Hi guys!  Well, I’ve uploaded three new recipes for you to try.   Vegetable cakes with orange marmalade, my zesty Lasagna with a Latin twist and a serious dessert; White chocolate cheesecake!  All of them are unbelievable so I hope you get the chance to try them out; as a matter of fact, the White chocolate cheesecake would be a perfect addition to your holiday table this Sunday!!  I’ll be celebrating Easter with my grandmother and she always prepares a sweet ham smothered with garlic, cinnamon, cloves and pineapples and I’ll bring my famous potato gratin and garlic broccoli spears!  I can’t wait!  I wish you great food and fun times with your family this holiday weekend and will meet you back next week with my holiday recipes for you to try!  

Take care, evy   

Hola my friends, I’ve just posted a new recipe for yellow rice.  This recipe is a basic one that, if you open your mind, will take you to new creative heights in the world of rice.  When my mother taught me to prepare it she said that it should serve as a template, that I should feel free to add whatever ingredients I wanted in place of the peas to make it special and my own.  So, this recipe evolved into my yellow rice with shrimp and lima beans and my famous Arroz con pollo that I prepare with a hot Sofrito (not posted yet) and a very mild yellow rice with mixed vegetables.  Today I give it to you with my mother’s blessings and her words of advice; the possibilities are endless so please give it a try, master it and let the creative juices flow.  Oh, and don’t forget to share some of your creations with me here on Evy’s Kitchen. 

Take care, Evy�

This is a picture of my chicken stock gently bubbling away on the stove, it takes approximately seven hours to get the perfect golden color that you see here in my picture.  This stock, which I affectionately call liquid gold, is the cornerstone of many of my Thanksgiving recipes.  It goes into my stuffing, gravy and green beans so you know it has to be perfect!  Check out my recipe section at www.evyskitchen.com to print the instructions and give it a whirl for one of your Holiday recipes.

Hi! I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I had a very nice one thank you very much.  The food was great and it was awesome spending time with my family especially my big brother’s kids; he and his wife Kelly just had twins and I’m simply tickled to have met them! So, after eating so much poultry (because we ate leftovers for two days after) I had a food block!  No kidding! I just had no idea what to cook after so many days of cooking (I began cooking on the Tuesday before Turkey day) we had a plethora of leftovers I mean we had, turkey pasta, turkey sandwiches, turkey and rice I was like whoa (in the style of Joey Lawrence the hottest Dancing With The Stars contestant aside from Mario but he is heavenly ordained so we can’t place him in the same category) I need some pork!

Yes, I love pork.  Sorry for those of you out there who don’t care for swine but I love it! OK then so here is what I came up with; I loved this recipe from the August 2006 issue of Cooking Light Magazine page 123, Indian Spiced Chicken but I just couldn’t think of eating another morsel of poultry so I decided to make it with pork and see how it went.  The recipe also called for tomato chutney but I didn’t have tomatos so I substituted them with peaches which I had frozen from the summer.  I have to say that it was luscious!  The pork married perfectly with the peaches and the sweet potato and corn just teamed up to make it a perfect pairing!  You must try this recipe, go to my website; www.evyskitchen.com and click on the “recipes” link and look for it there.  You will love it! Ok , then I’ll check back with you later, I’ve just purchased my Christmas tree and I’ll be decorating it in the next few days; I think I’ll bake some Christmas cookies!  I love Christmas, smooches and blessings to you all.

Evy

OK, so I’m still on my pork kick!  I pulled this bowtie pasta with pesto pork sauce and goat cheese together for dinner tonight out of absolute desperation as I had a Barnes’s & Noble date with my good friend Teresita to get to and as usual I was running late with only 30 minutes before I had to leave the house.  I took a quick look at my basil plant and sure enough I had enough to make a decent pesto, no pine nuts, but I had walnuts so no problem!  The pork was leftover from the stuffing I made for Thanksgiving, it’s Jimmy Dean’s Maple pork (if you have not indulged in pork stuffed into a plastic sleeve then you have no idea what you’re missing).  For the recipe pay a visit to my website; www.evyskitchen.com and click on the “recipe” link.  Hope you like.

Sad news; I’ll have to cut my post short as I picked up new ornaments for my tree tonight and I won’t rest until I finish my tree project.  I’ll share some pictures tomorrow with some cookie musings as I’ve got to find the perfect biscuit for Teresita’s Cookie Exchange party next Sunday.  I plan on testing the Barefoot Contessa’s Rugelach from her “Parties” book and I’ve got my eye on a tasty looking Mexican wedding cookie recipe that I found on the web. I love testing sweets! 

Bueno then, besos from me to you! Evy

For years now my friends have been telling me how wonderful it is to have a real tree at Christmas time and although I’ve always meant to buy one, I never have quite gotten around to it.  There’s just something comforting about the 8 foot faux tree I’ve had for 17 years.  I bought it for my daughter Christina’s first Christmas and I took such great care of it that its lasted our family all of this time.  Maybe it’s the memories associated with the tree that makes me hesitate at the thought of replacing it or maybe it’s the ease of having one at the ready rather than going through the trouble of choosing a new one each year.  Regardless, this year, my old tree is blessing someone else’s house as I’ve finally made the jump to a new Christmas tradition; a real tree.  And yes, I don’t think I’ll ever go faux again. 

Christina and I have a tradition, every year we decorate the tree together, drink hot cocoa and share some sort of treat that I’ve baked for us; it’s a mother, daughter thing and this year was no exception.  For our decorating date I made one of my favorite winter quick breads; banana, cranberry and walnut to be exact.