I mentioned in my recent  Susis Taco Grill post that their amazing carnitas inspired me to make my own. In fact, it incited a whole Mexican feast with my brother and his wife and a few friends. We’ve spent quite a few Sunday evenings cooking at each other’s homes recently, a fun topic BG just covered well.

Our multi-course feasts are generally lengthy affairs, with too much food, and just the right amount of booze. Thomas kicked off this recent bacchanal with some chorizo and cheese stuffed, bacon wrapped (claro), grilled jalapenos.

We then moved on to grilled corn, which we dipped in crema and rolled in queso fresco. Cotija would have been preferable for this application, but queso was all that was available, or so my brother claimed.

I made a few salsas for the dinner. The pico de gallo is a simple uncooked mix of chopped tomatoes (seeds/flesh removed), jalapeno, serrano, onion, cilantro, and a splash or two of red wine vinegar.

The darker sauce is a cooked sauce of boiled whole tomato, onion, and serrano peppers, all simmered in the same pot for ten minutes or so. Then I added a handful of cilantro, some salt, then hit it with my immersion blender.

Finally the salsa verde is a tomatillo salsa, as specified in Kenji’s Serious Eats carnitas recipe. After the carnitas cook for hours and hours at a low heat, the fat is drained off and the pork liquid that remains becomes the base for the salsa. I’ve never had a “meaty” salsa, and if you didn’t know it was coming, the reticent pork flavor and creamy texture could be a little surprising, but it was really awesome.

Finally, there are the carnitas. Submerged in canola oil with orange, garlic, onion, and cinnamon, the pork was cooked at 275F for about four hours, when the pork was falling apart tender. I stored it in the fridge until that evening, when the carnitas were finished in the broiler to crisp up slightly before serving.

Served simply with corn tortillas, queso fresco, and quick pickled red onion (thin sliced with vinegar, Mexican oregano, cumin). A great meal.

I’ve been doing a lot of bike riding out in this area cyclists refer to as “Silk Sheets”, which is a loop that cruises around Fairburn and Palmetto. Many of my spandex-clothed brethren begin the ride at a church that is fairly easy for me to access – I just drive 25 minutes out Bolton Rd, which eventually turns into Fulton-Industrial and go straight for what seems like a million stop lights.

After the ride, I’m ravenous, so I usually stop and get something to eat to quell my stomach’s screams. First it was Bojangles, but lately I’ve been hitting up Susis Taco Grill.

In a strip mall by the Bojangles, Susis is a small little place with maybe six tables, a large menu (tacos, tortas, enchiladas, whole chickens – you name it), and three friendly guys that serve up some damn fine food. So far I’ve only tried four of the tacos (carne asada, al pastor, carnitas, and lengua), as tacos are the best candidates for eating while driving. The lengua is pictured above because that’s the only one to make it all the way home. You can see that if you order them “all the way” they are loaded up with beans, tomatos, and cheese, which I don’t normally see on tacos of this style. Some may think it crowded, but I particularly like the addition of the beans.

I wish I had a picture of it, but the carnitas were the best I’ve ever had. Susis didn’t skimp on the large chunks of tender and crispy edged pork, which had an incredible aroma of cinnamon without an overpowering flavor the spice. Wonderful.

So good, in fact, I ended up making carnitas at home the next day….more on that later this week.

But regarding Susis, if you are anywhere close to that side of town, I highly recommend trying it out.

After attending a meeting in Forest Park yesterday, I swung by Taco Rancho, the new taqueria from Chef Jose Rego (formerly of Allegro). I first heard about this place in a write-up Bob Townsend did for the AJC. I had a very good meal at Allegro before their demise, so I had high expectations, which were almost completely diminished as I drove through the desolate State Farmer’s Market to find the place. Finally, the quaint and isolated restaurant appeared.

The interior is very vibrant and clean, most definitely not a dive taqueria joint. Unlike many small taquerias, the menu offers the full spectrum of Mexican food for lunch (not open for dinner) – tacos, burritos, tortas, quesadillas, soups, whole chickens, and more. In addition, they serve breakfast, mostly a eggs, beans, chorizo, or a combination thereof in sandwich, plate, or burrito form.

