Author Archives: Meg
Smoothie Sunday: Apple Horchata Smoothie
This smoothie has a bit of a back-story. Erik and I first encountered horchata at our favorite Mexican restaurant. They have it up at the counter and we kept seeing it, saying it looked interesting, looking up what it actually was, and then somehow instantly forgetting so almost every time we went we’d look up what horchata is. Horchata (and yes, I had to look it up again just be sure I got it right) is a type of beverage that is made of ground almonds, sesame seeds, rice, barely, and/or tigernuts. The Mexican version of horchata is usually made with rice and also contains cinnamon. Finally we actually ordered it. And it was super yummy! We drank it all up and that was it. I didn’t really give it much more thought. Then a few weeks later we were at a local deli and lo and behold, they had dry horchata mix*. “Dude, I should get this and use it in a smoothie. It’ll be awesome,” I said, and Erik agreed. And thus the beginning of the apple horchata smoothie was born.
Unfortunately I still had to figure out a fruit to include, since without a fruit it wasn’t going to be a smoothie…just a really big glass of horchata. I tossed around a few ideas. Erik suggested apple would go best, and even though I was a bit skeptical of putting an apple in my blender, I ultimately decided to give it a try.
What you’ll need
Pizza Lab #31: Tres Leches Pizza
We’ve come up with some crazy crossovers for our pizzas before. This pizza maybe one of the strangest. But strange doesn’t mean bad! The inspiration for this pizza was tres leches cake. “Tres leches” means “three milks” in Spanish, so as you can imagine, three milks are involved in the making of the cake. Traditional tres leches cake is composed of a sponge cake soaked in a combination of evaporated milk, condensed milk, and heavy cream after baking. Yet despite this, when done correctly the cake is still light and airy, not soggy. I’m not entirely sure of the origins of the cake, but I imagine someone dipping cookies into milk was involved somewhere, since it’s a similar concept.
How we came up with the idea for this pizza I’m not entirely sure; this was mostly Erik’s idea. But we both brainstormed out the details and execution. Obviously we couldn’t just have a mostly naked pizza that’d been soaked in milk. A pizza needs toppings. The original plan was to top it with dulce de leche. Dulce de leche is a caramel like sauce made from condensed milk. This plan eventually changed though, because despite the fact that pre-made, canned dulce de leche is a thing that exists, we could not find any in stores near us. And making it from scratch takes at least 2 hours, and quite frankly, we just didn’t have the time to babysit cans of milk for that long. So we ultimately ended up on plan B, which was to use our go-to caramel sauce recipe, which takes about 5 minutes to make. I’m getting a bit ahead of myself though…
Smoothie Sunday: Cherry Mango Smoothie
Sometimes I give a lot of thought to my smoothie flavor combinations. Other times the ideas arise mainly from, “I need to use up this fruit before it goes bad.” This smoothie happened to come from the latter category. Luckily it happened to turn out really yummy! It became one of my new favorite smoothies. I realize cherries are kind of a pain in the ass to use in smoothies because you have to remove the pit. If you plan on using them a lot you can buy frozen pitted cherries and use those. If not you’re going to have to bite the bullet and pit fresh ones. I admit this does add a bit of prep time to this smoothie, especially since the mango isn’t super fast to dismantle either. But I think it’s worth it.
What you’ll need
Cheat Codes: Homemade Tortilla Chips
Tortilla chips are a party snack classic. They’re strong enough to hold up dips of pretty much any kind, but mild enough in flavor to let said dip shine. And yet they also have enough of their own flavor to be yummy eaten on their own. Tortilla chips bought at the store are usually pretty good (though some are better than others. Perhaps we’ll have a snack report comparison about it one of these days), but tortilla chips at Mexican restaurants are usually even better. That’s because most places make their chips fresh from scratch. And is the case with almost all food stuffs, fresher is better.
Making tortilla chips from super scratch involves making tortillas from scratch. While probably awesome, making fresh tortillas is a bit too much work for this particular application. That’s why this is a cheat code; it’s halfway between totally from scratch and straight up store bought.
Luckily, despite soft tortillas from scratch involves multiple ingredients and special equipment, making tortilla chips only requires three ingredients and standard kitchen equipment.
Smoothie Sunday: Carrot Cake Smoothie
Smoothie Sunday is back everyone! After taking the winter off from smoothies, now that the weather has finally turned warm it’s time to go back to smoothies. While starting the brainstorming process for smoothies I decided I wanted to try to work some more veggies into smoothies this year, since I didn’t use any last year except avocado (and even then I believe that’s technically a fruit). One of the first things that came to mind was a carrot cake smoothie. Carrots are a vegetable, but they’re on the sweet side, and carrot cake is definitely sweet, so it would make it seem less like drinking veggies, and more just yummy. While a lot of my smoothie recipes call for yogurt, mostly just to add substance, in this case the yogurt plays a vital flavor role. The vanilla yogurt adds a sweet tang, similar to the cream cheese frosting that normally tops carrots cakes, without as much fat and sugar and whatnot. This smoothie is like eating dessert for breakfast, but it’s good for you!
What you’ll need
The Poor Couple's Food Guide 
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