be drinking cocktails by the pool, I might be having a great time, and I might be missing you all!!! I'm so happy I met you all... blogging and food has given my life a great switch ;-)

See you all in September for sure :D

Restraining trans fats in Massachusetts restaurants

The Massachusetts Senate shortly may take up a bill passed by the House (HB 4346), which would ban artificial trans fats in restaurants. The small amount of naturally occurring trans fats in food would not be affected. Like saturated fats, or perhaps worse, trans fats appear to affect blood cholesterol in a way that increases the risk of heart disease. Because heart disease is a leading killer, a small improvement in risk can save many lives.

Senate President Therese Murray will try to move this bill shortly, perhaps today, according to David Seltz, a senior policy advisor. (A wonderful thing about State legislatures is that citizens can easily place a call directly to relevant staff on issues like this. Try it yourself on an issue you care about!)

The bill is supported by the American Diabetes Association, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the American College of Cardiology, the American Academy of Pediatrics, MassPIRG, and the Massachusetts Hospital Association. In the House, HB 4346 was supported by long-time public health and nutrition champion Peter Koutoujian.

Senate minority leader Richard Tisei may oppose the bill. An earlier opinion piece by him worried about "nanny state" implications. In the case of trans fats, these concerns are misplaced. Artificial trans fats are a recent invention with little merit in terms of the taste and food quality goals that consumers seek to achieve by expressing their freedom of choice. Trans fats are disappearing from manufactured foods already, because new labeling rules reveal which food products contain them, and food companies quickly realized that no consumers want trans fats. A similar approach doesn't work in restaurants, because consumers do not have such easy access to nutrition information, so they can't protect their own interests in the restaurant marketplace without government action.

In many cases, good government policy should defer to consumers, but for trans fats the simple and economically reasonable approach is to do away with them. I hope Senator Tisei keeps raising these considerations on other food policy issues, but relaxes his opposition in the case of trans fats.

Interesting blogs

I occasionally get emails about interesting blogs.

Here is chomposaurus, which features astonishing quantities of meat.

Here is Stirring and Whirring, a journey of cookbook writing.

In case you were wondering (I did), chomposaurus is not sponsored by the beef and pork checkoff programs, and Stirring and Whirring's campaign to replace high-fructose corn syrup in soda was not sponsored by cane sugar industry interests.

Far out

The fascinating food behavior researcher Brian Wansink, who was appointed last year to head USDA's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion (see earlier post), certainly breaks the mold of previous holders of that position (see my video interview with him last year). The CNPP is responsible for the Dietary Guidelines, MyPyramid, and the Thrifty Food Plan.

An electronic mailing this week from Wansink's Mindless Eating site, with his name at the bottom, invited readers to check out a program of web classes called HealthTeleClass.

The "renowned" teachers include Dr. Tea (owner of an "Herbal Emporium" in LA) ...


... John Basedow (a "fitness celebrity") and John Rowley (a "motivational guru") ...


... Karen Curry (a "long time student of prosperity teachings," who has used them "to create miracles in her own life") and Brad Yates ("internationally known for his creative and often humorous use of EFT").


I don't even know what EFT stands for, unless it is Electronic Funds Transfer.

I am sure these are excellent teachers, and I think it is safe to guess that no endorsement by USDA of this seminar series was implied. Still, I wonder if the upcoming revision of the Dietary Guidelines will be a little less staid than usual.

Citrics' Marinated Tuna

My old PC broke!!!! And I wanted to have a party in my blog on Friday... some of the things I need are in the PC and don't know if it will be fixed before Friday... Imagine snakes, skulls and pigs coming out of my mouth! I'll try to come up with a solution... I hope!
You all know by now that I'm getting kind of fried here! The weather is humit and hot and I just cannot find enough ways to avoid the heat. The kitchen is Red Inferno these days and I only feel comfortable when I open the fridge!

So, it feels great to "cook" something without using the stove and thanks to this months' Joust ingredients here you have a F.R.E.S.H. dish in capital letters!

Flavourful, Raw, Eadible any time, Simple and Healthy. Mr. Kalofagas has chosen the best ingredients for me this month! Thank you darling Peter :D. Eventhough, this is my first time with sesame and coriander there's been no problem at all in using them and I'm thinking of adding these two new condiments to my dishes :D.

This is one of the reasons why I Do Love the LeftoverQueen's Joust: I always learn something new and it's such a wonderful challenge! All entries are top level... Hey, I mean it! Please get over there and check! This month, I know that I have nothing to do there... just take a look at Eating Club's and More than a burn toast's recipes, to mention a couple of recipes that left my mouth open for more than 10 seconds ;-)


But I keep on trying every month and hoping that one day I will get that Joust's apron. If you like my dish, please get in the Forum and vote for me... I'll be forever grateful :D

Now, this dish might look a bit Asian, but I got inspired in a Spanish Cooking Magazine... well it must be globalization... anyway, it's so fresh and easy that you should all try it!

Ingredients for 4 servings: 600 grs of SuperFresh Tuna, 1 fresh lime, 1 fresh lemon, 1 fresh orange, some toasted sesame seeds, 4 extra virgin olive oil tablespoons, thick sea salt, 2 tablespoons of soya sauce, some fresh coriander springs, black ground pepper.

• To avoid fresh fish parasits, first freeze the tuna!
• Defroze inside the fridge.
• Ask your fishmonger to clean and cut the tuna in dices and take away the fat and skin. When you get home, wash under tap water and place over kitchen paper to leave there all its blood.
• Meanwhile, get the citrics juice. Strain and reserve.
• Cut half the skin of the fruits in long strips and take away their white part because that could turn the dish bitter (the lime was really hard... I did what I could).
• Place the tuna dices in a big bowl and pour the citrics juice on top. Take half of the citrics skin's strips and pour inside the bowl too.
• Add some salt and pepper and reserve in the fridge for 20 minutes. After 10 minutes have passed turn the tuna so that it gets the citrics marination all over.
• Wash and dry the coriander springs. Reserve.
• Prepare a vinagrette with the olive oil and soya sauce, some coriander leaves, a bit of salt and pepper. Stir and add the other half of citric's skin. Let it cool down in the fridge.