As this was just a quick snack, I sauntered on over to the counter while I scanned the menu and ordered two tacos – one beef cheek (cachete), and one carnitas. (unrelated – what’s the difference between a saunter and a mosey? I think with a mosey, one would perhaps be wearing cowboy boots. Just a thought.)

The two tacos, served on amazingly thin and smooth white corn tortillas which had been quickly firmed up on the griddle, arrived quickly. The carnita taco was a pleasant mix of both shredded and large chunks of pork, neither one dry. I didn’t get too much spice flavoring on the carnitas, but perfectly juicy pork doesn’t really have to have much flavor added to be great.

The beef cheek, which was slathered in a tomato based sauce which made the whole dish very reminiscent of beef stew, was also excellent, due to the tenderness of the fork tender and gelatinous beef.

These were some damn fine tacos.

Also of note, in the brief couple of minutes before my tacos arrived, some chips hit my table and the waiter pointed me to the salsa bar, which features five to six good looking salsas. I tried the salsa roja with cacahuate (peanuts ya gringo), which was fiery and smooth and excellent.

I’m not sure if I’d drive 30 minutes to hit up Taco Ranch very often, but it’s definitely destination worthy if you are on the south side of town.

After my ‘04 Spring semester of college, a few friends and I got all Horace Greeley and packed it into a couple of cars and drove out west for a week. I was in the Ford station wagon on the left (below), dubbed “The Red Baron”. The engine was so tired we had to turn off the AC to maintain speeds over 30 mph while driving up hills. Once we reached Memphis we decided to forgo all interstate highways and we drove 36 hours straight on scenic state highways, sleeping in shifts, until we reached Moab, Utah.

The sights were awesome. The picture at the top of this post is the famous “Delicate Arch” near Moab. Below is a picture from Needles in nearby Canyonlands National Park.

After a few days we headed South into New Mexico and checked out Santa Fe, eventually heading back to Georgia via the Texas panhandle. We ended up breaking down an hour outside of Amarillo (Shamrock, which happened to be a dry town), where we spent two days sampling the local combination Pizza Hut/Taco Bell and waiting for the car to be repaired. It’s a trip I think of often.

One particular food memory from that trip is the green chiles. They were everywhere. Green chile sauce  is HUGE in Moab, it’s the speciality topping for everything from hamburgers to omelets. The condiment is somewhat like salsa, but it’s cooked with flour and chicken stock to create a unique sauce. Yes I realize salsa = sauce, but you know what I mean.

In New Mexico, where the chiles are even more popular, they are generally used to make a fiery salsa. Hatch in southern New Mexico is the city that made them famous (similar to what Vidalia did for sweet onions), though they are ubiquitous all over the state. We purchased some green chile salsa during the trip, and used it often in the breakfast burritos we made while camping. We also sampled some green chile salsa in Santa Fe, where we had some food that the waiter described as “a little bit hot”, which apparently is the Pueblo expression for “oh-my-Jesus-make-it-stop”.

Below are what they look like, similar to an Anaheim chile. The red chiles come from the same plant as the green chiles, the green ones are picked before they’re ripe, then they are generally roasted. The ripe red chiles are often dried and used in powders. Unlike many unripe/green peppers, the New Mexico variety can be quite hot. Chili fact – the interior rib of a chile is also referred to as the placenta!

Still here after all that? That brings me to the point of all this – Sol Del Rio Salsa, made in Georgia using New Mexico chiles, which I purchased at Whole Foods last weekend. The mild and medium were good, but if we’re talking about green chiles, I want some heat, and the “Hot” version brings it. Chock full of green chiles (the #1 listed ingredient), the salsa is light on acid and seasoning, but the slow burn begs for another scoop of salsa to cool things back down…only to bring the burn back. Finally, some jarred salsa with some character. Enjoy with caution.

Bonus – me looking like a douche in Santa Fe.

