[brace yourselves]

This is the easiest, most flavorful marinade recipe I’ve ever found.

While I wish I could claim it as my own, it’s not. It’s her’s – the Homesick Texan.

And I’ve followed her cooking blog religiously ever since I stumbled on it.

But here’s what you’ll need:

• 2 lbs. Beef Skirt Steak
• 1 Jalapeno
• 1/2 Cup Lime Juice
• 4 Cloves of Garlic
• 1/4 Cup Cilantro
• 1 tsp Cumin
• 1 tsp Salt
• 1 tbsp Black Pepper (yep, one tablespoon)

I’m not sure if you can find skirt steak everywhere, but we’re extremely lucky they ship it in for us.

Roughly chop up the cilantro & jalapeno – nothing fancy.

Throw all the dry ingredients (everything but the lime juice) into a big, country blue plastic bowl – preferrably circa 1989, if you have one.

If not – any bowl will do or even a big ziploc bag.

Then add in the lime juice & stir that sucker around.

The smell alone at this point is worth it – even if you don’t have skirt steak to marinade it in.

Heck, you could probably use chicken if you wanted to.

At this point you’ll have to pull your head out of the bowl so you can add in the meat.

Since skirt steak is a long, thin slab, I cut it into 4 pieces to make it easier to handle.

Toss the marinade over the meat a bit then shove it in the fridge.

It can sit in there anywhere from 2 – 8 hours, just be sure to turn the meat over occasionally.

Once you’re ready to pull it out, you can either grill it – like us now that we actually have a real BBQ grill.

Or amazingly you can get the EXACT SAME charred flavor if you don’t have a grill.

[kid you not]

You’ll just need a cast iron skillet & a really good vent hood.

That’s how we tried this recipe first & man, was it good. It didn’t smoke up the house too bad…but even then, the smell that filled the house was worth it, Baby.

You can read her full instructions here.

Had Eric or I been able to control ourselves, I would’ve had pictures of the actual completed tacos for you.

But we wrapped those suckers up in flour tortillas quicker than you can spit & downed them all on the spot.

And while you can add all kinds of toppings if you want (cheese, pico de gallo, sour cream, etc.) – the best way is to just add a bit of guacamole.

Keeping it simple lets the flavor of the meat come through.

So there you are – go out & celebrate! For you, too, can now eat the food of the Tex-Mex Gods.

Disclaimer: The Homesick Texan, goddess divine that she is, has no idea who I am or that I even exist – especially so far away from home. This is her recipe, not mine & I’ve followed her rules for sharing to the best of my ability. So help me God.

While it’s true…I can’t cook…I have mastered the art of authentic, close-my-eyes-&-I’m-home, fresh table salsa.

It’s a recipe I stumbled along somewhere or another years ago that I slightly modified.

I first made it when we were stationed in Virginia…because I’m sorry, but barbeque sauce on burritos does NOT constitute real Tex-Mex.

(Yeah, after that restaurant fiasco it was downhill from there.)

So I was forced to recreate things myself and this has helped me many a time to survive being so far from home.

You’ll need:

• 3 large, ripe & firm tomatoes
• 2 16-oz. cans of diced tomatoes
• 1/2 cup of white onion
• 2 – 3 jalapenos
• 1/2 tsp of minced garlic
• 1/4 cup of cilantro
• Salt, black pepper & lime juice

(Although I’ve been skipping the black pepper lately & you can’t really tell the difference.)

There are two tricks to making this salsa bullet-proof.

The first is draining the canned tomatoes. You gotta get all that extra juice out or the salsa will be too runny.

I usually let it sit a good 15 – 20 minutes.

So while that drains, I cut up the fresh tomatoes…

…and hollow out all the seeds.

Don’t skip this step or it’ll be too runny.

As I get stuff done, I put it all in a big tupperware container.

Roughly chop the onion to get 1/2 a cup & throw that in.

Add the 1/2 tsp of minced garlic.

Slice open the peppers…

…and remove the seeds.

Slice the peppers up & throw them in, too.

But don’t throw out the seeds! That’s how you’ll kick the hotness up to your own tastes.

Pinch off enough cilantro leaves to get a 1/4 cup…although I’ve been using close to a 1/2 cup lately.

At this point, strip off & add all the seeds of one of the peppers into the tupperware.

One set of seeds will give you flavor without burning your tongue off.

Now…here’s the other secret.

If you want heat, put a lid on that tupperware container & shove it in the fridge over night.

