A Taste of Peñasco and Iron Chef competition

Okay, I've cleared the cache and cookies and turned off the pop-up blocker and removed over a thousand photos from my hard drive and emptied my recycle bin.  Things still aren't great, but slightly better.

Where were we?  Oh yes - The Taste of Peñasco and the Iron Chef competition.  Like I said, there were 6 chefs competing this year.  There were originally 7 teams entered, but one of them had to withdraw. (No reason was given.)  Gabriella (on the right) was part of the team that had to drop out, but Chef Mickey asked her to be his sous-chef.  She is a culinary arts student at the Technological Institute in town and she was thrilled to be working with one of the top chefs in the city!

This is the team from the Mayan Palace.  We met Julio (on the left) when we had lunch out there a few weeks ago.

Another favourite around town is Chef Ramon 

 (I stole this photo from Rocky Point 360's Facebook page)

Their working spaces were much improved over previous years, but still pretty squishy.

The event was held at the Plaza de Camaron (Shrimp Plaza) which is just a few blocks from our place.  It was a warm, sunny day so the place was packed!

Lots of the local restaurants had booths set up and for a couple of tickets you could try their dishes.  All proceeds were split between this charity and the bomberos (fire fighters)

Mmm...mmm...free samples

Dan enjoying a slice of Brother's Pizza.  

Lots of art and handicraft booths too.  This is Joyce Dodd-Harcharek.  We have several of her paintings in our house, and  I ordered another one from her too.  Our house is turning into a shrine to her artwork.

I'm pretty sure you're supposed to bounce INSIDE the castle, not climb over the walls...

Live music all day.  It switched to a rock band later in the afternoon

The judges (Another stolen photo)

And this year's winner is Chef Mickey!!!

(That's Rosie on the far left, and Mayor Zepeda Munro to the left of Mickey)

A couple of days later, we joined some friends for dinner at Chef Mickey's Restaurant and it was delicious!

☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼

Oh look - dogs!  This is on our way to the beach.  That's Taz in the lead, the dark one is Bibi, Pedro's puppy, then Triste is another one of Pedro's dogs (he has 4 altogether), then there's BeeGee and Barky Boots bringing up the rear.

Dan found himself a nice comfy rock to sit on.

Remember the excellent tortillas that I made a couple of weeks ago using Nancy's bolitas?  I decided to make some from scratch this time.  Ingredients were assembled, instructions were followed to the letter...

...and the results?  Yep, straight into the trash!  Truly awful!

I guess I need to sit in on Nancy's next tortilla making session and see if I can learn the secrets.

Things and stuff

I know, I know - I'm a bad blogger this year.  My laptop is giving me all kinds of problems, so I hardly ever turn it on.  I use my i-phone for most e-mails and Facebook instead.  

For some reason, my laptop sometimes  takes 3 or 4 attempts to upload a picture to the blog, which is, as you can imagine, just a LITTLE BIT FRUSTRATING!

Beach day!  

Well, somebody else's beach day;  we just happened to be walking with the dogs when we spotted this inviting chair.  The person that belonged to it was nowhere to be seen.

Help!  Quicksand!

See the line across the picture where the sand is a different colour?    This picture wasn't too bad, so I left it in, but most of them, the entire bottom ½ of the picture is either black or a weird looking washed out pink or turquoise-y colour.

One of the down-sides of living close to the ocean is the effect of the salt air on, well, on everything.  This is the door to our terrace - nice eh?  And we have these metal grills on every door and every window...yuk!

This year, we decided to paint everything a dark brown instead of the creamy colour.  Sure, it'll still rust just as fast, but hopefully it won't be quite as noticeable.

Things are really starting to bloom in the desert.  We've noticed lots of different flowers on our walks to the beach.  This stuff is pretty;  it grows in drifts all over the place.

So what if it's a weed - it's still pretty.

These white flowers have sprung up everywhere in the last week.  It took us a few days to realize that they were actually flowers - there is so much garbage in the desert that we assumed they were just more pieces of plastic or paper lying around.

Last year there was a garage a block away from us that had been turned into a restaurant called "Fries and Thai".  Or was it "Thai and Fries"?   Doesn't matter - it's gone now.  In it's place is a new cupcake shop.  I haven't actually seen it open yet though.  Hopefully we get a chance to try it before it disappears.