Included in the photo set: Taqueria Mi Pueblita II, Paul’s Philadelpha Eatery, Taqueria Jasmine, and Baan Sawan. Baan Sawan is the coolest Thai restaurant I’ve been to in a long time. The bartender and proprietor (and obvious wine geek), Sam, says he runs a “fine dining restaurant, that just happens to serve Thai food”. A comprehensive post on Baan Sawan can be found here.

Taqueria del Sol is celebrating their 10th anniversary by opening up on a single Sunday for each location. The Decatur location will be open for a 12-3PM brunch, featuring huevos rancheros for $8. The other locations will be open from 6-9PM and each location will have a different specialty dish. The Westside event will be on April 4 and will feature fajitas with traditional fixings for $10. The Athens location will have green chile cheeseburgers/fries for $9 on April 18, and on April 25 Cheshire Bridge will have turnip green tamales with pork crackling and refried black eyed peas for $10.

I am often in the Westside Provisions District, but I generally avoid that TDS like that line out the front door is the Baatan death march. I have little interest in standing in line in the sweltering heat for 1 hour, and similarly I don’t want to freeze my ass off with an icy cold margarita in hand. BUT, I recently hit up TDS around 9PM when the line was short and I thoroughly enjoyed my meal, especially the special-of-the-day crispy shredded beef taco. I need to add TDS to my regular rotation, but just pick my moments better. If you need recurring enticement, you can sign up to receive their weekly email updates.

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Last year I attended the Wine Enthusiast ‘Toast of the Town’ event at the Aquarium. It was fun – there was some decent wine, especially at the VIP tasting, and good eats from numerous chefs around Atlanta too. The aquarium ballroom isn’t a shabby destination either, especially if they’ve managed to keep all the sharks and beluga whales alive for this event. The event is offering my readers $10 off the regular tickets and $20 off the VIP tickets. Use code ‘PRMOUTHPIECE’. Just kidding, PATL10 is what you actually need to use.

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Cochon 555 is coming to Atlanta on 4/18 (my birthday, btw). If you haven’t seen the concept, it’s 5 chefs, 5 pigs, and 5 winemakers (read: you’ll be buzzed, riding a pork high). Tickets are $125/$175 VIP. That’s a lot of clams, but the event has some impressive chefs (Sean Brock, Kevin Rathbun, Todd Mussman, Mike Lata, Kelly English), and the wineries include Gamble Family Winery and Hirsch Vineyards. Hirsch makes some killer pinot noir, so that is really tempting me.

I started by making refried beans. I had some Rancho Gordo black beans soaking in a water/garlic/bay leaf mixture from the previous day. Shown beside it are the Napa-based Rancho Gordo Rosa de Castilla beans, part of a joint venture called the Rancho Gordo-Xoxoc project, a partnership with Mexican bean growers to promote and ensure the survival of heirloom Mexican bean varietals. 

You can get a lot of great bean cooking ideas from the RG blog. The next day I ended up sautéing the rosa de castilla beans in bacon fat with onions. These beans are fantastic. You can buy RG beans online for $5-6 a package, or you can also pick them up at Star Provisions for $8.50 a package. $5 a package is expensive, but you get a lot of varietals that you won’t find around Atlanta, and the taste is 300% better than store brand beans.

I also ordered some Mexican oregano from RG, which has a slightly stronger and more distinct oregano flavor.

The beans weren’t quite tender yet, so I sautéed some onions and garlic, then added the beans, water, fresh ground cumin, chile powder and cayenne until they were soft and the liquid was almost totally reduced. Actually, these black beans never really got as tender as I wanted. And I cooked them a long time, probably an hour, adding water a few times.

I don’t have a masher, so I used my “mallet”, which also has the potential to be the most dangerous weapon in my kitchen. I mashed up the bean mixture, added some olive oil, and turned up the heat to finish the beans.

While all of this was going on, I also cooked some bacon and crisped potato cubes. I began creating the burritos – tortillas, then refried beans, then queso, potato, and bacon.

Followed by rice and scrambled egg. When I cooked the scrambled egg, I cooked it like an omelet, keeping it in one large piece. My thinking is that there would be less surface area of egg exposed to the deep freeze, so there’s less chance of textural issues when they are reheated.

