Mexican Food!

I received something exciting last week - packages containing some of the things I left in Oaxaca! Most importantly, I got my teddy bear back and immediately gave it a big hug :-). Among other things in the packages, I also got the recipes from my cooking classes. So, guess what my parents got to do the last two days... That's right! They were the bold, the brave, the beautiful - the volunteer food tasters!

I have only tried two recipes so far. I am limited to what I remember how to make and to what I can understand of the recipes that are written, of course, in Spanish. What's more, sometimes the directions are kind of vague. For example, the first recipe I tried says that you need an onion, then later on it says to put a piece of the onion in a blender with the rest of the ingredients - what size piece? No idea, but it's kind of fun to guess. The recipe also called for 6 cloves of garlic, but the recipe makes no mention of when or how to use it. So... more guessing :-).

It turned out quite well actually. You can see a "making of" picture above of the entomotadas. I would just like to point out that while it looks like it's just tomato paste, it was actually completely made with fresh ingredients and tasted much better than plain paste ;-). Today I tried my hand at rice pudding, and that went well too. It is quite exciting and relieving to have things go so well. So, yay! My cooking skills are growing bit by bit (I think I need to attribute that in part to some good cooking genes I am finally trying out- thanks mom and grandma!). :-D

The completed Entomotada (with some nachos on the side).