Tag: Vegetarian

Healthy Mexican Food

How to Make a Simple Sofrito

manton

The Simple Sofrito

The Simple Sofrito is a powerful flavor ambassador.  One of the very first things that my mother taught me about cooking is to always start with a sofrito.  She said that my food would always be delicious if I started whatever I was doing with this magic concoction.  It seems like every Latino family has their own version of sofrito. My sister always adds a little fresh garlic, carrots and celery. My Ecuadoran consuegra calls it “Refrito,” and hers includes garlic, onion and achiote.  In Spain, the sofrito involves garlic and red pepper.

A Universal Practice

In our family, it meant chopping up some green chile, tomate y cebolla and frying it up in a small amount of oil.  So try this simple saute of green chile, onion and tomato next time you are cooking up some taco meat, scrambled eggs, or whatever you’re hungry for. Just start with the sofrito and then when the pepper is soft but not wilted, add your meat, eggs, or frijoles de la olla. We always make the point that Latinos and Latinas are not a monolithic group.  We are not all the same, but we have some strong things in common.  In the kitchen we find that almost all Spanish, Mexican and Latin American cooks use some kind of sofrito. Therefore, you can call the Sofrito, a universal practice across Latino cultures!

The De Las Mías sofrito is very simple and packs a good punch with ancho chile.  Find the recipe in the De Las Mías Recipe collection. Use it as a base for soup or whatever other guisado you embark on. The short cut is simple though, just chop up some chile, tomate y cebolla and fry it up in a small amount of oil. Sure, go ahead and add some minced garlic. ¡Y ya!

Nothing Fancy, Just Sabroso

I’m a very simple cook but people always love my food.  I don’t have a lot of fancy cooking stuff and most of my pots look like they made it out of a war zone, but I always start with a sofrito, and I think that’s why I cook sabroso.

One of my favorite on-the-go meals is to stop by the market and get one of those chickens that are already roasted.  I remove the skin and chop it up for taquitos. I always start with the simple sofrito I learned from my mom. The chicken just tastes better and you can forget that you bought it in a plastic container and that it’s slammed in sodium. (Poquito de todo, remember?)

I heat up my corn tortillas with a tiniest amount of butter on the comal.  Add the chopped chicken that I sauteed with my sofrito. Top it off with shredded cabbage, cilantro, green onion and a squeeze of lime.  And you’ve got dinner!

Try it and let me know how it goes.  Nothing fancy! Just good and healthy. And it’ll take you home.

¡Hola, Sabrosa!, English, Healthy Mexican Food

How to Make a Simple Sofrito

shared

The Simple Sofrito

The Simple Sofrito is a powerful flavor ambassador.  One of the very first things that my mother taught me about cooking is to always start with a sofrito.  She said that my food would always be delicious if I started whatever I was doing with this magic concoction.  It seems like every Latino family has their own version of sofrito. My sister always adds a little fresh garlic, carrots and celery. My Ecuadoran consuegra calls it “Refrito,” and hers includes garlic, onion and achiote.  In Spain, the sofrito involves garlic and red pepper.

A Universal Practice

In our family, it meant chopping up some green chile, tomate y cebolla and frying it up in a small amount of oil.  So try this simple saute of green chile, onion and tomato next time you are cooking up some taco meat, scrambled eggs, or whatever you’re hungry for. Just start with the sofrito and then when the pepper is soft but not wilted, add your meat, eggs, or frijoles de la olla. We always make the point that Latinos and Latinas are not a monolithic group.  We are not all the same, but we have some strong things in common.  In the kitchen we find that almost all Spanish, Mexican and Latin American cooks use some kind of sofrito. Therefore, you can call the Sofrito, a universal practice across Latino cultures!

The De Las Mías sofrito is very simple and packs a good punch with ancho chile.  Find the recipe in the De Las Mías Recipe collection. Use it as a base for soup or whatever other guisado you embark on. The short cut is simple though, just chop up some chile, tomate y cebolla and fry it up in a small amount of oil. Sure, go ahead and add some minced garlic. ¡Y ya!

