Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

Long day today (and much longer for Rachel who's done most of the work)… Had a computer failure yesterday (on the machine that updates BMEvideo, so it will be a few days before the next update) and discovered that it's disturbingly difficult to make an NTFS boot disc (or CD-ROM) if you can't boot off your harddrive, but need to update a single file on it so you can (a core Windows DLL got damaged)… to be honest, Knoppix seemed like by far the easiest way to go, minus the big download that is.

We bought a new computer here (a 3.2Ghz VAIO), but it's not as simple as just plugging it in… It came with Mexican Windows, which means that every single interface is in Spanish, and there's no way to change that. And it came with only a modem, and no ethernet card installed, which was a surprise since that's one of those things you just “assume” is going to be there… Anyway, that's sorted out now. Other than that, we also had to do a bit of running around because I lost my FM3 (sort of like a Mexican green card) and had to go to the police station to file the appropriate reports and forms.

On to a couple things I've cooked in the past few days, starting with this experiment… It's nothing amazing, just a walnut, yellow pepper, zucchini, red onion, and cactus stirfry on sauce-fried noodles.

The spicing was an experiment to try and make something close to a pad thai sauce… I can't remember exactly what I put in it but it was a mix of various chile peppers, including I think some smoked ones, and garlic, lime, soy sauce, and brown sugar…

I made some chilli as well, which I managed to eat inside 30 hours.

It's got a can each of red beans, kidney beans, pinto beans, and black beans, as well as a big can of whole tomatoes (which I quartered), and a small can of whole mushrooms. This is added to lime-grilled onion, garlic, zucchini, yellow pepper, and cactus. If I remember right, it's spiced with three or four kinds of fresh-powdered chile along with lots of chipotle pepper. This is all ground up with paprika, cumin, black pepper, salt, and brown sugar (and maybe some other stuff I'm forgetting). It's not really anything special but it was really delicious and super easy to make.

Sorry I haven't been posting more!

PS. Raw Food: Before and after pictures!