And now there's two ways to eat this dish:

1st.- Strain the tuna dices and place in a long dish, sprinkle some sesame seeds on top and dress with the vinagrette sauce. Decorate with some citrics skin and coriander leaves.

2nd.- Strain the tuna dices and place in a new bowl. Mix half the citrics juice with the vinagrette, stir and pour on top of the tuna. Sprinkle with the sesame seeds and decorate with citrics skin and coriander leaves.

Have it cold with a fresh and young fruity wine... that would be my choice! Cheers :D

FTC estimates the extent of food marketing to children

Using unprecedented data collected through subpoenas to 44 major food and beverage companies, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today estimated that $1.6 billion was spent in 2006 on food marketing to children.

The FTC study, which was requested by Congress, will provide a benchmark or baseline for evaluating marketing changes under the current system of industry self-regulation, especially the effectiveness of the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative established in 2006.

That Initiative has been criticized as weak and voluntary, and several major companies including Yum! Brands and Nestle have declined to participate. FTC officials said today that they believed that the Nestle company will announce its participation in the Initiative later today.

The FTC officials said all food companies should join this self-regulatory Initiative and, moreover, that the voluntary company pledges under the Initiative should be seen just as a starting point. Lydia Parnes, who leads the FTC Division of Consumer Protection, quoted SpiderMan: "With great power comes great responsibility."

The data used by the FTC are different and in some ways better than anything else used previously in research on this topic. The FTC subpoenas asked companies to account for not just traditional "measured media," such as television and print advertising, but also the whole gamut of commonly unmeasured marketing techniques. Furthermore, FTC required breakdowns by food category.

FTC reported today that television advertising was 46% of total expenses for marketing to children. Internet advertising is very important in marketing to children, but comparatively inexpensive to produce, accounting for only 5% of expenses. Premiums or prizes were also a modest percentage, unless one counted the toys in fast food meals to children, in which case premiums ranked second only to television advertising.

Mary Engle, who leads the FTC's Division of Advertising Practices, described how companies integrate across media types in supporting a coherent branded message. Children might see an ad on television, for example, and have the message reinforced by packaging on a supermarket shelf. Or, the television ad might send the child toward more marketing at an internet site. The description makes clear that mild restrictions in one setting, such as a pledge to advertise only comparatively healthy products in a particular branded line on television shows for children, can be overcome by using similar branding and images that promote sales of the whole line, including lucrative less healthy products, in a wide variety of other settings.

Updates (late afternoon 7/29):

-- Are the FoxNews.com headline writers are a bit weak on the math, or am I missing a subtle distinction of some sort? "Federal Trade Commission: Kids Target of $1 Billion in Food Ads." But what's $600 million between friends?

-- A press release and copy of the report are now on the FTC site.

Playing with Raw Fish, Fruits, Colours, Textures and Flavours

Humid weather kills me! I'm fine with heat, but getting my arms stuck at the table, my legs at the car seat... bla... it's disgusting!!! If heat is too much, then I can behave a bit like Hulk! I don't get that green though, but I do get pretty aggressive and unsocial.

So here I am looking for remedies to pass this heat:
* A dive in the pool is always a good solution but I don't get a pool near every time I need it.
* Avoiding the heat of the stove and oven is a great way to cook now,therefore, salads, fruits, and raw fish are perfect elements to play with!

Since it's time for sales, here you have two dishes for the price of one ;-). Herring black eggs on Salmon tower and Fruits tricoloured flag.

Let's start with the Salmon tower. Depending on the people you'll have for dinner, or lunch, buy a piece of fresh salmon (calculate 100 grs per person), 1 fresh cantaloupe melon (or a ripe and sweet one), a can of herring black eggs.

Cut the salmon in dices and the melon too and place some herring eggs on top. Sprinkle some sea thick salt between the melon and salmon. I bet you cannot find a shorter recipe in the whole blogosphere :D.
Experience the salty and sweet and also the different textures... Mmmmmm.

And for the dessert you will need some figs, the truth is that I didn't count them, some kiwis, yogurts and sugar.

Have some glasses ready and peel and smash the figs in a bowl with a fork. Take some and place in the bottom of the glass. Get some sugar in the natural yogurt and stir. Make the white level with it and third, place the peeled kiwis in a food processor and blend. Use them for the green third level.

Place in the fridge and let it cool down! Before you eat it, mix it all.
Wednesday's post will be my Joust's entry and on Friday... you better come over here on Friday if you want to celebrate with me my bloggiversary!!! Please do, I'll be showing you all something you have never seen!!!! And you might me asking in the distance.... what? what?, and I'll might be answering... aaaaahhhh you will see if you come here and celebrate... there will be some music, some balloons, some food, and something to laugh at... the ingredients for a good party :D... there will also be a cold wonderful cava's Spanish Sangria waiting for you ;-)

Ajo Blanco

GARLIC POWER!!!!

Ajo means garlic and Blanco, white... easy and simple name for a simple dish! Back to the origins of this dish, as happens with many others too, the idea to use garlic, almonds, bread and olive oil came from the use of handy and cheap products. Andalusia is a southern Spanish region known for its wonderful Olive oil, its beautiful beaches, its shinny white village houses, its history... A dream to visit!

Even though the name of the dish might indicate the use of lots of garlics, it's not the case, you will only need 1 for the Ajo Blanco Soup, instead, the main ingredients here are the almonds and the bread.

Garlic has been known through the years for its amazing properties, it's a: vasodilator, hypotensive, anti platelet, lipid lowering, hypoglycemic, bactericidal, fungicidal, antiviral and vermifuge... a pharmacy in your garden!!!
Almonds also have the following properties: laxative, anti-inflammatory, emollient and healing.

Have one bowl of Ajo blanco and you will get indestructible!!! ;-)

Ingredients for 4 servings: 75 grs of raw almonds (not toasted), 1 garlic clove, 100 grs of the white part of the bread (not the crust), 6 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, 2 tablespoons of Jerez Vinegar, 1 1/2 liters of mineral water, toasted bread crumbs.