Nothing Fancy, Just Sabroso

I’m a very simple cook but people always love my food.  I don’t have a lot of fancy cooking stuff and most of my pots look like they made it out of a war zone, but I always start with a sofrito, and I think that’s why I cook sabroso.

One of my favorite on-the-go meals is to stop by the market and get one of those chickens that are already roasted.  I remove the skin and chop it up for taquitos. I always start with the simple sofrito I learned from my mom. The chicken just tastes better and you can forget that you bought it in a plastic container and that it’s slammed in sodium. (Poquito de todo, remember?)

I heat up my corn tortillas with a tiniest amount of butter on the comal.  Add the chopped chicken that I sauteed with my sofrito. Top it off with shredded cabbage, cilantro, green onion and a squeeze of lime.  And you’ve got dinner!

Try it and let me know how it goes.  Nothing fancy! Just good and healthy. And it’ll take you home.

Healthy Body, Healthy Family, Healthy Mexican Food, Latina Community

Meatless Monday

manton

Meatless Monday – A Fun Way to Start Eating More Veggies

One of my healthy living goals for the new year is to cut down on meat, and eat more more fruits and vegetables.  

A fun way to do this is to start a Meatless Monday tradition. So we agreed that we could try new recipes, and start the week off with a slightly healthier approach. Also, in these times of climate change, I am constantly worried about our poor little planet! Eating less meat is good for our bodies and good for the planet – a win-win!  

I was remembering my life in Nogales and how we had Meatless Mondays at my Nana’s house “across the line,” on the Mexican side of border. And then I realized that it wasn’t just Meatless Monday, but also Meatless Tuesday and Meatless Wednesday. And then, wait! Hold on. We pretty much went meatless every day except for maybe Carne Asada Sunday!  

The reason wasn’t that we were trying to save the planet, or lower our cholesterol. The reason was that my Nana and my aunts and uncles who lived in that old adobe house on the hill, didn’t have the money to buy meat for a giant family.

We ate frijoles de la olla, frijoles refritos, sopa de frijoles, enfrijoladas, burritos de frijoles, frijoles con chorizo, tostadas with you guessed it, frijoles, and even a special trick I learned: Cave out a bolillo roll and fill it with frijoles and queso fresco! YUM! This all paired really well with my Nana’s killer salsa de chile verde. And ¿sabes qué? I never once felt deprived. I felt loved and satisfied and nurtured.

When we were on the Mexican side of the border, we were poor and we had a super healthy diet. We never ate large portions because there weren’t that many portions to go around. But we never went hungry either, so we were lucky.

You’ve heard it here before and we will say it again: the traditional Mexican diet is a SUPER healthy diet! Our Mexican diet was pretty much dominated by protein from beans, eggs and queso fresco, and bolstered by corn, which is the grain of the gods. (No fooling.) Sure, we ate meat with our meals, but they weren’t dominated by large portions of it. If we had meat, it was in very moderate to small amounts, and mostly for taste.

But here we are now, trying to adopt a healthier way of living. And all we Mexicans have to do is look back to the way of our Nanas and Tatas!

In doing research about Meatless Mondays, I found out that Meatless Monday started as a movement by our colegas at the Public Health School at Johns Hopkins University, back in 2003. Through research, they discovered that Monday was the ideal day to try to recover from the overindulgence of weekends. (Overeating, disrupted sleep patterns and possibly even drinking too much.)  

Some of this research showed that people were motivated by making a small but significant change at the start of the work week. That is where the idea of Meatless Monday came from. As more and more people adopted the idea of not eating meat on Mondays, they became healthier, poco a poco, over time. Here is more evidence that small changes over time are the ones that last. It wasn’t a drastic thing, but just one day a week. The idea is that we could become just a little healthier if we took this small step. We would become healthier and the planet would benefit too.  

 

So Meatless Monday took off and other countries and organizations started getting on board. Australia tried it. Paul McCartney promoted it. Even beef-consuming Argentina got into the act in 2017 by declaring Vegan Mondays!

