How to Keep Cilantro Fresh Longer

Grandmas always have good advice to share, and my grandma is an excellent cook so she always shares her cooking/kitchen wisdom with us. Her latest tip was about cilantro.
At my home there is only two of us, my wife and I and we both like cilantro a lot. Even though we like it a lot and use it all the time in our cooking, we always end up throwing some of it away because it goes bad before we can use it all (It would be great if they sold a smaller bunch at the grocery store). What was my grandma’s solution for this? To take the cilantro out of the plastic bag, wrap it around with newspaper and then put it in the refrigerator just like that. I have to say that doing this works pretty well. The cilantro doesn’t go bad as fast as it used to so we hardly have to throw any away now.

Lemon and Salt

Have you ever wondered how else can you dress a salad without using salad dressing? Try putting some lemon juice and a little bit of salt on it next time. It tastes great and it’s healthy too. You can also ad some diced onions (put the diced onions in a colander and wash them with running water while squeezing them hard to take away some of the strong flavor, but if you like them like that you can skip this part). Ad some avocado slices, a little bit of green or red pepper, cilantro and some shrimp. Then let it a sit for about 10 minutes so that everything can absorb the lemon juice and that’s it! You are ready to eat! This is one of my favorite salad recipes. Try it. I hope you like it!

Dinner for Lunch… Lunch for Dinner…

I am feeling a little bit heavier than when I got to the US. (I left Chile about 9 years ago). Lots of things here felt backwards; I was used to having Christmas during the summer, going to the beach in February and having to bundle up in July. However, one of the hardest things was getting used to eating dinner around 6 or 7 in the evening. Lunch at noon wasn’t enough to get me through the day. In Chile I used to have almuerzo (our dinner/main course of the day) around 1 or 2 in the afternoon. Me and my sisters would come home from school while dad came home from the office. Mom would wait for us with a big and yummy almuerzo; one of my favorite was her sliced zucchini filled with tuna and melted cheese on top of it, followed by a special made rice and chicken that we would devour in a matter of just a few bites. Then we would go back to school happy with our full stomachs (Dad would take his little siesta though before going back to work). In the evening after everyone was back home, we would have another meal, but a small one this time. We call it “Tomar Once” which is basically tea time. We would have a cup of tea and some fresh warm bread, bought just a couple of minutes before from the bakery around the corner. Yummmm that was good bread! I loved it when steam came out every time I sliced it and the butter melted as I spread it on it :)

What does that have to do with me feeling a little bit heavier? I think it has a lot to do with it. I am used to eating the American way now, with dinner around 7:15 in the evening, and I think that is precisely the problem. Many times I don’t get to exercise after dinner and I go to bed with a full stomach. That combined with big lunches (lets see.. a 12” sub or chicken teriyaki or a turkey sandwich) makes me feel as if I had eaten dinner twice in a day, and the pounds add up really quick... I know is not possible for lots of people to have dinner at “lunch time” and then a smaller meal at “dinner time”, but what I try to do during the weekends with my wife is go back to my Chilean eating schedule so that at least on Saturdays and Sundays I don’t go to bed with a heavy stomach. This helps my stomach feel much better. What do you think of a schedule like that? Would you try switching on the weekends or is it too weird?

Picking Good Grapes

The other day I was at the grocery store doing my shopping and I wanted to buy some grapes. The problem was that most of them looked just ok, not great. Some of them were a bit brown and most of them had too much shatter. Shatter is when grapes have fallen off the stem without you pulling on them. The less shatter, the better/fresher the grapes are supposed to be, so whenever you buy grapes look for the ones with the least amount of shatter! That day I ended up not buying any and decided to wait until the following week. Boy I was glad I waited because they looked so much better, with way less shatter and yes... they were very tasty!