• Place the bread inside a big bowl full of water.
• Get a small pot with water over the heat and when it boils add the almonds. Let them boil for only 30 seconds. Strain and rinse them. Take their peel away and reserve.
• Peel the garlic and place it inside a mortar with some salt. Smash it and add the almonds. Smash until you get an homogeneous paste.
• Add the bread previously drained from the water to the mortar. Stir all ingredients until the mix well together.
• Add the olive oil little by little while you keep on stirring. Once the paste has absorbed the oil, add the vinegar little by little. Now pour some of the water until you get an emulsion.
• Pour the emulsion into a soup recipient and add the rest of the water. Taste and add salt to fit your taste. Stir and place in the fridge.
• Eat cold. Just before serving the dish, toast some bread and add to the Ajo blanco. You can also fry the bread crumbs in some garlic oil. Place over kitchen paper so that they leave the oil there and add to the Ajo blanco soup.

Hope your partner, boyfriend, girlfriend also enjoys ajo ;-)

High food prices

I didn't notice until this morning that a Reuters report a couple weeks ago quoted me on the food price dilemma:

Ultimately, economists point out that demand for food is simply rising as the world's population grows along with its appetite for higher quality food.

"Higher food prices are here to stay. I don't know if that means that the current high rate of inflation will continue, I just wouldn't expect a substantial retrenchment," said Parke Wilde, an agricultural economist at Tufts University.

"It's a clear signal to people that resources are scarce."

Of course, my guess about future trends is just a guess. The more interesting question is whether an economist's understanding of what prices are makes any sense to anybody else. When I see food prices go up, I think not just of the hardship they cause -- though I do think of that, too -- but also of the signal the prices send about choosing foods that use fewer resources and hence cost less. I also think of the farmers around the world, including some of the poorest people in the world, who benefit from high prices. The tough question, on which comments are welcome, is: "Are high food prices unambiguously bad?"

AAEA / ACCI conference in Orlando, July 27-29

We noted earlier that the AAEA is holding its annual conference this year jointly with the American Council on Consumer Interests (ACCI), in Orlando, FL, this coming week: July 27-29.

To better describe the breadth of its member interests, AAEA is also changing its name from the American Agricultural Economics Association to the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association. The association will keep the same acronym.

I helped organize a symposium session, Hard Hitting and Well-Informed: A Conversation Between Food Safety Policy Advocates and Researchers. A section of the press release from Consumers Union and Consumer Federation of America:

Orlando, FL—Consumer Federation of America and Consumers Union food safety experts will discuss how new food technologies are also creating potential new risks for Americans at the 2008 ACCI & AAEA Joint Annual Conference, the nation’s largest gathering of consumer researchers and agricultural economists, taking place at the Caribe Royale Resort in Orlando, Florida from July 27 to 29. At 1:00 p.m. on Tuesday, July 29, CFA’s Chris Waldrop and CU’s Dr. Michael Hansen will identify the myriad food challenges facing U.S. consumers in a session in the Boca II room entitled: “Hard Hitting and Well Informed: A Conversation Between Food Safety Policy Advocates and Researchers.”

Food Safety: USDA and FDA Policies toward Bacterial Contamination in Meat
Chris Waldrop, Director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America, will discuss needed efforts to prevent food-borne illness; providing consumers with better information about recalled food; labeling foods with their country of origin; and establishing a food traceability system that can track foods from the farm to the table. He will outline how consumer advocates will present their case for needed regulations before Congress and federal agencies.

New Food Production Technologies-New Risks
Dr. Michael Hansen, Senior Scientist at Consumers Union, the non-profit publisher of Consumer Reports, will discuss genetically engineered food and pharma crops; meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring; and the use of nanotechnology in food and in food contact substances. He will identify the scientific, ethical, social and safety (human and environmental) issues raised by these new technologies—which are little known by consumers.

The Consumer Policy Symposium, co-sponsored by ACCI and AAEA, is the first in a series that will bring academic consumer researchers and policy activists together to discuss ways to strengthen consumer advocacy through sound, up-to-date research.... More information on this conference and a conference program can be found at www.consumerinterests.org and www.aaea.org/2008am.

The AAEA's Food Safety and Nutrition Section will have its annual meeting over breakfast early Tuesday morning. The section's "track" of symposium sessions on interdisciplinary topics related to food, nutrition, and economics, is listed on the section website.

Thomas Hager: The Alchemy of Air

Thomas Hager shares an essay from his forthcoming book, The Alchemy of Air, which explores the implications of the 1909 invention of the Haber-Bosch process for creating nitrogen fertilizer. Without it, for better or worse, there would be no modern agriculture. Here is a sample.

Before Haber-Bosch, there were only two ways to get nitrogen out of the air and into food. One was lightning. But the most important one was the slow, steady process by which a few types of bacteria ate atmospheric nitrogen, broke it apart, and reformed it into substances plants could eat. The process is called bacterial nitrogen fixation. Some of these bacteria set up homes in nodules attached to the roots of plants, notably legumes like peas and beans, forming a symbiotic relationship in which they exchanged their fixed nitrogen for sugars and other food provided by the plants. These bacteria, working for millions of years, slowly built a stockpile of fixed nitrogen that fed most of the earth’s plants, which fed all the animals. Life on earth depended on that stock of fixed nitrogen.

Haber-Bosch turbocharged the process. Today, Haber-Bosch plants produce an amount of fixed nitrogen equivalent to that produced naturally, doubling the amount available on earth. While this massive change in natural cycles means little to the basic composition of the atmosphere -- there is so much N₂ in the air that the amount used by Haber-Bosch is negligible – it does mean a great deal to the biosphere, the places on the earth where life dwells....

Green Gazpacho - A Dive into Freshness

I think that this week is going to be the Could Soups/Puree week! Monday: Carrot's Puree, Wednesday: Green Gazpacho and Friday: Ajo blanco, a typical Spanish dish, original from Andalusia, as Gazpacho is, but made out of Almonds, garlic and bread.