There’s something about letting it marinate overnight that really brings out the heat.

If you just want flavorful, but no heat salsa – go ahead & pulse it in your food processor.

Once you’ve got an almost perfect consistency, add in 1 tsp of lime juice – to start.

Then add in a teaspoon of salt – again, to start.

Although for me, two teaspoons is just right.

Pulse it around a bit again & then taste it.

If it’s too hot for you, add anywhere from 1 to 3 more teaspoons of lime juice.

If you think it needs more salt, add it a half teaspoon at a time.

But really…2 teaspoons of salt should be just fine.

For the folks in Texas…put in the seeds of two peppers & let that baby sit overnight.

The heat should be just about right then.

This makes a good amount of salsa which usually lasts us a few days.

But I guarantee you’ll love it…the first time I brought it to an FRG meeting back in Virginia, one soldier looked up & said, “Marry me.”

So let’s get off this whole ’some-ting’s’ in my brain train and talk about something else for a while.

Maybe you can help me out.

I’ve discovered a new favorite that they actually carry at the commissary.

And now that I’m eating it all the time, I’m wondering if I’ll be able to find this back home.

They’re a different kind of dumpling made by a company called Chew-Young-Roo.

It’s pork, green onion, ginger, leek & cabbage…and no MSG.

They come frozen so they should be in the freezer section of places like Whole Foods, Central Market…hmm, wonder what other big chains might carry it?

But they’re super easy to make.

And don’t believe the packaging – don’t try to boil them. Ugh.

Just put about 3 teaspoons of oil into a skillet, then turn the sucker on medium-high.

Dump in all the dumplings you can eat (this is for two, thank you very much) when the oil’s hot & they’ll begin to sizzle.

The trick is to stir the dumplings around a bit in the oil so they get coated.

Then pour 1/4 to 1/3 cup of hot water into the pan.

The water will steam out, steaming the dumplings in the process.

You don’t want them to get anywhere near brown or even golden brown!

They’ll turn way too chewy.

You’re going for a nice medium translucent with just a hint of of gold starting to show.

Which should only take 4 - 5 minutes, maybe less.

But as soon as the water’s all evaporated, be sure to keep an eye on them or they’ll be overdone.

Then just serve ‘em up with some soy sauce with a little sesame seed sprinkled on top and a good giner ale.

Ok, maybe you’d prefer a white wine…I’ll take the giner ale, it compliments the ginger in the dumplings.

So do me a favor…

Would you look for these the next time you’re in the grocery store & let me know if they sell them?

I have a juke-box in my head.

Yep…and without any conscious effort on my part it pulls out the perfect song to fit any given situation – like this one!

So sing along & enjoy!

[humor me - play the music]

For Eric’s one-night home from the cold, frozen tundra of gunnery I decided to make one our favorite winter meals…

Soup with Crunchy Bread.

Any homemade soup will do…but the bread?

You just can’t substitute store-bought, sandwich sliced bread for a good crunchy bread.

So all winter long I’ve been missing Panera, Le Madeliene and Central Market…artisan crunchy bread paradise for a carb-addicted bread lover like me.

And if you thought my quest for pumpkin was hard - try finding a decent bread, any decent bread, at the commissary!

They all expire within a day or two…and mold by the 3rd or 4th. It’s because they fly our bread in from the states.

But after finding a no-knead crunchy bread recipe online, I was determined to make it myself.

And look!

I HAVE MADE BREAD!

As I pulled this beautifully rustic, golden-brown artisan bread out of the oven…

…thumping the hard crust to hear that lovely hollow sound…

Julie Andrews & the Von Trapp Children started singing in my head.

Incessantly.

I mean it.

All night.

“Jam and bread…tea with jam…jam and bread.”

It was like my own personal Hallelujah Chorus complete with trumpets & thunderous applause.

“TEA WITH JAM & BREAD…

 WITH JAM AND BREAD…

WITH JAM – WITH JAM …

AND…

 BREAD!”

[bowing profusely]

Thank you, thank you!…No really, thank you – you’re too kind!

Thank you Ladies & 2 Gentlemen…you’ve been a wonderful audience!

Thank you so much! Good night!

I’m off to the after party!

FOOTNOTE: If you’d like to have your own Hallelujah moment, you can try out the recipe here at King Arthur Flour.

God bless King Arthur.

About this time every year, my sister begins to feverishly bake Christmas cookie after Christmas cookie. There are the old standards she makes every year – but she also hunts up a few new recipes each year to try out.

