Mexican fire-roasted sauces

If you are into real Mexican cuisine, you might like to make a fantastic fire-roasted sauce that only gets better once it sits in the fridge.

You'll need a cast-iron griddle or comal (a round iron griddle).  The best are by Lodge, and you can often find them at Academy; if not, you can order one directly from Lodge.  They are the best way to heat up corn tortillas also.

Ingredients:
One onion, quartered
Three or four Italian tomatoes
Two or three garlic cloves, unpeeled
A chile ancho, mulato, guajillo, pasilla, or cascabel (I really like cascabel chiles); these are dried chiles but they should still be flexible so you can use the rest for stuffing if you want to.  Recipe for that later.
Ground chipotle powder

Cover the griddle with aluminum foil and heat.  Place onion and tomatoes on the griddle and allow to roast, turning with kitchen tongs.  Have your blender handy, and as the onion and tomato begin to char, put them into the blender.  Put garlic on griddle and remove as the peel becomes toasted.  You can do this at the same time you do the onion and tomatoes if you are careful not to let the garlic burn.  Without taking off the peel, use a garlic mincer to mince the garlic right into the blender.

Put a small pan of water on the stove, add some salt, and heat to just boiling.  Meanwhile, remove the seeds and the stem from your chile of choice (I only use one) and place on griddle.  Turn chile, pressing it down lightly, but only until fragrant.  If it burns it becomes bitter.  Pop it into the hot water, turn off the heat under the pan and allow chile to rehydrate.

Place chile into blender with other ingredients and a little of the water in which the chile soaked.  Add salt and pepper.  Blend until smooth.

Heat a skillet and add some neutral-tasting oil.  When hot, "fry" sauce, stirring, until the raw taste has worn off.  Check the salt, and add just a touch of chipotle powder to add a smoky taste.

Store sauce in fridge.  Use for flautas, enchiladas, with a fried egg, in beans, you name it. 

The aluminum foil allows you to use the griddle without having a clean-up afterward.  Enjoy!

The Yard Rat

Two days ago, as I watered my newly-planted flowers in the back yard, suddenly a large rat scuttled across the lawn and made its escape.  I was horrified, because each morning Toots dashes into the backyard sniffing the ground from one end to the other, obviously enthusiastic about something unusual that has been here in the night.  Okay, I can take opossums and raccoons, but I draw the line at rats.  It was off to the store to find some kind of trap.  Rats can give dogs toxoplasmosis and gosh knows what else.

There was poison, but I didn't want to kill some harmless visitor to our lawn, such as our squirrel.  There were the snapping-type traps, but only mouse size, and besides, it seems like a ghastly way to die.  I have a wire cage trap I've used to get rid of opossums and stray cats, but where would I let the danged rat out?  ]And what else might I catch instead of the rat?  Could I let the rat loose far enough away to keep it from returning?  Heaven forbid it should be reproducing somewhere in the yard, because not only might it come back, but then what to do with the offspring?

Finally I bought a sticky trap.  It consisted of a couple of strips of thick plastic (two traps, or a double dose of stickiness if you needed it) covered in something unbelievably adhesive; I accidentally got a finger into the stuff and thought I'd never get free again. 

But somehow this didn't seem like a particularly stress-free solution; the instructions showed a rat, dead, stuck in the stuff and being tossed into the trash in a very sanitary fashion.  Well, something wasn't right, because why was it dead?  And who in his right mind would pitch the cadaver into his trash can and hope for the best, smell-wise?

It took me two days to work up the nerve to set the traps out, baited with some almonds and a toasted tortilla.  The instructions were clear that no cheese or bacon could be used since greasy substances were banned.  Might they allow the rat to slip away, lubricated by cheese or bacon?  Who knows?

During the night, I had nightmares that the trap was loaded with radioactive material such as uranium and strontium 90.  That would sure explain the dead rat in the instruction drawing!

First thing this morning before allowing Toots outside, I checked the trap, which I had placed on a patio close to the laundry room.  The entire trap was gone.  I couldn't find it anywhere.  I pictured a 'possum making off with the trap stuck to its paws, strong enough to function in spite of this minor bother.

Finally I found the sticky thing, overturned and crammed into a drain grill next to our patio that keeps water from accumulating along a wall.  The danged beast, whatever it was, was not only strong but vindictive.  If it had rained we would have had water flooding the whole patio, thanks to the natural dam created by the trap.

I've declared a truce on the vermin front.  As long as whatever they are stay outside, so be it.  After last night, though, I don't think we will be visited again for a while.  That could not have been a pleasant time, finding yourself stuck to a big black plastic tray and having to drag it around the yard while trying to free your paws.  I wish I could have seen it.

Sandles, sandels and sandals...

This is what happens when you are too lazy to look up a word that has whisked out of your brain.  It's not as if the dictionary were in another room, either.  It is on a stand right by the computer, but that means I have to get up and turn pages, God help us.  And try learning another language.  It will make your English go to the devil.  I have a wonderful computer program for learning Italian, and it has made me grind to a halt, communication-wise.  My brain goes into some kind of gear-stripping buzz that can't come up with the right word in any language at all until, perhaps, several hours later.

Today the Toots and I only went two kilometers because I was tired, sore, and hungry, but he behaved wonderfully.  I may be able to trot with him before long.  It has dawned on him that there will be no leash, thus no walk, if he goes bananas at the very thought of going out.  So now the uproar of getting him into the underleg doo-dad has calmed to a mere routine.  Today we went by another wonderful Sheltie, the soul of civilization, and a black Lab totally out of control that was dragging its owner down the path.  The Toots did not try to dash to one side, he didn't yank on his leash, he didn't whine.  Is victory within sight??