Back to our Green Dive, have it as a first dish or appetizer or just to keep the heat away. This is my first time using a bulb fennel, but I've seen in your blogs that is not unknown to you.

Fennel is a herb that connects me to my childhood, its smell takes me back to green fields with uptight little snails in fennel branches and butterflies all over and me running and capturing them! However, I never used it in my kitchen, but there's always a first time for everything!


Ingredients for 4 servings: 4 celery branches (the whiter ones and no leaves), 1 fennel bulb, 2 cucumbers, 30 grs. of pine nuts, 2 tablespoons of honey, 8 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, 2 branches of fresh mint, salt and black ground pepper.

• Clean the celery branches and cut in small pieces, peel the cucumbers and cut too, cut the fennel bulb and the mint leaves.
• Place in a food processor and blend until you get a fine texture. You might need to add some water (I added 1 glass).
• Pour the honey and the pine nuts and blend it.
• Sift it so that you get a thick soup or a light puree.
• Add the olive oil and stir (do not use the food processor).
• Add salt and black ground pepper to fit your taste.
• Place in the fridge and add a mint leave on top. Serve cold.

Enjoy it!


I'm submitting this recipe to Grace's blog: A Southern Grace and her Event - Beat the Heat (what a great idea!). I can't wait to see the round-up full of fresh recipes to help pass the summer heat. Hey! Head over her blog and contribute with a summer recipe :D

Cold Carrot's Puree with Iberian Acorn Ham

Carrots are one of the first vegetables I started eating as a kid. When my first teeth started to show, my mom would always give me a peeled and fresh carrot to calm my gums.

This is such a wonderful vegetable, contains A vitamin and it's good for the skin and the sight. You can have this puree hot or cold... guess how we had it ;-) Yes... cold, of course.


Ingredients for 4 servings: 1 kilo of carrots, 2 green onions, 2 leeks, a spring of celery, 50 grs of butter and 50 grs of olive oil, 4 slices of Iberian Acorn ham, 1 can of evaporated milk Ideal (200 grs), a dry ham bone, some salt.

• Peel the carrots, cut in slices and reserve.
• Prepare a stock with 1 onion, the leeks, the ham bone and 3/4 of a liter of water. Place all ingredients in cold water and boil for 1 1/2 hours at the lowest heat.
• Meanwhile, pour the oil in a sauce pan and the butter. With low heat, add the carrots and the other chopped onion. Stir for 5 minutes.
• Add the stock which has been previously strained, also add the evaporated milk and let it all simmer for 30 minutes.
• Taste and add salt to fit your palate.
• Use a food processor to get an homogeneous texture. Reserve and when cold, place in the fridge.
• Cut the Iberian Acorn Ham in small pieces. Place a sauce pan in the heat and when hot, add the ham. When crusty, take away from the sauce pan and pour over the cold carrot's puree.

The sweetness of the carrots and the Iberian Acorn ham make this simple dish a winner during hot summer days :D
I feel so lazy these days... still doubting if I will keep on posting during August or not. I'll be away from home and won't have a fast Internet connection, so I will probably post less than usual... I'll see. Anyway, what I'll do for sure is cook and will keep the recipes and pictures for September and there will also be some restaurants recommendations :D. Oh and before the end of this month... there's a BIG surprise in Spanish Recipes... stay tunned :D

I'm submitting this recipe to Linda from Got Milk? She has an event going on about Breastfeeding and since I'm a big supporter of this method and breastfeeded my child for 9 months, would love to take this opportunity to encourage all women with babies to try this antique, wonderful, primary, touching, vital and sweet way to feed your babies :D.

There's still time until beginning of August and the dish should contain milk in it. Please head over her blog for sweet milk recipes.

MK Olsen

I absolutely love Mary Kate's latest outfits. She always wears comfy looking oversized tees or pullovers with high heels, huge jewelry and messy hair.
I whish I could pull off that style just like her! She always creates a great outfit out of a few simple garments.

Let me think if you love or dislike her style.

Stuffed Purple Eggplant

I thought I had all ingredients and everything I needed to cook this dish... but so often I find that one or two things are missing. Does it happen to you too? I hate it! I hate unexpected changes... This time I looked for my kitchen silver paper and... there was none left!!! Aaaaaahhh, ok everything has a solution and my "smart" solution, this time, was to cook the dish without the silver paper! Ha!

Two small problems showed after the cooking: 1st.- the eggplant "shell" wasn't cooked enough and 2nd.- the nice purple colour was lost. Well, I know what I have to do the next time ;-). However, the stuffing was sooooo good! Easy and supertasty :D
Ingredients for 4 servings: 4 eggplants or aubergines, 200 grs. of pasta (smaller sizes are preferable), 1/2 kilo of red tomatoes (aprox. 4), 1 garlic clove, olive oil, 4 anchovies in salt fillets, 50 grs of black olives without their seed, 1 teaspoon of hot red paprika, a spring of fresh parsley and salt.

• Cut the hat of the eggplants and empty their pulp, cut in small dices and reserve in a strainer, sprinkle some salt over so that it leaves the sower juices away. Pour a bit of oil on the eggplant shells and rub all over as well as some inside and some salt.
• Turn oven on at 170ºC.
• Place the eggplants shells with their hats on in the middle rack and with silver kitchen paper on them. Have for 30 minutes.
• Meanwhile, take a sauce pan and pour some olive oil (5-6 tablespoons), medium heat and add the eggplant dices (they should have lost their sower juice after 30 minutes). Stir and add the tomatoes in small dices too. Stir for 5 minutes and add the hot paprika. Stir another 5 minutes at medium heat.
• Boil some salty water in a pot and pour your pasta. Follow package instructions and drain. Refresh with tap cold water and add some oil so that it doesn't stick together.
• Back to the sauce pan, when you see the eggplant is done add the anchovies thinnely sliced and the black olives cut in circumferences. Stir for only 30 seconds. Add the pasta. Turn heat off. Chop the parsley and add it too. Keep on stirring until flavours and ingredients mix well.
• Fill the eggplants' shells and back to the oven for 10 minutes at 220ºC.
• Maybe one eggplant is not enough for 1 person, it all depends on their size and hunger ;-)

Keep your heart healthy and have this cooked at home! Olives, olive oil and anchovies contain nonsaturated fats that are super for you♥

I'm sending this recipe to Once upon a Feast, Ruth's blog and her Event Presto Pasta Nights. Head over there for all kind of imaginable pasta combinations! Great for summer salads' ideas and other pasta dishes :D

Figs and Foie... Something to die for

Only 3 ingredients and some bread and you'll become the Magician Superstar of your kitchen, house, neighbourhood, village, town... get the idea? Just say the magic words: Abra Ka Dabra, or Hockus Pockus or Alakazaaaam! and make sure to have the ingredients, if you don't, the magic won't work ;-). But, if you have them, get ready to experience a palate sensorial climax!!!

