Discovering New Vitamins

This past Tuesday night, some great friends of ours came over for dinner and brought fresh made Torta's. Our friends are Hispanic and referred to the sandwiches as 'Mexican Subway'... They brought the sandwiches, filled with steak and pork, fresh lettuce, sliced tomatoes, fresh sliced avocados and 2 different types of sauce (red & green). About half way through the meal I told them just how good I thought they were and David told me that in the Mexican culture, this is how they get vitamin t (torta). He went on and on listing letters as he referred to them as vitamins but had an Hispanic dish of food that started with that letter. We had a great laughs with some great friends and great food.


 I was first introduced to the Torta about a year ago. A friend of mine from work was talking about a 'drive thru' Mexican restaurant in Decatur that was supposed to be fantastic and as authentic as anything around, so we gave it a try. Now like I've said before, my middle daughter Shelby and my oldest daughter Ashleigh, will try absolutely anything once so when I headed out to El Palomino for a Totra De Lengua (tongue sandwich), I had Shelby in tow. Now I ordered tacos (chorizo x 2 and tongue x 2), Shelby ordered the Torta De Lengua and we kind of shared our lunch so that each of us could get a taste of what the other one had ordered. My friend was correct. The food was delicious and as fresh as any place that I've ever been. The lettuce was crisp and avocado was beautiful green but not mushy and the meat had been prepared as we waited. Great experience. If you want to try this place, they only have outdoor tables (NO DINE IN), so you'll want to make sure the weather is cooperating or get it to go. I've added a pic of the Torta. At the time I wasn't planning on blogging and posting pics so the detail is lacking...

After dinner, I had baked an iron skillet apple pie (Southern Living) and made homemade cinnamon ice cream (Ree Drummond). The combination worked really well together. I was able to capture a pic of the pie, right out of the oven, but once I combined them and started plating, they got gone in a hurry..

Pretty simple pie to make and the recipe is easily found on-line. Its basically butter and brown sugar in the bottom topped with a store bought crust then 4 lbs. sliced apples tossed in cinnamon and sugar poured over the bottom crust and topped with the other store bought crust (they come 2 in a pack). Brush the top with a frothy egg white, cut about 5 slits and bake for about an hour.... It cuts more like a cobbler than an actual pie but believe me, the taste is there !!! The ice cream recipe can also be found on line (Ree Drummond or The Pioneer Woman). Its a basic ice cream recipe with a lot of egg yolks, half and half, heavy cream, cinnamon and vanilla. NOTE: On the show, she used vanilla beans and cinnamon sticks to steep in her cream mixture. When I was doing my shopping, I discovered that whole vanilla beans were $11 each (jar of 2/$22.00). I went the written recipe route and used a good vanilla extract but the choice is yours. There is already a teaspoon of ground cinnamon in the recipe so you'll actually not see the vanilla beans (inside scrapings) as much as you would think and the extract taste really good in this recipe.

My wife and I finished up our week, like we normally do, on a date night. We went to a cool little place in Madison for dinner called Stem's and Steins but hey, that's another blog post that I'll get to later.

Hope you run out and get some tongue tacos or a tongue torta and then head home to make pie and ice cream... You won't regret it !!!