Getting Ready

We were invited by S and family to join them at Lake Sinclair for several days. Their family has a small house there, and because a few other families would also be there, we decided to take Popper along for additional bed space. So, in addition to packing the usual stuff for camping and laking, a big portion of Sunday was spent preparing food to take along.

Michael was my kitchen helper. He learned how to break up, peel and mince garlic. Lots of garlic!

Michael doin' the garlic.

Very carefully chopping.

In addition to garlic, we used a ton of cilantro. Half a bunch for the salsa, a full bunch for the sofrito, and two full bunches for a new recipe I was trying out, Mojo Verde. The cilantro I was able to get at the store was looking a bit tired, and was very unlikely to survive the three days or so until Taco Night at the lake. So, instead of using fresh cilantro for my infamous Fresh Avocado Salsa, I decided to try making it with Mojo Verde. Although the sauce turned out good, I think next time I'll try substituting lime juice for the apple cider vinegar.

Oh, yeah, the sofrito is something that I tried a couple of weeks back. I was getting jarred sofrito at the store, but it has MSG in it, which I'd like to avoid. So, I found this recipe on line for a fresh, green sofrito. But, I wanted the tomato-pasty version, so I popped the green sofrito into a saucepan with 2 cans of tomato paste, 1 T paprika, 1 T garlic powder, and 1 t salt, and then simmered til it cooked down to the consistency I wanted. It made up three small jars. For Spanish Rice, I simply put two cups of brown rice in the cooker with one jar of sofrito and the appropriate amount of water. Very tasty ;)