I'm assuming you like contrasts because this is the point of the dish: sweet and salty together in perfect harmony. Make sure you have Foie Micuit, some Figs, Maldon Salt and some crunchy Bread. Spread the foie on top of the bread (be generous), add some maldon salt on it, peel the figs and cut as you see in the picture and place on top. Sprinkle with just a bit more of salt.

You can have 20 like this done in no time!!!! Any parties in sight? This could be one of the appetizers. Your guests will be delighted :D


First time we dared to leave our baby with my parents she was one year and a half and such a good little girl. My man and I escaped to a beautiful XVII - XVIII century Castle in the middle of nowhere but still, near the beach, with amazing suites, rooms, gardens and most of all amazing owners and cook!

This place will be forever in my heart: the food was a symphony to our senses, the suite was soooo beautifully decorated, the surroundings were peaceful and bright... Abra Ka Dabra... Magic! Antonio Ferrer and his wife Teresa Escayola run L'Odissea de L'Empordà with Art!

He is one of the best cooks I ever met: Original, fun, daring... a great experience! When he started with his first restaurant, many of his clients were artists, therefore, didn't have much money, but they paid with sculptures and paintings. Now the Castle is like an eclectic museum... a wonder!


Some years have passed since that first time (10 1/2) and I still remember a phrase from Antonio. We were talking about food, of course, and he was complaining about the people that would ask for a complete wonderful menu for the adults and ask for macaroni or sausages and chips for the kids... he exclaimed... give foie to the kids, they are not stupid and they will appreciate it, give foie to the kids!!! He was so true! Give foie to your kids, teach their palates and they will be able to appreciate and enjoy all kinds of diverse food.

This is my entry for Eat Healthy - Protein Rich Contest. Sangeeth from Art of Cooking Indian Food has this contest going on until July the 30th, please join in or simply visit her blog!

100 grs. of foie contain 518 calories, 33% of water, 4 to 7% of protein, 10% of Glucids and 42 to 50% of fat. Contrary to what's been said until now, recent research has proved that the majority of the fats are not saturated (only 28,6% are saturated), the rest are the "good" fat that won't increase our cholesterol levels. However, this is a very satiating food and eating a lot would do no good.

Hummus Magnificus!

Hummus sounds like Latin to me, but is it Latin? Nope! It's Arab and it means garbanzos or chickpeas... the main ingredient of the dish. Believe it or not, this is the first time I cook it and I took the recipe from a Spanish food magazine, so if there's any Arabs reading this post, please let me know if there's mistakes in the recipe.

I must say I didn't enjoy the flavour of the lemon and the garlic together in the hummus. It was a bit strange to me but my husband had his portion and mine too!!! So, I guess the dish was ok.

I had to put this title to the dish because every time I hear the word hummus, it has to be followed by magnificus... you'll think I'm crazy but, did you see Monthy Python's Life of Bryan? Do you remember the part where Pontius Pilate is giving amnesty to some prisoners? The crowd calls the ones that have a letter in their names that he cannot pronounce... it's a hilarious scene. Or that one about Bigus Dickus, such a great laugh; I'm not going to make any comments on that name ;-).

Somehow my brain connects words that might sound Latin with that movie. If you don't know what I'm talking about follow the link that will take you to one of the films scenes in youtube.

The ingredients for the dish are very handy and if you don't feel like boiling the chickpeas, use some canned ones.
Ingredients for 4 servings: 4 cups full of cooked chickpeas, 2 or 3 tablespoon of tahini (sesame paste), 2 lemons, 2 garlic cloves, 1/2 teaspoon of cumin powder, 2 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil, 1/2 teaspoon of red sweet paprika, salt and pepper.

• Peel the garlics and pour in a recipient together with the lemons' juice. Add the chickpeas, the tahini paste, the cumin, some salt and a bit of pepper.
  
• Use your food processor until you get an homogeneous paste. Fill up the dishes and place in the fridge for 30 minutes minimum. Remember to cover with transparent film.
  
• Just before serving sprinkle the sweet paprika on top and add some drops of olive oil too.

Hummus Magnificus goes well with fish or meat, but always have some warm bread to eat with it :D

And is there anyone more Magnificus than Ivy? She has awarded me with 2 more fantastic blog awards and from the bottom of my heart ... THANKS SO MUCH IVY!!! You are tremendous, fantasticous and generous :D. For those of you not in the know, Ivy has a great blog: Kopiaste full of Greek recipes and some Cypriot ones, hurry to her place and you will enjoy her food as much as I do :D



Who do I want to give A Giant Bear Hug? Aaaahhhh there's so many of you I would love to meet and give a long nice hug to... such as: Mallory, Jen, Jenn, Courtney, Valli... there's many more but, these are the rules, only 5 and their blogs:

Mallory from the Salty Cod: Please take 5 minutes to visit her, she's brilliant and vital.

Jen from A2write: So warm, helpful and sweet.

Jenn from The LeftoverQueen: my darling Jenn... what else can I say about her... a loving woman!

Courtney from CoCo Cooks: she's always there for you with nice words and good feelings.

Valli from More than a burnt toast: you deserve a Kodiac hug, aren't these the biggest ones? Who doesn't know Valli?


And now the blogging with a purpose award I'm giving it to the following wonderful people: Ben, Amy, Peter G, Katie and Giz.