I ended up making five burritos.

I ate one right away.

And froze the other four. I wrapped them tightly in aluminum foil. I should have wrapped them first in plastic wrap, then in aluminum foil, as the aluminum foil stuck to parts of the burritos when I tried to unwrap them later.

Here is a frozen burrito. The frozen bean end looks gross. I cooked it in the microwave for three minutes at 70% power. Don’t ask me why I selected 70%. I’m slightly neurotic about choosing microwave power levels. I come up with all sorts of internal justifications regarding why I chose a particular setting. “I’m warming up a pint of chili? Well Jimmy, we don’t want to cook the exterior of the chili, we want to slowly warm the chili, followed by a quick nuke to ensure the chili surface is hot enough to melt shredded cheese. Let’s go four minutes at 40%, followed by sixty seconds at 100%”.

Guess what, they were pretty good. I ate one almost every day for the following six days, and I never noticed a degradation of quality from day one to day six. The eggs didn’t even taste weird. I wish I had used more cheese, which I think helps balance out the rice and beans, which get a bit dry upon reheat. But additional salsa helps with that too.

I drive to South Carolina one morning every week, so these were especially convenient for that trip. Right before I jettisoned Atlanta, I microwaved the burrito, wrapped it in foil, and went on my way. It was still warm by the time I hit Monroe, GA.

Burrito success!

I can’t believe it’s already Christmas. It always sneaks up on me. So is it any shock that I’m behind on buying gifts?

This Saturday I made a mad dash to try to wrap up my Christmas shopping, plus I needed to buy some stuff for a cheesy Christmas sweater/pot luck party that night. Instead of cooking I decided to get a spread of charcuterie and cheese from Star Provisions, but on my way there, I hit a pothole (seen above) on Huff Rd. and blew out two tires. Merry Christmas.

So as I sat there in my car waiting for a tow truck, across from the street from a speaker store that was blasting rap music in the parking lot (“I wanna, lick lick lick lick ya from ya head to ya toe”), thinking about how this was some sort of penance for prior sins, when I realized I was walking distance from urban pl8.

I walked over to find they were still serving brunch. I contemplated eating in so I could relax with a bloody mary, but decided missing the tow truck would be the icing on the cake, so I ordered huevos rancheros to go, then sat in my car and ate while the apartment complex security guard curiously watched me from afar.

I enjoyed the breakfast. Two corn tortillas with two sunny side eggs, salsa, refried beans, sour cream, and cilantro. You can’t really see the beans in the picture, but that was the best part. They created a refried bean cake and cooked it on a griddle so that it was crusty on the top and bottom. The salsa was above average too. Recommended. Also, the staff at urban pl8 are super nice.

The tow truck finally arrived and towed me to Gordy Tires, across from Flip. A little over $400 later, and I was on my way.

I finally did get that charcuterie at SP. It was a hit at the party.

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This photo has nothing to do with this story, but it’s my Sunday breakfast from this weekend. I’ve been making rice bowls a lot for breakfast since our house got a rice cooker. They are great for using up vegetables in the fridge. This one is rice + bacon + asparagus sautéed in bacon fat + two poached eggs + sriracha + soy sauce. Delicious.

day 5 lunch: enchiladas with cheese, potato, green pepper, chicken breast, homemade sauce – cost: $2.08

breakfast day 6/7: Spanish omelet – cost: $0.81

My last two meals of my “week” were the enchiladas I had for lunch on Friday and the breakfast I had on Saturday and Sunday. The rest of my meals were provided for me due to a wedding, which I’ve mentioned many times in my posts in this series, as if that’s a good excuse.

Honestly, I think my Eat on $30 week was a bit of a failure. I managed to eat 16 meals using $15.61 worth of food, with $20 layout in cash. I have a bunch of eggs, chicken, scallions, celery, carrot, tortillas, and cheese left, but getting through week days is no problem. Being creative, frugal, healthy, and sober is relatively easy during the week. Making it through the weekend, when you want to cut loose, is another story. I can’t say that I feel like I challenged myself like the other participants did, but I did learn a lot and hope that some of these learned values will rub off on me. I think they will.