And a few years ago she started holding cookie parties to share the joy & load of baking & decorating that many cookies.

The day would be spent between eating the unbaked dough, decorating the freshly baked cookies & snitching a few of the completed ones – just to make sure they came out right. Because you know, you just can’t give someone a cookie that didn’t come out right.

The Christmas music would be playing,  the oven would be going full steam, our cumulative blood sugar would be rising, we’d be dust-covered in flour from head to toe & at the end of the day everyone got to take home some of everything.

Since I can’t be home this year to show off my anti-culinary yet highly artistic prowess, I’m going to have to make my own. And I need some help figuring out what all to bake this year.

Last year my big cookie contribution was Martha-inspired Speculaas Cookies…similar to the windmill cookies you can buy in the supermarket…very spicy, not so sweet & very dense.

The dough consistency was great for stamping impressions into or for shaping into all sorts of overly ornate cookie art masterpieces….like my holly leaves above – which would’ve been really cool with little cinnamon red hots to poke into the ends to act as holly berries, but we didn’t have any.

I can usually make a mean gingerbread man, too…I just can’t seem to screw up cookie dough that doesn’t really rise. Apparently my medium is cookie dough the equivalent of play-dough.

So yes…I’m gonna need help this year coming up with recipes I can’t screw up, that look pretty, that utilizes ingredients I can get over here & most importantly that taste good – because I’m going to be giving cookies to the Lumber Barons, the Custodian & his wife, the guys at OMG (the auto mechanic shop that did us a big favor over the summer)…and a few others.

If you have a recipe you’re willing to share or one you’ve tried that’s listed online that you can give me the link to, I would greatly appreciate it.

And while I’m asking for stuff…does anybody know if 7Up is making this stuff again this year?…The pomegranate 7Up? It’s obviously not coming to a commissary near me anytime in near future, but I would love you forever if you would smuggle in a can or two of the Diet version to me.

But here you go…the Speculaas Cookie recipe & tips I learned the hard way:

SPECULAAS COOKIES

• 3 1/2 Cups All-Purpose Flour
• 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 1 1/2 tsp Cinnanmon
• 1 tsp Ginger
• 1/4 tsp Nutmeg
• 3/4 tsp Cardamon*
• 1/4 tsp Mace*
• 1/4 tsp Ground White Pepper
• Pinch of Cloves
• 6 ounces (1 1/2 sticks) Unsalted Butter, softened
• 1 Cup Light Brown Sugar (packed)
• 1/3 Cup Water
• Powdered Sugar for dusting

*I didn’t have Cardamon or Mace so I just used more of the other spices to make up for it.

COMBINE THE INGREDIENTS

1. Combine all the dry ingredients into a bowl & whisk together to combine.
2. Cream the butter & brown sugar until light & fluffy.
3. Beat in half of the flour mixture. Then beat in the water. Then beat in the rest of the flour mixture & pray your mixer’s little engine doesn’t burn out.
4. Divide the dough into 3 portions – beat it flat into pancakes, plastic wrap it & stick it in the fridge for an hour to firm up more.

IF YOU’RE GOING TO USE A COOKIE MOLD

• Check the dough’s consistency. It really shouldn’t be sticky at all. If it is, add more flour in little by little until it’s no longer sticky.
• Roll it out flat somewhere between 1/4″ and 3/8″ – depending on how deep your mold is.
• Dust the mold really good with powdered sugar & dust the dough’s surface a little too – you don’t want it to stick to the mold. It needs to come out nice & clean.
• Press your mold into the dough – pound on it, roll it, whatever works best to make sure you get a good impression without punching the mold all the way down to the table surface.
• Lift up carefully, cut out your impression with a knife & gently place on a baking sheet.
• Repeat until you’re blue in the face or until you’re tired of pressing that dang mold.
• Keep the cookies about an inch apart on the sheet & freeze until they’re really firm – about an hour.

IF YOU’RE GOING TO CUT THEM OUT WITH COOKIE CUTTERS

• Roll the dough flat until it’s somewhere between 1/4″ and 3/8″ thick.
• Cut out your shapes – you can even use a toothpick to draw swirls or names or polka dots into the cookie.
• Put them about an inch apart on a cookie sheet & freeze them for up to an hour to get the dough really firm.

BAKING THE COOKIES

• Preheat the oven to 325 degrees
• Place one sheet of cookies into the oven & immediately reduce the heat to 250.
• Bake one sheet at a time for 55 – 65 minutes.
• When the edges are just turning a light gold, they’re done.