Ben from What's Cooking gave his blog a new dimension some time ago and he has achieved his goal (from my point of view) A super complete blog!

Amy and Jonny from We are never full. They are never full and I'm never tired of visiting them. Great cooks with funny post casts.

Peter from Souvlaki for the soul. He had the purpose to change his blog, and man, what a change! Beautiful new design and wonderful new pictures and recipes!

Katie from Thyme for cooking. I love her place and her stories and her recipes... she surely has a purpose :D

Giz from Equal opportunity kitchen. A big hearted woman with a busy kitchen and great events going on!


Enjoy!

USDA will identify retailers involved in meat recalls

... and Elanor at the Ethicurean explains the information economics.

Score one for access to information.

The USDA announced today that starting next month, it will publicize the names of retail stores that have received shipments of recalled meat and poultry. Up until now, recalls were issued for slaughtering or processing companies; consumers were informed that meat processed at Hallmark-Westland packing plants might have some downer properties, or that Topps ground beef could give you an extra bacterial bang for your buck. If you were actually interested in information that could help you avoid these supplies, though, you’d be out of luck. As Marc reported in a February post, Topps meat was packaged and sold nationally under no fewer than eleven different brand names. And the USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service wasn’t going to tell you where the contaminated meat might have been purchased....

The information is particularly important in light of the fact that the USDA can’t actually require companies to recall contaminated meat; they can only ask nicely and issue public warnings. (See Marc’s post for detailed info.) At least they’re giving consumers a shot at self-advocacy.

Thanks for pointing this out, Ashley.

Tell me exactly how bloated ...

A reader drew our attention to this funny paragraph of today's Washington Post story on restaurant menu board labeling in San Francisco. The California Restaurant Association had written a verbose complaint to oppose new labeling requirements.

Warming to the challenge, city attorney Dennis Herrera issued a statement calling the 59-page complaint "nearly as bloated as Burger King's Triple Whopper Sandwich with Cheese (1,230 calories, 82 grams of fat)." Further noting that a federal judge upheld a similar regulation in New York after a trade group asserted that it violated the First Amendment, Herrera termed the irony "as rich as an order of Outback Steakhouse Aussie Cheese Fries with Ranch Dressing (2,900 calories, 182 grams of fat)."

That's bare-knuckled politics! "Agree to the new labeling rules," the city attorney seems to be saying, "or we will use the spotlight on the resulting controversy to remind the public what kind of product you sell."

Will work for food

Washington Post cartoonist Ann Telnaes has really mastered multimedia. She uses images, simple animation, and real-world audio from political speeches to craft cruelly effective political satire. Here is her take on food and fuel prices for Independence Day, but the rest of her recent work is even better.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria (MRSA) in pork?

Ashley from Epicurean Ideal points our attention toward seattlePI.com's online coverage of the dangerous Staph bacteria that is resistant to many antibiotics.

We know that some strains of MRSA – methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus – are extremely dangerous. Dr. Monina Klevens, of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, examined the cases of the disease reported in hospitals, schools and prisons in one year and extrapolated that "94,360 invasive MRSA infections occurred in the United States in 2005; these infections were associated with death in 18,650 cases."

Earlier his year, Dr. Scott Weese, from the Department of Pathobiology at the Ontario Veterinary College told those attending the International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases at the CDC that there was a problem. He and his colleagues had found MRSA in 10 percent of 212 samples of pork chops and ground pork bought in four Canadian provinces. Picture

"I think it is very likely that the situation is the same in the U.S.," he told me in a phone interview.

"We've proven MRSA is in pigs and the marketed pork in Canada, and we know that it's also in U.S. pigs. It's inconceivable that it wouldn't also be found in the pork products from those pigs."

This raised a bunch of obvious questions, such as, who exactly is checking to see if antibiotic-resistant staph bacteria is in the 762 million pounds of Canadian pork that's imported into the U.S. each year?

The answer appears to be no one.

It should be the USDA.

One question is whether heavy use of antibiotics in industrial pork farming contributes to the problem. Since the bacteria can be killed by cooking, another question is whether it is still dangerous for people who handle raw pork in the kitchen (perhaps by touching their mouth or eyes while cooking, for example). See also About.com.

Stuffed Squids in a Black Inked Sea

Dear foodie bloggers friends, I'm so sorry I don't have the time lately to come to your blogs and visit... I feel so bad about it! Hopefully, hopefully... next week I'll be able to spend more time in front of the computer. However, you are all in my mind and heart♥.

Today, the first thing I did this morning... well, right after the 5 more minutes please, and preparing and eating breakfast was to check my bank account through Internet. If I had swallowed all Frank's Hot Sauce I bet I would have felt better than I did looking to my extract account... They charged me 8,50 Euros for... for what? I'm doing everything through Internet, I don't go to their office and make them work for me, they don't spend one minute with my questions or anything!!! And they charged me 8,50 Euros under the concept of "commission for keeping the account"... unbelievable!
I guess all kind of horrible things came out from my mouth: big pigs, crossed bones, lightnings, pirates skulls... like in cartoon characters, you know what I mean?

I've been a good client of this bank for more than 20 years now. So I changed my morning plans and went to my bank's office. I was ready to move my account from there and put it somewhere else, no matter the work I would have doing that change. I was ready to squeeze the bank's boss' neck with my hands. I was ready for the fight! Have you got a saying in English equivalent to: la gota que colma el vaso - the drop that makes the glass water overflow? It was a good thing my husband came with me because he was a bit more calm.

We did talk with the boss and he just said: yes, that's a lot of money for nothing but this is how it works, however, I'll pass the order that from now on you don't pay any commissions in your accounts... he even ordered that our visa commission should only be 3 Euros per year, instead of 70!!! So there was finally no blood involved in that this morning ;-). Another Spanish saying says: Quien no llora no mama - If you don't cry you don't get what you want (more or less).

There's no blood involved in this recipe but there's a lot of ink instead. I can't imagine writing all my recipes with ink, how many grams of ink should I need? For this dish I used only 4 grams but when mixed with water or oil you can get a great amount!
Would you like to try this dish? It takes a bit of time but since I got so mad in the morning I wanted a good lunch meal and here you have it too! Just in case you have to go and fight with your bank!

