Super easy, fast, and delicious: Guacamole!

James and I eat a LOT of mexican food... and I'm positive that I could eat it for three meals a day and not get sick of it for a long time ;) On that note, as much as I love guacamole from our local Whole Foods/New Seasons Market I love homemade guacamole SO much more. I usually go the lazy route and have James throw some together but lately it just hasn't tasted the way I want it to so instead of telling him things to add/take out i decided to just make it how I used to do it :)

Ingredients:

3 avocados
2 roma tomatoes (the picture has three but I only ended up putting 2 in)
1 large clove garlic plus 1 small one minced (I only say those sizes because that's what I had on hand instead of 2 medium ones haha)
lemon and lime juice (i use stuff from the bottle out of ease but you could easily use 1/2 lemon and 1/2 lime for this)
a pinch or two of cumin
a pinch or two of ground California chili pepper
a pinch or two of salt
a pinch of two (see a common theme here? haha) of ground black pepper
1/4-1/2 chopped onion (I used about 1/3)

To prepare the avocados I cut them lengthwise in half, pop the seed out with a sharp knife, then cut the "pulp" into cubes while it's still in its shell (careful not to stab yourself through the skin!). Then I take a spoon and scoop it all out in to a bowl.

Next I just eyeballed the amount of lemon and lime juice that I used (I like using both for a different flavor but you could certainly use just one of them), but it was probably about 1/2 lemon and 1/2 limes' worth of juice. I tossed the avocado chunks around in it, finely minced my garlic cloves, put them as well as the salt, pepper, cumin, and red chili pepper into the bowl.

 Next I just mashed it all up and made sure to mix it well. I then chopped up my tomatoes (I usually de-seed one of them so there's not a lot of tomato juice in the finished guac but I've found that if i do that on both then it's not as good) and thew them in, as well as about 1/3 of an onion (more or less to taste). I'm a huge fan of tomato chunks in my guacamole and although I love the flavor of onion in it, I wasn't in the mood for big onion chunks today so i did smaller ones. Mis well and let sit for at least an hour if possible (I was up super early this morning so I just made it, covered it in plastic wrap, and put it in the fridge until dinner time tonight)

Look how delicious that looks!!! YUMMMM!!

Enjoy! 
-B

Roasted Apple Rabbit Recipe

Hey everyone! It's been awhile since I've blogged which is a good thing I suppose since that means I've been staying busy ;) Recently my fiance James and I have been trying to try out some rabbit recipes to see if we like the flavor. At first I did a basic google search and found a rabbit stew recipe but it had red wine in it and since I'm not a fan of red wine at all I wasn't a fan of the recipe. James liked it I think but mostly for the meat. So we tried to find other recipes and we just couldn't find anything that really sounded like it'd taste great. One afternoon a few months ago we were visiting with his grandparents and they said that all they do is cook it like they would cook chicken (basically a straight swap of the meat), and after thinking about it I realized that I wanted to try it with this fantastic Roasted Apple Grille Sauce by Stonewall Kitchen that we get for pork chops at our local New Seasons Market. The sauce has roasted apples, maple syrup, brown sugar, onions, garlic, apple cider vinegar, etc so it creates this flavorful sauce that works well with any meat really :) You can buy some online here if you don't have a New Seasons Market near you. Anyways, here is the recipe that I made up and loved:

1 rabbit (we purchase ours from local butchers) deboned and rinsed
2/3ish jar of the Roasted Apple Grille Sauce (i just sort of dumped it in until there was as much as I wanted)
Wildtree's California Style Garlic Pepper (to taste... I sprinkled it on all over)

As a side we had steamed broccoli and cauliflower and sauteed onions that were also seasoned with the Garlic Pepper.

Steps: 

 Ingredients all lined up (note: after this picture was taken that garlic clove disappeared and I can't find it anywhere in the kitchen! haha

 Better view of the oil and seasonings (I use Grapeseed oil because it's a light oil that's really good for you like Olive Oil is but it has 1/2 of the saturated fat as Olive Oil!)

 My delicious onions sauteing in a small pan.

I simply sliced them all up, threw them in a lightly oiled heated pan that was on medium heat, tossed in the minced garlic clove, sprinkled with Garlic Pepper and then cooked them on medium and low heat until they were the consistency that I wanted.

 My fantastic fiance deboned the rabbit for me so all I had to do was make sure it was rinsed well and then toss it into a heated oiled pan over medium/medium-high heat. I then sprinkled it with Garlic Pepper, stirred it around and added a little more to taste.

 When the meat looks white all the way through (and not pink anymore) I dumped in the sauce and simmered it until it hit 160 degrees F (well, since I had a blonde moment and used the thermometer wrong (Seiously, how hard is it to use a stupid thermometer?! haha) it was almost 200 degrees, but whatever ;) Like I told James: The meat may be a little tough, but we won't die from it being undercooked!! :) :)

YUMMY!!!! 

We used paper plates for easy clean up ;)

And there you have it folks! My super simple and somewhat quick recipe for Roasted Apple Rabbit. 

-B