If you want to learn more about the history of Meatless Mondays, see the Wikipedia article. It has a fascinating amount of information that will surely inspire you to try it!

So at De Las Mías we want to encourage you to give Meatless Monday a try. Here’s another way to eat more veggies and fruits for your health and help Mother Earth carry the load.

Here are some of the benefits of Meatless Mondays:

  • Lower your cholesterol and therefore, your risk of heart attack and stroke.
  • Help you get to a healthier weight.
  • Help lower your risk of high blood pressure.
  • Increase your intake of fiber and its health benefits.
  • Take a little stress off the planet (plant-based foods take less energy).
  • Use less water to grow food (plant-based foods take less water than animal-based food).
  • Plant-based foods pollute less than cows.  

Try some meatless dishes from De Las Mías:

And we’re curious…

  • What’s your favorite meatless dish?  
  • How would your family feel about starting a Meatless Monday tradition at your house? Would they be on board?
  • What is the biggest barrier to going meatless on Mondays?

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meatless_Monday

https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2017/10/19/argentinas-vegan-mondays

¡Hola, Sabrosa!, Edición No. 7: Change, English, Healthy Body, Healthy Mexican Food

Meatless Monday

shared

Meatless Monday – A Fun Way to Start Eating More Veggies

One of my healthy living goals for the new year is to cut down on meat, and eat more more fruits and vegetables.  

A fun way to do this is to start a Meatless Monday tradition. So we agreed that we could try new recipes, and start the week off with a slightly healthier approach. Also, in these times of climate change, I am constantly worried about our poor little planet! Eating less meat is good for our bodies and good for the planet – a win-win!  

I was remembering my life in Nogales and how we had Meatless Mondays at my Nana’s house “across the line,” on the Mexican side of border. And then I realized that it wasn’t just Meatless Monday, but also Meatless Tuesday and Meatless Wednesday. And then, wait! Hold on. We pretty much went meatless every day except for maybe Carne Asada Sunday!  

The reason wasn’t that we were trying to save the planet, or lower our cholesterol. The reason was that my Nana and my aunts and uncles who lived in that old adobe house on the hill, didn’t have the money to buy meat for a giant family.

We ate frijoles de la olla, frijoles refritos, sopa de frijoles, enfrijoladas, burritos de frijoles, frijoles con chorizo, tostadas with you guessed it, frijoles, and even a special trick I learned: Cave out a bolillo roll and fill it with frijoles and queso fresco! YUM! This all paired really well with my Nana’s killer salsa de chile verde. And ¿sabes qué? I never once felt deprived. I felt loved and satisfied and nurtured.

When we were on the Mexican side of the border, we were poor and we had a super healthy diet. We never ate large portions because there weren’t that many portions to go around. But we never went hungry either, so we were lucky.

You’ve heard it here before and we will say it again: the traditional Mexican diet is a SUPER healthy diet! Our Mexican diet was pretty much dominated by protein from beans, eggs and queso fresco, and bolstered by corn, which is the grain of the gods. (No fooling.) Sure, we ate meat with our meals, but they weren’t dominated by large portions of it. If we had meat, it was in very moderate to small amounts, and mostly for taste.

But here we are now, trying to adopt a healthier way of living. And all we Mexicans have to do is look back to the way of our Nanas and Tatas!

In doing research about Meatless Mondays, I found out that Meatless Monday started as a movement by our colegas at the Public Health School at Johns Hopkins University, back in 2003. Through research, they discovered that Monday was the ideal day to try to recover from the overindulgence of weekends. (Overeating, disrupted sleep patterns and possibly even drinking too much.)  

Some of this research showed that people were motivated by making a small but significant change at the start of the work week. That is where the idea of Meatless Monday came from. As more and more people adopted the idea of not eating meat on Mondays, they became healthier, poco a poco, over time. Here is more evidence that small changes over time are the ones that last. It wasn’t a drastic thing, but just one day a week. The idea is that we could become just a little healthier if we took this small step. We would become healthier and the planet would benefit too.  