Flavours combine so good together here: the shrimps, the squid, the ink... super flavourful; give it a try :D

Ingredients for 4 servings: 4 medium squids, 100 grs of rice, 1 green pepper, 4 medium onions, 2 garlic cloves, 8 shrimps, 1 spurt of cognac, salt, olive oil, 100 grs of dry white wine, 4 grs of squids' ink.

• Clean the squids or ask your fishmonger to do it for you. Take the skin off and turn them inside out to wash them properly. Take their "bone" away too. Cut the legs and wings and reserve aside. And dry the empty bodies when cleaned and washed.


• In a sauce pan add some olive oil (5 spoontable) and fry the cleaned shrimps, pour a spurt of cognac (be careful you don't get burned!) Shake the sauce pan. When the flame dissappears, add salt and have for 1 minute maximum. Reserve.


• In that same oil add the chopped onions (2) and when transparent, add the chopped green pepper, when it softens, add the minced garlic and when you start to feel its aroma, add the legs and wings of the squid cut in small pieces.


• You might need to add some more oil, feel free to do so. Have all ingredients simmering at low fire and add some salt to fit your taste.


• Meanwhile, in a different pot add some olive oil (5 tablesp) and the other 2 chopped onions. Have it covered and at the lowest heat.


• Peel the shrimps and add to the sauce pan with the rest of ingredients. Stir for a couple of minutes at low heat so that all flavours mix.


• In a small pot boil the rice with some water. Have it boiling for 10 minutes only. Strain and add to the sauce pan. Stir for one minute and reserve.


• Stuff the squids with the rice and shrimps mixture. Use a toothpick to avoid the stuffing fall out of the squids.


• Back to the onion pot, add the stuffed squids inside (the onion should be soft and transparent) and pour the wine inside too. Have it all simmering for 45 minutes at the lowest heat and covered. Turn the squids from time to time so that they get equally cooked.


• Take the squids out of the pot and reserve. Add the ink to the juices that remain in the pot and stir at low heat for 45 seconds. Pour all the pot juices in your blender and get a black homogeneous sauce. Reserve.


• Prepare the dish as you see in the pictures or in any other manner you wish. If you like seafood, this is your meal! You can eat it warm or cold, again... up to you!

Enjoy it!

Nutrient labeling for alcoholic beverages

Quick nutrition science quiz. After carbs (4 kcal per gram), protein (4 kcal per gram), and fats (9 kcal per gram), what is the only other major source of human food energy? The answer is the alcohol in alcoholic beverages.

Yet, alcoholic beverages are exempt from federal nutrient labeling requirements. So, companies must tell you the amount of calories in lemonade, unless the lemonade is alcoholic, in which case you can be left in the dark.

This policy question is in the hands of the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) of the Treasury Department, not the first name in federal sources of nutrition facts information. The TTB last year requested public comment (.pdf) on possible new nutrition labeling rules. Several consumer groups are in favor. On the one hand, with mandatory labeling, I would expect to start to see advertisements exaggerating the health benefits of moderate alcohol consumption. On the other hand, alcoholic beverages seem a strange class of products to exempt from disclosure rules.

TTB will announce its decision on next steps ... well, ... some day. In the meanwhile, the Consumer Federation of America last month released (.pdf) its own table (.pdf) of nutrition facts for leading products. There are some surprises. To continue the hard lemonade example, I would not have guessed that a serving of Mike's Hard Lemonade contained 220 kcal, about a tenth of a person's food energy needs for a day, mostly in the form of carbohydrates, not alcohol. But, now that I think about it, perhaps I should have guessed. I had one once. It tastes like high fructuse corn syrup.

Activia claims are being questioned

Dannon's popular probiotic yogurt product Activia cannot legally claim to protect against "constipation." If the company made a claim about the relationship between the product and a medical condition, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would ask some reasonable questions about whether there is any scientific evidence for the claim.

But, there are ways around such meddlesome standards of consumer protection. Ask yourself, what condition is the company alluding to, in the passages I've bolded below?

Slate quotes the advertising copy from the Activia website ...

Activia helps to naturally regulate your slow intestinal transit.

and a press release a couple years earlier:

Orlando is at a standstill, and we're not talking traffic. According to The Activia Most Irregular Cities Ranking, a recent national survey(1) sponsored by The Dannon Company, the Orlando area(2) is the most irregular market in America. But, Floridians aren't alone. The same research shows that approximately 26 million American adults have experienced irregularity at least once in the last three months.

For the survey, irregularity was defined as that miserable experience of not going to the bathroom for two or more days. More uncomfortable yet, more than half (55 percent) of those reporting irregularity -- more than 12 million adults -- say they have been irregular three or more times over the last three months.

Help is on the way! The Dannon Company is trailblazing a new way to help Americans keep their bodies working like clockwork with the launch of Activia(R), the first and only probiotic yogurt available in the United States that is clinically proven to help naturally regulate the digestive system...

Clinically proven? The Slate article continues: "If you dig a little, Dannon seems aware that the studies it adduces to support Activia's effectiveness are inconclusive."

FCC considers addressing product placement

From the Consumerist's post on recent FCC activity to consider addressing product placement issues, check out this ridiculous 7th Heaven segment featuring Oreos.



What a peculiarly fraudulent veneer of family values thinly painted over a crass junk food advertisement.

The 2,000-Watt society

In this passage from a fascinating article this week in the New Yorker, a group of Swiss scientists pose the question, what level of per capita energy use would be sustainable?

The answer they came up with—two thousand watts per person—furnished the name for a new project: the 2,000-Watt Society.

“What it’s important, I think, to know is that the 2,000-Watt Society is not a program of hard life,” the director of the project, Roland Stulz, told me when I went to speak to him at his office, in the Zurich suburb of Dübendorf. “It is not what we call Gürtel enger schnallen”—belt tightening—“it’s not starving, it’s not having less comfort or fun. It’s a creative approach to the future.” ...