I am not actually sure how to summarize my thoughts on Eat on 30, especially after reading such great wrap-up posts from Tami, Use Real Butter, and Trouble with Toast. So here are some random thoughts on what I did to Eat on < $30, challenges, and takeaways.

Eat on $30 Stuff

• The Sunday paper has lots of coupons, but you can find just as many great manufacturer coupons on coupons.com and via slickdeals.net.
• My key ingredients for inexpensive meals: legumes, rice, whole chicken, pasta, eggs, and potato.
• I became much more cognizant about not wasting food – all leftovers not immediately eaten went into the freezer. Bones and celery/carrots ends became stock. Livers became pate.
• Planning and cooking healthy meals took more time than I had available . Now think about people who are working double shifts.
• Without a strong desire to cook, and/or a solid set of culinary skills, coming up with intriguing and tasty meals can be tough. I was “up to the challenge” so to speak, as I knew it was a short period of time and thought it was fun. I bet after only two weeks this novelty would wear off. And I love to cook.
• Dining out isn’t possible without severely cutting into the grocery budget. Most people have to dine out sometime, at the least pickup fast food, due to various circumstances in their lives. For example, many of the people I work with have thirty minutes to eat their lunch. If they forget to bring their lunch from home, then they have to pickup something quick, and now they have less money for groceries. Every instance of this scenario, which can realistically happen multiple times in a week, impacts the person’s ability to buy fresh food to cook/eat.
• This challenge saved me a ton of money during the week, and when I bought my first meal out (Indian food in Little 5 Points), I felt great.
• The ability to stretch food and save in creative ways is an art form. I enjoyed talking with friends and reading blog posts about all of the various meals and savings that are out there within the Eat on $30 constraints
• Tami from Running with Tweezers is awesome. She cares so much about these issues, and she has successfully created a platform that has reached a lot of people. I know I probably disappointed her with my inability to fully meet this challenge, but her message has not fallen on deaf ears. I hope I can follow through and continue to be a more responsible eater, but most importantly, I need to give my time to this cause. My girlfriend’s family once invited me to help them serve food at a shelter on Ponce, and it was very rewarding. The people there were amazing. I think the reason I haven’t donated my time at this shelter since my last visit is because I haven’t thought about it. And now because of Eat on $30, I’m thinking about it. Hopefully you are too.

I’m back in Atlanta, but as Tami mentioned in her Eat on 30 announcement post, I am in a wedding for one of my good friends this weekend and there are all sorts of related parties surrounding the event, beginning with last night. Last night I had to head directly from SC to the taqueria themed party, hence my lack of a post.

I feel guilty that I am going to these free food/wine parties, which is why I’m trying to keep my budget under $24, or even lower if possible. In addition to last night’s party, I will be fed for free tonight, tomorrow lunch, and tomorrow dinner. That gives me a total of four free meals.

Through this morning, which is my fifth day as I’m one day behind the rest of the Eat on $30 crew, I’ve used $12 worth of food. I only spent $20 on groceries, but I already had certain things in stock, like canned diced tomatoes, and I’m waiting to see if I end up using them before I count them as $ spent. It does look like I’m going to be left with quite a bit of food on Sunday though, I’ve hardly made a dent in my chicken and eggs.

There are no pictures from Thursday’s food, but here’s the quick run-down:

• Breakfast – two scrambled eggs with 1oz cheese on a corn tortilla – cost: $0.39
• Lunch – I made this along with breakfast, then nuked it in the microwave at work – pasta with sautéed zucchini and tuna – cost: $1.52
• Dinner – felt super guilty as I ate a catered meal provided by Taqueria del Sol :-(

For breakfast today I made chilaquiles with fried potatoes, using an easy enchilada sauce I made before I left town. The meal came out awesome.

breakfast 5: chilaquiles with fried potato, jack cheese, fried egg, scallion, green pepper, and cilantro – cost: $1.26