Call's Culinary Coaching Classes

Back from the dead! (At least on FB)

I have spent the past year and a half making a family history cookbook. I have gone through family recipes, and poured over family journals and interviews to find foods that featured in our family. Like this one.

My great, great grandpa grew up in the south and wrote about how him and his mother would tap their maple trees and make syrup. So I ordered maple sap water and made our own syrup! It was really easy, just let it boil for hours but then keep an eye on it, especially towards the end to keep it from burning. I kept it pretty light because I didn't want it to burn. And while it is very easy, just know the ratio is 40:1! That means 40 cups of maple sap becomes 1 cup of syrup. So my 180 fl oz ended up approximately 1/4 a cup of syrup. Not much but it was pretty tasty! I'd recommend getting your own maple sap if you can!

Well nothing like celebrating my return from the dead with Dìa de los Mu***os! It's been a really rough time with this pregnancy but I am grateful for my (somewhat) increased energy. To celebrate, today we had my mom's Grilled Chicken Tortilla Soup and I made this for dessert. So easy and yummy! It's a great recipe for both fall and Dìa de los Mu***os. I used butternut squash since that's what we had in hand. You could substitute brown sugar for the piloncillo. (a cone of unrefined cane sugar used in Hispanic cooking, found in Latin markets or WinCo!) I had one cone and just added roughly the same amount of brown sugar. Towards the end of cooking, my squash was most definitely done but the sauce was still thin so I took out the pieces of squash and boiled down the sauce to thicken. Serve with vanilla ice cream if you have it handy!
Link here:

Calabaza en tacha o dulce de calabaza. Receta Hay recetas que nos llenan de infinidad de recuerdos, recetas que nos acompañan toda la vida, que aprendimos en nuestro hogar de la infancia y que por gusto y tradición, seguimos preparando para los nuestros. Una de esas recetas que a mi me llena el alma con probarla, es la de calabaza en tacha o ...

Well I'm not dead, at least I think!! Just pregnant. And SICK. So while I am able to cook maybe once a week, I am finding my cooking style is having to pivot for the time being. There will be a time I make lots of food from scratch but now is not the time. And even though there are many days when the last thing I even wanna think about is food, my family apparently still needs to eat. (Rude) So since my energy level hovers around zero and my stomach is often not able to handle the most gentle of foods (I miss you salsa and Thai chili sauce 😭) I have made peace with my inner Martha (Stewart or Biblical, take your pick) and am working on "good enough." Which entails more frozen foods, premade items, and yes, still fresh veggies because of ALL the times to be sick it HAD to be when garden tomatoes and fresh corn are coming on!! As much as I LOVE to cook and take pride in making things from scratch (even though they don't always turn out) there are plenty of times in life when "good enough" is well...good enough!!

In the meantime, while I am laid out flat on my bed for the better part of the day, I still have a weird thing while I don't even wanna think about eating, I still am drawn to cooking and food so I have been reading up on techniques and food science. And while I am late to the game on this one, I'm finding I adore Serious Eats. Go check them out if you haven't! They have GREAT info, and they fall into the food science/America's Test Kitchen range of explaining things very well and using food science, not just giving recipes with no info on the WHYS. I especially like the ingredient guides where they do a deeper dive on individual ingredients.

Serious Eats: The Destination for Delicious Serious Eats is the destination for delicious food, with definitive recipes, trailblazing science, and essential guides to eating and knowing all about the best food, wherever you are.