Mia Cucina da Texas

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

My little Anna is quite the budding foodie. She will tilt her head back, roll her eyes, and moan if she puts something especially delicious in her mouth. I can always count on her for a good dinner suggestion if I don't know what to fix. Recently she made the leap to creating recipes in her head.

While we were on vacation, she started dreaming up a dessert. "We could take peaches, and apples, and chop them up, and bake them..." I could see the wheels turning! We couldn't make the dessert at that time, but I told her to remember it and we'd try it when we were camping.

At the grocery store two days later, Anna still remembered her inspired dish. "We need an apple and a peach." She picked two big beauties. What are you putting on top? "You know, some flour, and eggs. Oh, and cinnamon." I got a small box of cake mix for the batter she was dreaming up.


Here she is, chopping all the fruit herself. She mixed the cake mix, and egg, and slightly less water than called for, then folded in the fruit.


Anna couldn't resist adding a large amount of these gaudy sprinkles on top.








It was a good learning experience, since she ended up not liking the sprinkles and asked me to cut them off her piece. The cake was delicious! Fruity and moist! We all loved it. I can't wait for a repeat.

Here are the chicken breasts I grilled over our campfire. In the RV, you're a little limited for ingredients. The night before I wanted to saute some chicken in flour, but the flour I had was old and spoiled. Instead, I put some fresh cheerios in a ziplock bag and charged the kids with crushing them. After the chicken bits rolled around in the cheerio crumbs, I cooked them until golden brown and they were terrific! These grilled breasts are rubbed with garlic salt, pepper, lemon juice, and canola oil. They came out so smokey and moist! We had plenty leftover, which we turned into quesadillas al fuego.

Monday, August 20, 2007

Our garden still had plenty of oomph when we left for Dallas, so I took with us 2 huge bags of produce - tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers. We also had a bag of basil and a bag of cucumbers. It was so wonderful to eat in season, and to eat so much that we had grown ourselves. My MIL is gracious enough to let me operate in her kitchen, and we are a pretty good team when we divide and conquer (Anth does a bang-up job with clean up, too). Anyway, the first night she made grilled salmon and I made a ratatouille with all our veggies. What a combo - yum! The second night was after our hot trip to the zoo, so we tried a new Thai restaurant I had spied (in order to avoid eating at a chain restaurant) and again - yum! On the third night, my MIL asked me, "What are we going to make for dinner tonight?!?" and I swear, I'd had an inspiration in my sleep! "Let's make pasta with a fresh pomodoro sauce - we need to use up all these tomatoes!" Marion grilled some delicious chicken breasts, and we boiled some of the excellent organic Garofalo pasta she had. I made a sauce with EVO, tomatoes, lots of garlic, and our basil julienned. We tossed it all together with parmegiano reggiano and some asiago. It smelled and tasted great. I also had an impromptu insalata of cucumbers, peppers, and herbs that she grows (thyme, mint, and parsley). We washed it all down with the excellent and very limited Cameron Hughes 16. Mangiamo bene!






















Keep watching this spot for campfire cooking.