 

So Meatless Monday took off and other countries and organizations started getting on board. Australia tried it. Paul McCartney promoted it. Even beef-consuming Argentina got into the act in 2017 by declaring Vegan Mondays!

If you want to learn more about the history of Meatless Mondays, see the Wikipedia article. It has a fascinating amount of information that will surely inspire you to try it!

So at De Las Mías we want to encourage you to give Meatless Monday a try. Here’s another way to eat more veggies and fruits for your health and help Mother Earth carry the load.

Here are some of the benefits of Meatless Mondays:

  • Lower your cholesterol and therefore, your risk of heart attack and stroke.
  • Help you get to a healthier weight.
  • Help lower your risk of high blood pressure.
  • Increase your intake of fiber and its health benefits.
  • Take a little stress off the planet (plant-based foods take less energy).
  • Use less water to grow food (plant-based foods take less water than animal-based food).
  • Plant-based foods pollute less than cows.  

Try some meatless dishes from De Las Mías:

And we’re curious…

  • What’s your favorite meatless dish?  
  • How would your family feel about starting a Meatless Monday tradition at your house? Would they be on board?
  • What is the biggest barrier to going meatless on Mondays?

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meatless_Monday

https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2017/10/19/argentinas-vegan-mondays

Healthy Mexican Food

Nopalito Salsa

manton

Nopalito Salsa – Prickly Pear Cactus Salsa: Healthy, Tangy and Delicious

Did you say nopalito salsa? Cactus salsa?  Yes, amiga, that’s what I said!  Okay, first let’s dispel the stereotype that all Latinos eat cactus.  They don’t.  (You saw it here first!) Nopalitos are of the prickly pear variety, and they are healthy and delicious, and many Mexicans and Mexican Americans, but not all, eat them.  Case in point: I once brought a platter of nopalitos con chile to a picnic pot luck in Northern New Mexico and not one person ate them.  The hostess was kind enough to dip her spoon and take a bite and say something, like, “Tangy,”  but that was about it.  And nopalitos are tangy, and are made tangier with a squeeze of lemon or lime, but they are an acquired taste and not universally eaten by all Latinos.

But if you’ve had them and like them, try this simple and delicious salsa.  And if you haven’t had them, try them! Start with this simple, tangy and delicious salsa. Serve it with corn chips! YUM! Or make yourself a  little soft shell taco with a nice warm corn tortilla. DOUBLE YUM! It is also wonderful as a side dish!

This recipe is “seria.”  I say that because it was developed by Lori, La Madrina en la Cocina and she prepared the nopalitos from scratch.  You can find fresh-cut nopalitos already prepared and free of thorns at Mexican grocery stores.  So you could just buy them all ready to go.   But if you’re little lazy, or busy, or both, buy them in a  jar.  It’s okay not to be so Betty Crocker.  Just rinse them before you chop them up for the salsa.  Malena, our mera mera nutritionist would tell you, rinsing gets rid of some of the sodium, and that’s a good thing.

We made this nopalito salsa for our end-of-study party in Albuquerque and it was a big hit!  Try them today and feed them to your kids.  They can go to school and brag about eating cactus!

Healthy Mexican Food

Avocado Mojito Smoothie

manton

Avocado Mojito Smoothie

This seemingly random combination of ingredients actually works to make a delicious and nutritious pick-me-up! If you like melon and you like avocado, you will love this licuado.  The coconut water, lime juice and mint give it a mojito vibe. This smoothie is a great way to get your healthy fat in from the avocado, as well as boosting your new habit of having more fruits and veggies every day.

Treat it as a satisfying elixir after-work or after-work-out!

We love this avocado smoothie because it’s great for breakfast too!  You can also turn it into a mid-day  meal by pairing it with protein.  It goes  nicely with a tuna salad, or tuna tacos, or you can keep it simple by making yourself a fresh ensaladilla with lettuce, tomato, and purple onion, dressed with a light olive oil vinaigrette.  With the olive oil and the avocado you’ve got your healthy fats covered.  And with a crisp, fresh salad with a little protein you are well on your way to treating your body right, Comadres!

