Epcot Food and Wine 2011

It is that time of year again. Every fall, Epcot hosts a Food and Wine Festival. There are many food and alcohol events during that time but most are a separate admission price. We usually go once or twice a year – once as a large group and another time to sample the goodies we missed while hanging out with the group. Our group event was on a Saturday this year. We had another one of those perfect Florida weather days. It appears that everyone in Orlando decided to visit the park on this day. I was able to sample a couple of dishes. Some of them included Feijoada (Brazilian dish), beef skewer with chimmichurri, cheese fondue, and pumpkin mousse. My favorites from the first day included the Argentinean Skewer and the pumpkin mousse. We also enjoyed many beverages, many in France, on this day.

Cosmo Slush

From Epcot2011v2.0 2011-10-30

Grand Marnier Slushie – tastes like a Cream Cycle

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Lydia enjoyed the lobster claw

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Carlos had the coq a vin

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And you can’t go wrong with some Rosa Regale

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At some point during the day, we got an infused tequila sampler. The jalapeno tequila was the best.

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On the second visit, I was able to try a few more dishes.
I enjoyed the pork sliders in Hawaii (with Mai Tai).

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Finally the Greek Cheese.

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Eithiopian Spicy Lentils

From Food

Around a week ago I decided to go on a slow carb diet. Basically for 6 days you eat beans, meat, and veggies and avoid dairy, breads, and grains. And on the 7th day, you cheat, you can eat anything you want. I needed to make large batches of things that I could eat throughout the week so I would not be tempted to fall off the wagon. I took out a recipe for Ethiopian Spiced Lentils that I used in the past and enjoyed. I made my own modifications below:

Used pretty much all the spices mentioned in the recipe but not necessarily in those amounts. I took the approach add seasoning, taste, add more seasoning.
I omitted the red wine vinegar (mostly because I thought at the time it wasn’t allowed on the diet – still not sure if it is)
I soaked the lentils over night before cooking. Technically you don’t have to soak lentils but it is always helpful to release gases in the beans/legumes.
I sauteed carrots along with the onions and garlic.
I always end up cooking things longer than recipes say. I tend to cook at slightly lower temperatures than they recommend. This was probably simmered an additional 5-10 minutes.
I ate the dish without rice.

What I would change about how I prepared this dish:

Either omit the peas altogether or cook them with the lentils so they are mushy. I am not a big fan of sweet peas. I would rather know that they are not even there.
I would cook the carrots with the lentils so they are also mushy. It was distracting to have crunchy carrots in what was essentially a mushy dish.
Make it slightly less spicy hot – a little less red pepper.

Veggie Lasagna

I made a fresh vegetable lasagna about a week or so ago.

From Lasangna

Ingredients:

Shredded Tomme Cheese (From a local Dairy)
Shredded Sharp Cheddar cheese
Shredded Mozzarella
Ricotta Cheese
Bay Leaves
Parsley
Basil
Oregano
Dash of spicy seasoning
Thyme
Olive oil
whole wheat Lasagna noodles
roasted red peppers
Muir Glen crushed plum tomatoes
eggplant
salt to taste
onion
garlic
green pepper
zucchini
glass of wine to drink while cooking

From Lasangna

I chopped up all veggies and sauteed them in olive oil or canola oil (with the exception of the roasted red peppers that were already cooked). I added the canned tomatoes and spices to the sauteed veggies and let them all simmer together for about 30 minutes. I cooked the pasta according to package requirements (it recommended al dente for lasagna making). I oiled a glass pan and started a bottom layer of the cooked pasta. On each layer I put first ricotta, second pasta sauce mixture, third some chopped roasted red peppers, and fourth spread a layer of shredded cheddar, tomme, and mozzarella. At the very top, more shredded cheese was added to melt over the lasagna noodles. It was cooked in the oven at 350 for 30 -40 minutes (inspect for lightly browned at top). After it cooled, I cut the lasagna and placed it into multiple freezable containers. It is a great quick dinner for when you don’t have time to cook. We still have a few servings left in our freezer from this batch. It was yum yum good.

From Lasangna

Carlos cooked octopus

Around two weeks ago, Carlos made octopus for dinner….
Every Monday night in Audubon Park, there is a community farmers market. Every week, my husband picks up locally made cheese, bread, fresh caught fish, and organically grown veggies. One particular week he brought home frozen octopus. Knowing that octopus seemed quite difficult to prepare, I left it up to him to figure out how to cook it.
After it defrosted, he cleaned out the eyes and ink.

While he was preparing the octopus, I had to leave to go play volleyball. He prepared the following octopus recipe –Polpi in Umido -Italian Octopus Stewed in Wine and Tomatoes.
When I returned, I was pleasantly surprised at what was prepared.

We ate it on its own with a side of boiled beets and sliced burpless cucumbers. The octopus and sauce would have been spectacular though as a pasta topping.

Home made pizza

I am a pizza freak. If unrestrained, I could eat pizza for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I have been talking about making home-made dough for a while now. I decided to try making pizza from scratch about a week ago. My goal is to come up with a dough recipe that uses alternative grains such as buckwheat and to possibly eliminate the use of yeast in the recipe. However for this pizza, I used the tried and true whole wheat pizza dough recipe that is in the The New Basics Cookbook by Julee Rosso. It was not a difficult recipe to follow. We love to make our own tomato sauces so the pizza sauce is a variation of the spaghetti sauce we normally make.

The following ingredients were used in sauce:

Muir Glens Fire Roasted Tomatoes
Veggies sauteed in olive oil (eggplant, zucchini, green pepper, onion, garlic)
Medley of fresh and dry herbs (bay leaf, oregano, basil, thyme)

Finally, I shredded Organic Valley mozzarella cheese for the cheese topping.

Final Notes
The pizza was quite good but the dough was a little thick and crunchy. The dough recipe allows to make two pizzas. The extra dough can be stored for a day or two in the refrigerator as long as it is covered. For the first attempt, I had preheated the pizza stone. I did not do this on the second pizza. Additionally in the second attempt, I used a rolling pin to flatten the dough to make it look more pizza like and to even the dough throughout. Finally, in addition to the mozzarella cheese, I added some grated cows milk cheese that I purchased from whole foods. The cheese had a similar taste to a parmesan. While I enjoyed both pizzas, the second was definitely better. Sorry I did not take pictures of the latter because we were rushed to eat it before a Broadway show.