No longer updating, but hope you enjoy the recipes!
Unfortunately, I got too busy to go back to blogging, after I was forced to take a break from it in 2015 because of tendonitis.
But you can still follow my cooking, eating, and travels on instagram: (@spontaneoustomato)
Avocado Chicken Tacos
What do you cook when you don’t feel like cooking?
When I lived in Japan and would come home exhausted and starving from work, I would either pick up some food from a convenience store on the way home (<== much better food than in convenience stores here in the states, but still…) or I would chop up one tomato and one avocado, toss them in a bowl, give them a healthy drizzle of Sriracha, and call it Dinner.
Now that I live in a country where I can afford salad greens again (!), my no-cooking lazy summer evenings often just involve “fridge salads.” A handful or two of arugula, spinach, or baby romaine, decorated with sliced peaches or strawberries—along with a crumble of goat cheese and a scattering of almonds or pine nuts—or even my trusty old tomato-avocado combination.
There are also nights when we cook real food, which leads to subsequent nights when we can heat up leftovers. (Leftovers are the best!)
Other nights we just have guacamole for dinner. Don’t judge.
Black Sesame Mochi Cake (+ Two Years!)
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Two years of blogging. It’s hard to believe.
Two years of trying to fall asleep with recipe ideas rattling wildly around in my head: a very specific form of insomnia.
Two years of connecting with other food bloggers as colleagues and as friends (and yes, sometimes as an awestruck, admiring fan).
Two years of feeling extra pressure every time a potluck rolls around.
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Two years of struggling with food photography, despite the fact that I’ve now had my fancier camera for a year. (At least my photos will never be as bad as the ones in my first post.)
Peppered Turkey Scones (Guest Post)
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Once upon a time, I wasn’t much of a cook. I mean, I knew how to make a few recipes that were childhood favorites like sweet cinnamon rice or potato soup, but everything else either came out of a box or was bought on the go. Then came a marriage in which I was expected to be the perfect little Mexican wife, and I tried to make all of the traditional foods, but they were never as good as the suegra’s dishes. Then came the divorce and even though that was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, the fact that I had to cook for one was something I couldn’t handle; I didn’t take care of myself as well as I should have.
I skipped breakfast and sometimes forgot to eat lunch. Dinner was a simple protein-packed chicken taco. I lived off chicken and tortillas. Even though my eating habits have changed drastically since the first year of my divorce, I still sometimes crave simple chicken in a tortilla (with Tapatío!).
In that first year, when I was in the habit of forgetting to eat, I suffered some weird symptoms, yet somehow despite all of that, was awarded a promotion at work. Even though I was happy for the first time in many years, I realized that I needed to take better care of myself, so I started making breakfast every day.
Paprika Gambas al Ajillo
More than a few of my friends should really start their own cooking blogs.
Not that anyone thinks they have enough time for that (and they’re right; no one does!), but I mean they are totally qualified, especially since the qualifications include: love food; make a lot of it pretty well (or a little of it very well); own a camera.
My point is, I sometimes feel it’s a fluke that I ended up creating a food blog while certain other people haven’t. (Yet?) A fluke that is no doubt related to all of that unstructured time I’ve been busy enjoying as a grad student (whereas other people— “real people,” as I call them— tend to have jobs). I’m sure there’s a relevant PhD comic for this somewhere.
Since I started this blog, I’ve gotten so much inspiration and wisdom from various friends who could show me up in the kitchen if they wanted to. I can’t count the number of times I’ve called my younger sister for baking advice. I’ve learned the most, though, not from correspondence but from cooking together with others.
Raspberry Chocolate Tart with Coconut Crust
Summer vacations and celebrations sometimes call for decadence.
It’s been two solid weeks of decadence around here.
Today concludes my (family reunion slash) eating tour of the Midwest: this afternoon Paula and I will fly back to California after spending two weeks doing all of the eating we possibly could in Madison and Chicago.
Continue Reading: Raspberry Chocolate Tart with Coconut Crust…
Za’atar Roasted Chickpeas
I’m home visiting my parents in Madison, Wisconsin, and I can tell you one thing for certain about the weather: I would not want to turn on the oven right now.
It’s been a humid swamp of a week, with the air outside as warm and thick as a sauna, punctuated only by nightly thunderstorms. Miraculously, a slight breeze has been keeping the mosquitoes at bay… otherwise it’d remind me even more of my childhood.
My parents’ occasionally air conditioned house is a temperate refuge from the heat and humidity; I see no reason to meddle with that by turning on the oven (although my sister made her spinach cheese mini quiches, among other things, in preparation for my family’s solstice party over the weekend.)
These roasted chickpeas happen to be the last reason I turned on the oven before I left California, and they’ll be the first reason I turn it on again when I get back.
spontaneous tomato 