Summer 2011, Day 3: Mahi Mahi Tacos with Strawberry Salsa

Today we made Mahi-Mahi fish tacos. Maji-Maji tacos are from the California strawberry cookbook.

My mom really wanted to do this recipe, so I agreed. I thought we should do an Ellie Krieger recipe, so I also made Apple Brown Betty.

But back to the tacos. They are actually really good. There are 3 parts.

• The Fish.
• The Chipotle Avocado Sour Cream.
• The Strawberry Salsa.

First, the fish. What you do is season the fish with cumin, coriander, salt and pepper. And chili, if you want, which I didn't. Then you grill it on a grill pan. That's it.

For the sour cream. Basically, you just get sour cream, chop up some avocado (we used a whole one), and a teaspoon of chipotle chili in adobo sauce (comes in a can). You don't have to add the chipotle, if you don't want to. Mash it all together and there you have it.

The Strawberry salsa you just chop up red onion, strawberries, mango, papaya (we used frozen mango and papaya), and cilantro. It's a sweet salsa.

I give it 1 3/4 Thumbs Up, and my brother's friend also gave it 1 3/4 Thumbs. My mom LOVES it and gives it MORE than 2 Thumbs Up.

She says this is a definite repeat meal. I liked it.

Summer 2011, Day 2: Strawberry Smoothie Love

To Whom May Read This Blog...

As you probably all know, I'm Sophie. The reason why we didn't do our Kid's Cooking Challenge over the school year is because we were really busy. But now it's summer so we're starting it up again.

I started by going to a Califoria Strawberry convention where I learned all about strawberries and how to use them and what's in them. They're pretty amazing because they actually carry a lot of vitamin C, antioxidents, and fiber. I know we're doing Ellie Krieger this summer for our cooking challenge, but I wanted to sort of make my own, using the California Strawberry Cookbook.

The smoothie was really easy and quick. Like usual, we didn't have all the ingredients, so I improvised. We didn't have strawberry juice, plain yogurt, basil leaves (we had them, but I didn't want to add that or the pepper spice). What I did instead was I put in some frozen mangos, strawberries, a cup and a half of ice, some milk, and some strawberry yogurt.

Then I pureed it in the blender. A dietician, who is a guy-etician since he's a guy and most dieticians are women, I guess, said a smoothie is a good lunch or breakfast...or even dinner.

It was a really easy recipe. You just put it all into a blender and puree. It was really tasty and it fills you. And it was very healthy. No ice cream. No presercatives. And I learned that if you freeze fruit, or buy frozen fruit, you don't actually lose much of the good stuff. There's still a lot of good stuf in the fruit, or vegetables, too.

I give this 2 thumbs up, and will make this again.

PS, my oldest brother, who's very particular about his smoothies, said this was a very good smoothie. He thought there were bananas in it, but I said no, they were mangos.

I suggest you feed this to your family.

This is the book by the Guy-etician, David Grotto.

Day 78 - Strawberry Fruit Leather

Recipe from MOM Magazine

You probably thought we forgot about you, but no. Mmm-mmm. No.

I'd never forget about any of you!

I was sick this last week and stayed home from school for 3 days. Our family was really busy. My mom had to finish her book. She's a writer and has a due date. My brothers had band. My dad works.

We cooked, but didn't blog.

But today I am blogging. While we were at the doctor last week, my mom saw a recipe in MOM Magazine to make Strawberry Fruit Leather. It looked good so she copied the recipe into her phone and then later, after we had strawberries, we made it.

All I had to do was puree the strawberries. Of course you wash them and cut off the stems. Jared did this with me.

You just puree them in the blender. This means to blend them like a smoothie. Then you add 1 tablespoon of honey. You can actually add a little more honey, or some sugar. We didn't and our fruit leather is very tart. Or you can find sweeter strawberries.

So then you put parchment paper on a baking sheet with sides. You pour the strawberries on the paper and spread it really thin.

You bake it for 2-3 hours at 250 degrees, then let it sit overnight.

We cut it into strips and rolled it up.

I think you could do this with other fruit, too, like raspberries, and stuff. It is cool!!!

1 THUMB UP because ours was really tart.

Day 9 - Fruit Smoothy

Cookbook - Jamie's Food Revolution

Today is Sunday and we made a smoothy. It's a mix and match smoothy. The recipe calls for different stuff. You can do different kinds of frozen fruits and then it's just kind of what you like. It says to use plain yogurt, but we didn't have any so we used vanilla yogurt.

The weird thing is that it calls for oats. The oats slows down the sugar from the fruits going into your blood so it doesn't rush through your body all at once. You can also put in nuts. You can also add honey to bring out the flavor of the strawberrries or the bananas if you can't taste it that well.

I didn't like the graininess of the oats, but we used steel cut oats. We were supposed to use regular oats. So with steel cuts oats it was grainy and I give it 1 THUMB UP.

But if you use regular oats, I probably would have liked it a lot better. I'll try it again another day with regular oats--not today, some other time--and see how many thumbs up I'll give it.