Vegetarian burritos

Last month, as is my usual wont, I headed up to the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival. The Dancer and I drove up on Friday night, since I couldn't take time off from work this year. Before we left, The Dancer made a quick dinner of vegetarian burritos. I was glad to see her method, particularly the assembly, since I've been getting curious about Mexican cooking lately.

First she heated up corn tortillas in the oven, then added refried beans, pre-cooked brown rice, salsa and grated cheddar cheese to the tortillas. After letting the burritos heat through in the oven, she brought them out, added fresh chopped lettuce and tomato for a garnish, and we went outside for dinner al fresco in her back yard. I was impressed with how quickly everything came together, and also with the fact that this would be a great use for leftovers.

A few days ago, I tried my own version of a burrito. The main difference was that I used a skillet on the stovetop, not the oven. I first toasted a flour tortilla on both sides in a little vegetable oil. Then I added refried beans, leftover salsa and grated cheddar cheese. Since I wasn't working from a recipe, this was cooking by guess and by gosh, but it turned out fine. The thing I liked most was the hot, crispy toasted tortilla. I'm sure to tinker with this in the future, but the initial results were quite promising. Since all my ingredients were out of jars, there's plenty of room for making my own refried beans and salsa, for example.

Housekeeping note

I've been shifting a few things around behind the scenes here. Please note that my new e-mail account is still sevensoy, but it happens to be located at gmail.com , not earthlink.net as it was previously.

Summer Pasta

Well, it's been almost a year since I last blogged here. I'm still cooking, though much of my cooking these days isn't Asian (which is not to say I'm no longer cooking Asian food, far from it!). The garden has been more aggravation than success in the past couple of seasons. I've been very busy with work and school, which cuts down on blogging time (never mind discretionary income).

Having said all that, you might see me back here a little more often in future.

Tonight I made a simple summery pasta dish for dinner. I cooked some penne pasta, adorned it with a chopped tomato from the Red Top Market in Red Lion, NJ, then garnished all with salt, grated black pepper and grated parmesan cheese. Sometimes simple is the best way to go.