Getting into the habit of adding healthy smoothies like this to your day will make it that much easier to live a healthier and satisfying life. Look for other De Las Mías smoothies and licuados in our La Cocina section and enjoy!

¡Andale!  You deserve to take care of yourself!

¡Buen Provecho!

Healthy Mexican Food

Black Bean Tostada with Mexican Squash

manton

These vegetarian tostadas ¡son muy sabrosas! These Black Bean Tostadas with Mexican Squash are tasty and easy.

Get your tostada on!

Here you will find different ways to get your tostada on. You can make your own tostadas in the oven. You can heat them up on the comal to the point of crispy, or if you’re feeling lazy or rushed, you can just use the ones that come in EL PAQUETITO. Yes, that’s right, sometimes we just gotta do what we gotta do. If you have a hungry crew ready for dinner, just use the packaged ones. We won’t tell! And remember, corn is a whole grain, and we want you to eat more whole grains!

This is a delish concoction of black beans and calabacitas, aka Mexican squash. It calls for canned tomatoes. We suggest Rotel™ although we are not sponsored by them. They just have an honorary place in our pantry for those days when you have to throw something together quick.

The combo of sautéed squash, onion and tomato with the black beans is hardy with plant protein and packed full of flavor. The added queso fresco and cilantro add a nice touch and don’t forget to punch it up with your favorite salsa. We have several salsas for your culinary pleasure. So knock yourself out and make yourself, your honey, Viejo, Vieja, Kiddoes, or whoever is at your table, a healthy dinner!

We love tostadas because the basic street tostada is just as simple as a crispy corn tortilla, a good spread of beans, refried, or just mashed without the extra fat, a few morsels of your favorite meat: carnitas, ground turkey, turkey chorizo, or tofu, if you must, and a robust serving of shredded lettuce, tomatoes, sliced radishes or whatever fresh veggie your heart desires. You got queso fresco? Throw some on there! A little of this and a little of that and you’ve got yourself a Mexican feast,¡Comadre!

¡Qué viva México y que vivan las tostadas!

¡Buen Provecho!

 

Healthy Mexican Food

Sofrito para Caldos

manton

The Simple Sofrito is a powerful flavor ambassador.  One of the very first things that my mother taught me about cooking is to always start with a sofrito.  She said that my food would always be delicious if I started whatever I was doing with this magic concoction.  It seems like every Latino family has their own version of sofrito. My sister always adds a little fresh garlic, carrots and celery. My Ecuadoran consuegra calls it “Refrito,” and hers includes garlic, onion and achiote.  In Spain, the sofrito involves garlic and red pepper.

In our family, it meant chile, tomate y cebolla – a saute of green chile, onion and tomato in a bit of olive oil.  You start with the sofrito and then you add your meat, eggs, or frijoles de la olla. So, the take away here is that almost all Spanish, Mexican and Latin American cooks use some kind of sofrito.

The De Las Mías sofrito is very simple and packs a good punch with ancho chile.  Find the recipe in the De Las Mías Recipe collection. Use it as a base for soup or whatever other guisado you embark on.

I’m a very simple cook but people always love my food.  I don’t have a lot of fancy cooking stuff and most of my pots look like they made it out of a war zone, but I always start with a sofrito, and I think that’s why I cook sabroso.

Sometimes if we haven’t had a chance to cook dinner, I will stop by the market and get one of those chickens that are already roasted.  I remove the skin and chop it up for taquitos. I always start with the simple sofrito I learned from my mom. The chicken just tastes better and you can forget that you bought it in a plastic container and that it’s slammed in sodium. (Poquito de todo, remember?)

I heat up my corn tortillas with a tiniest amount of butter on the comal.  Add the chopped chicken that I sauteed with my sofrito. Top it off with shredded cabbage, cilantro, green onion and a squeeze of lime.  Add your salsa as the final step, and eat it when the news comes on.

Try this and let me know how it goes.  Nothing fancy! Just good and healthy. And it’ll take you home.