This building went up like a rocket!  Just since we've been here the 4 buildings making up the new navy barracks has gone from a hole in the ground to painted already.  For those that have been here, it's kitty-corner from Reggies.  Dan was less than thrilled when they painted it to match to old navy barracks that are right next door.  Actually, I don't care what they paint it - it's just nice to see a building completed!  There are SO many projects around town that have been started and abandoned.

Graffiti seen around town.  Is it art or vandalism?  I kind of like it.

Spotted on a beach walk.  A heart-shaped stone.

My current addiction is a website called Pinterest.  Kind of a virtual pinboard for all kinds of things.  Recipes, quotations, DIY projects etc.  I found this idea for a coffee table made from old pallets and thought it would work on our upstairs terrace.  

Pedro managed to scrounge up a couple of pallets and volunteered to make it for me.

 Well, he built it the wrong way the first time.  He had the bottom pallet upside down and the legs were about 18 inches long.  Dan got him back on track and told him 3 times (!) that the legs should be no more than 7 inches long.  He even drew him a picture with the measurements on it...
Pedro's report card would read:  Does not follow instructions well...
That's okay though;  Dan figured out how to mount the casters so that they're inset, so the whole table comes in at about 20 inches high which was the absolute highest that I wanted it.  Pedro even did some extra fancy bits on the bottom to give it a more finished look.  I'm happy with the end result!

My original plan was to paint it a bright colour, but Dan (the voice of reason) convinced me to go with a dark brown stain and a bright cloth instead.   My tendency to opt for bright colours quite often has to be reigned in.    He doesn't always succeed though.  Does anybody remember my Pepto Bismol pink living room?

Saturday was a big day here.  It was the Taste of Peñasco and the Iron Chef competition.  An unprecedented six chefs competing for the title this year.
This is Chef Mickey and his sous chef Gabriella.

Okay, see what I mean about the pictures?  This is driving me crazy!

Grrrr!!!

Aaaarrghhh!!

I give up.  Maybe I'll try again later, or maybe I'll toss this machine in the garbage and talk to you in the spring.

Cookin'

Tortillas de harina (flour tortillas) - yum!  The tortillas here are SO much better than the packages of cardboard that I buy at Coop.  And cheap!  I can buy a dozen tortillas for 12 pesos at a little road-side shack by the railway tracks. Even adding a generous tip, they're less than a penny a piece.  Last week, our neighbour Nancy brought over some fresh, hot off the griddle, tortillas and they were delicious!  She said that they're so easy to make that even Pedro can do it.  Well, if Pedro can do it...

I bought the ingredients and a rolling pin and was ready to set to when Pedro arrived with a bowl of bolitas.  (Ingredients already mixed up and rolled into little balls)  Nancy leaves a huge bowl of bolitas for him when she goes to Ajo for the week, so all he has to do is roll them out and cook them.  There was also a little bowl of flour.  Pedro told me to roll the bolitas in the flour, roll them flat, and fry them up.

Let me explain that I am the world's worst pastry maker.  My attempts at rolling out even the "never-fail" pastry recipes usually starts with me scraping the pastry off the counter in shredded pieces and ends in tears, so the phrase "just roll them out" strikes fear into my heart.

Turns out that tortillas are much more forgiving than pie crusts.  I could even pick them up and flip them around.

I was told to cook until they start to bubble.  I wasn't expecting such big bubbles

Flip 'em over and cook the other side

Um, I got so involved in rolling out the next tortilla that I forgot about the one in the pan.  Oh well, Taz didn't mind that it was over cooked.

Voila!  

A week's worth of tortillas.  Just have to warm them up before using.

Of course, that was easy because the bolitas were already made for me.  My next challenge is to try making them completely from scratch.  I may never have to eat the cardboard kind again!

In other cooking news - Lemon Crinkle Cookies

  Not the least little bit lemony in spite of the lemon juice and lemon zest - might as well just suck on a sugar cube.  Ugh!

Of course, no blog entry is complete without dog pictures.  

Miss BeeGee getting a good scritchin'

Barky Boots, too.

Some weird cloud formations at the beach.

Dan & Taz watching the sunset from the tailgate.

It was a nice one.