Food

Potato Bake

This potato bake recipe is now my family’s favorite. It’s great for brunch on Sundays.

Ingredients

1 bag frozen fried potatoes ( store bought)

1 cup of milk

Deli Ham or deli turkey or pre cooked sausage or deli sausage

Mozzarella cheese

Parmesan cheese

Onion ( white or yellow onion, diced)

Sweet peppers

1 Tablespoon butter

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Set oven to 400F degrees. Place the potato fries on a baking dish. Set aside.

Add 1 TBSP butter to a pan at medium heat. When butter has melted add the deli Ham ( or turkey or sausage.) Let it cook until it starts to brown on the edges. Add onions and sweet peppers ( optional ) and continue to saute until all ingredients are mixed in and well cooked. Add the warm cup of milk and mix well. Let the mix continue to cook until the milk starts to simmer. Pour the mix over the potatoes on the baking dish. Top with mozzarella cheese ( lots !!)

Let it bake for 40 minutes. Check the cheese and if it has completely melted you may add some more or parmesan cheese.

Enjoy! 🙂

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Very Easy Homemade Crackers Recipe

This recipe is so easy and so delicious that after making it twice, my kids already learned the recipe! I hope you try it out. It’s also very non-expensive as you probably already have all the ingredients you need in your pantry.  It’s our family favorite! Yum!

This recipe yields 30 crackers with each  being 4×2 inches ( rectangular shaped) approximately.

Ingredients

2 cups of flour; 1 Tsp salt; 1 Tablespoon of sugar; 1 Tsp baking powder ; 4 Tablespoons of meltes butter; 1.5 cups warm water.

Directions:

1. Mix all dry ingredients in a bowl. 

2. Add water to dry mix. Start mixing in the bowl and add more water little by little until you get the correct consistency before kneading.

3. Add flour to a clean counter surface. Add flour to your hands.

4. Place the dough from the bowl into a clean counter. Knead by hand adding additional flour as needed. When the dough is no longer sticky, take a rolling pin and stretch out the dough. It should be about 1/4 or 1/8 inch thick when ready. Both thicknesses work fine. It depends on your preference.

5. Cut the dough into strips of approximately 1 inch wide. Cut each strip into rectangles or squares ( your choice) and with a fork pinch the dough. The pinching of the dough is fun but also important to get the oven heat to bake the cracker all throughout. ( My kids do the pinching of the dough, it’s their favorite part!)

6. Prepare baking pans by covering with a small amount of butter. Place the crackers into the baking pans.

7. Bake in a 400 degree oven for 10 minutes or until golden on top.

Below is a short video showing you thickness of the dough and how to cut it.

My cracker shapes are very original as my kids are the ones involved in that part of the process, and having tons of fun with it. 🙂
Once you take the crackers out of the oven, let them cool. Then store them in an air tight container. Although I typically skip this step as these crackers don’t last long at home.. I never really get to store them. 🙂 
Enjoy!

Crackers in the oven.

Ready! 

Yuca ( Cassava)

Yuca or Cassava

Latin American cuisine knows yuca very well! I was thrilled to see that my local supermarket here in Colorado is selling it raw. 

Yuca is a tuber very much like the potato. However yuca is king for me and most of Latin American cuisine. It has a wonderful texture, it’s great for “sancocho” ( Colombian soup filled with multiple meats and cooked slowly for many hours.) To help illustrate, maybe our dear Louisiana gumbo may be a distant cousin of Sancocho.

To enjoy yuca you don’t need to cook a stew like sancocho, since yuca goes well with grilled beef or chicken and it’s perfect with scrambled eggs or omelets. Also, if you can get to some Latin American cheese (Mexican, Peruvian or Colombian) then yuca and cheese is the best snack! 

The recipe for boiled yuca is very simple.

Peel the yuca and wash well. Set enough water to boil but make sure you add 1 tablespoon of salt and 1 white onion in big chunks. It will boil for at least 30 minutes but you will know it is done when you take a knife and it goes through easily. Texture should be soft.

Some like to fry yuca after it’s been boiled and serve as a side to a meat ( beef or chicken) , instead of potato fries. 

I hope you may find it and try it sometime. It’s my favorite! 

Nutella

Here is my first Nutella dessert ever! My kids love nutella, and I knew anything with nutella would be a hit at home. 
The recipe is very simple and easy. I made it easier by using store bought pie dough. It saved me over 40 minutes of prep time.

Recipe:

1/2 cup sugar; 2 tablespoons of flour ; 3 eggs; 1 teaspoon of vanilla; 2 cups of clear, light corn syrup; 2 tablespoons of melted butter; 1 cup of nutella; 1 cup chopped nuts ( I used pecans and almonds, and you may add your favorite nuts here.) 

Tips:

Get a medium size bowl to mix ingredients. You don’t need a mixer, mixing by hand with a wooden spoon works great! 

Let the Melted butter cool down so when adding to the mix the eggs don’t become scrambled.

Place the pie dough on a medium size pan for the oven. Set it aside.

Start by adding the sugar and the flower.Mix well. Crack and whisk the three eggs in a separate bowl. Once they’re well whisked, add them to the sugar and flour mix. Mix well again.Next, add the vanilla, the melted butter and nutella. Mix well. Last, add the nuts.

Pour this mix into the pre prepared pan with pie dough.

Bake for 1 hour at 325 degrees Fahrenheit.

Once it’s done you must let it set for 30 minutes before cutting.

This is mine after “someone” cut a piece out before I had any chance to let it finish setting and serve! 🙂

Coffee!

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Coffee is one of my weaknesses. I love coffee warm (or hot) best! Coffee shops offer cold drinks which are very nice and I enjoy them every once in a while, but I still prefer my traditional cup of hot coffee.

This picture shows me (look at the metal part of the machine) taking a picture while the coffee machine finished a delicious cup of cappuccino for me. It was delicious!

I come from a family of coffee drinkers and my Dad’s routine included waking up at 4am and preparing his own coffee brewed on the stove. All in my family started having coffee as soon as jobs started. My husband and I love coffee as well, and we make it a point to buy good coffee to brew at home. Colombian coffee has been our favorite always. This cup of cappuccino was made with Colombian coffee by the way. Every time we travel we look for coffee and we like to try new flavors and strength levels, and we always end up with Colombian coffee being our favorite.

I don’t have a coffee cake recipe or any recipe of my own to share. I am not a fan of tiramisu as for me coffee is best as a hot drink. Therefore I will share my favorite things to put in coffee and other tips.

  • Add a drop of an aperitif, your favorite one, to coffee, instead of sugar.
  • Instead of adding cold packets of cream to black coffee, I add low-fat milk and then heat up the coffee for 30 seconds in my microwave.
  • Brown sugar is my favorite to add to sweeten my black coffee.
  • I am not a fan of spiced coffee, but I do like a very little bit of nutmeg or all spice on it.

In the end, in all honesty, my best thing to do is to have a delicious cup of coffee with a friend! 🙂