I love Rick Bayless

souce: epicurious.com

I just wanted to say how much I love Rick Bayless. He was on Top Chef Masters a few years back and I was completely inspired by his authentic Mexican cooking. Last year for my Birthday I got his Mexican Everyday Cookbook and I have LOVED everything that I've ever made from it. I suggest you go get this right now. I absolutely love Mexican but I usually tend or order things that are full of cheese and rice and not so healthy. Kevin and i have been trying to be healthier (on top of the fact that he is a crazy person who HATES cheese. Its weird. I know.) So I browsed through the cook book and I ended up making some beef fajitas with whole wheat tortillas (ok sooo i purchased the tortillas, I'm not that talented) With Rick's Mexican red rice, (substituted brown rice instead of white as the base and it turned out great) as well as some black beans that I doctored up using a couple of various bean recipes in the book. Voila healthy, cheese-less Mexican dinner!

The Pumpkin and Black Bean Soup Fiasco

I was so excited. I love pumpkin and had been researching pumpkin soups to try out. I found a few variations on pumpkin and black bean soup and decided to give it a try last night. Everything was going really well, and the soup had been simmering for about half an hour, I adjusted seasonings and it was tasting gooooodd and I was really excited to have some. The last step in the recipe that I was loosely working off was to add sherry vinegar. Earlier in the recipe it had called for actual Sherry which I didn't have and didn't feel like buying so I just tossed in some red wine instead. The soup already tasted good, but since I had omitted the earlier Sherry and had bought sherry vinegar I figured I should add it- right??? The sherry vinegar was completely overpowering. I ended up diluting the soup with more vegetable stock which helped some but it was no where near as good as before I added the vinegar. It was incredibly disappointing. I'll make it again the original way.... When I'm done eating this large vat good but not great soup. (If you live in the San Diego area and would like some good but not great black bean and pumpkin soup please let me know. I've got a lot. )

This is how to make the better version of the soup (please do not be temped to add Sherry of any sort)