One way to think about the 2,000-Watt Society is in terms of light bulbs. Let’s say you turn on twenty lamps, each with a hundred-watt bulb. Together, the lamps will draw two thousand watts of power. Left on for a day, they will consume forty-eight kilowatt-hours of energy; left on for a year, they will consume seventeen thousand five hundred and twenty kilowatt-hours. A person living a two-thousand-watt life would consume in all his activities—working, eating, travelling—the same amount of energy as those twenty bulbs, or seventeen thousand five hundred and twenty kilowatt-hours annually.

Most of the people in the world today consume far less than this. The average Bangladeshi, for example, uses only about twenty-six hundred kilowatt-hours a year—this figure includes all forms of energy, from electricity to transportation fuel—which is the equivalent of using roughly three hundred watts continuously. The average Indian uses about eighty-seven hundred kilowatt-hours a year, making India a one-thousand-watt society, while the average Chinese uses about thirteen thousand kilowatt-hours a year, making China a fifteen-hundred-watt society.

MISS SHINNY: An American Beauty in my Kitchen!!!

Chicos y Chicas, Ladies and Gentlemen, please put your sunglasses on if you don't want to be momentarily blind with the sight of my brand new Miss Shinny!!! Isn't she Glorious? I'm presenting you all my new toy, which came directly from Brooklyn, New York, North America!!!!!!!! Happy belated 4th of July to all my American readers and foodie bloggers friends and a toast with my first Fruit Smoothie to you all! Viva América! :D

Let me explain you how this Beauty came all the way from New York to Spain.

Amy and Jonny from We are never Full... one of my favourite food blogs, and I made a package exchange... there were some things they really wanted from Spain and I also wanted some things from New York... the tickets to the Musicals couldn't be this time because I'm not there but I will make it some day! Instead, and after a tough thinking I got my CuisineArt Shinny beauty! I just couldn't believe this object could be in my kitchen, and now it's finally here, installed and tried!

But if you look carefully to the picture, you will also notice some other food products such as: Dried Mexican Chiles (two types). Amy recomends the guajillo for soups and stews and the ancho for Mole. I still haven't tried any but I was thinking about some beans... maybe when the summer ends and the heat slows down. Also there's a sauce I never tried before, called Franks Red-Hot sauce and the other day when I made a veggies puree I added just one spoonful of Frank's sauce... and I tell you... it was HOT! We are not that used to it :D... but it gave a wonderful twist to the puree!

Also, Amy managed to squeeze in the box a package of Reeces which I found delicious! We love them!!!! These sweets are made out of peanut butter and chocolate and they tasted Super! If you ask my daughter she will say even more than that ;-). And we also got some fried chicken batter - Sylvia's brand. I will soon roll over my sleeves and fry some chicken with it.

So stay tunned to see my experiments with miss Shinny and with the American products and please go to Jonny and Amy's blog to see what they got from Spain and what will they come up with.

I will welcome any suggestions and recipes from all of you on how to use these products. The package exchange has been a lot of fun! From here, thanks again guys :D

Tropical Sunshine Fruit Smoothie
Ingredients for 4 Cups: 1 large banana, peeled, and cut into 1/2 inch pieces, 1 cup of orange juice (I used natural oranges), 2 cups of water peaches and 1 1/2 cup of pineapple chunks (1 inch pieces).

Place ingredients in blender jar in order listed. Cover and blend on Food Processor for 20 to 30 seconds until completely smooth and blended. Serve immediately.

The recipe comes with the CuisineArt Food processor and I only changed a few things: I used peaches instead of mango, added one spoonful of sugar and some drops of lemon and natural orange juice instead of calcium enriched.

Hope you enjoy this juice while sitting in front of the pool under the shade of a palm tree ;-)

Green Peas with Egg and Bacon

Special dressing: Cabaret. Money makes the world go round (turn player on)

Green on white. White on green, the colours of my blog. Green peas... Greenpeace... Please, let the green govern us! How can we make it this time? How can we continue being advanced, modern, fast, industrious, spoiled... Do we have the right to forbid natural resources to countries that start getting developed? Do we have the right to pollute our air because it's cheaper to pay the fine? How are we going to manage this crisis? Oil is getting the higher prices ever and also it's a resource that will soon have an end... Our world functions around Oil. Cabaret's song should change and say... ♫Oil makes the world go round♪ instead of ♫money makes the world go round♪... but isn't it all the same?

It's affecting everything in our lifes, just think about the cars, planes, anything that is involved with transport... but not only that! Also our daily objects are made out of Oil! (there could be a large list here)

The package containing the bacon strips is plastic... therefore comes from Oil.
The cover of my egg's package is plastic... therefore comes from Oil.
The bag containing the frozen green peas is plastic...
Some ingredients used to fertilize the land before the sow are made out of Oil.

Anyone out there with a good natural/nonpolluting idea?

Ok, I'm done with my Green thinking for now!

Too hot in your kitchen to get in there to cook long and complicated dishes? Give this one a chance, it's quick, simple and so nutritive. The ingredients are handy and cheap... who doesn't have eggs, frozen green peas and bacon in the fridge?

Ingredients for 4 servings: 1 package (500 grs) of frozen green peas, 180 of bacon strips, 4 eggs, some salt, thick sea salt and olive oil.

• Have a pot with salty boiling water and add the frozen green peas. Boil until tender or follow package instructions. Strain and reserve.
• In a sauce pan pour some olive oil (4-5 tablespoons) and when hot add the bacon strips, stir until golden.
• Add the green peas to the sauce pan and stir some more (1 minute aprox). Turn heat off and reserve.
• In a small pot with water add the eggs and boil for just 4 minutes. You will get the egg's white cooked and the egg yolk at the point we want it: just hardly cooked.
• Present the dish with the green peas and bacon and the egg on top. Sprinkle with thick sea salt and a little spurt of extra virgin olive oil.

For those of you who love the heat in and out of your mouth, some drops of a hot sauce would be perfect too... what about some Frank's Red Hot Original Sauce?

You'll soon know why I'm talking about this American Sauce... keep an eye on this blog... or two!