Tropicalsenior

Oh no, can you salvage anything?

I believe that the dried red ancho chili is the one most commonly used in commercial chili powders. You're not wrong in thinking that it shows up in a lot of chorizo recipes because that is the one that has been easiest to find. I'm not sure that I would just use the poblano because, to me, it just doesn't have a complex enough flavor. As I understand it, the New Mexican chili is a variety of the Anaheim pepper. Depending on the batch sometimes it has a little bit of a kick. The combination of peppers is what you will most likely find in true Mexican chorizo.

Yep! If you live alone and see this, you might want to schedule a visit with your doctor.

Believe me, that is the way to go. Pods are a PITA. Unless you're the type that wants to spray them gold and hang them on the Christmas tree, all you wind up with is a little bit of paste and a whole bin full of pods.

Road trip on Highway 90. Bring the chips!

Strange as it may seem, Costa Rica does not have a culture of using any hot peppers other than green jalapenos, Serranos and habaneros. A couple years ago I asked my daughter-in-law to bring me a little package of New Mexican red chili powder. She brought me a kilo.

The recipe sounds great to me but I do have a question. Do the spices that follow the mix of peppers go into the spice mix or go into the chorizo? For anyone wanting to make their own chorizo, if you find a recipe that does not have the vinegar, pass. I usually freeze the extra raw in 3 oz portions. Then I can add it in however I like. The little snack size bags are great for this. I don't have access to all the dried chili peppers but I do have a big supply of New Mexico ground pepper. I usually just use that.

The good Mexican stuff has a lot more fat, stronger spices, and probably a lot of stuff you don't want to know about. But yes, it is much more flavorful.

Another meal for me when I don't feel like cooking is pizza. I just make up a batch of @Duvel's Emergency Pizza Dough, throw on whatever is lurking in the refrigerator and I have a quick meal.

A lot of people won't eat it because they also call it the dolphin fish.

The two-day cooking marathon was a lot less work and a lot less traumatic than cleaning up the kitchen after him.

If you can get fresh ground pork, Mexican chorizo is very easy to make.

That's why you've got to add the salad. And it's even lower calorie if you have it with a Diet Coke.

One of my favorite quick meals is real Fettuccine Alfredo. Only four ingredients. The only real cooking is boiling the noodles. Add butter, cream, and Parmesan cheese, simmer a bit to thicken the cream and you're done. Add bread and a green salad and you have a full low calorie meal.

My husband liked lamb and when we lived in Seattle we would have it quite often. I could eat it but to me it was just nothing special. All the lamb in Costa Rica is imported and extremely expensive so I was saved from having to fix it very often. However, he loved Menudo and the main ingredient of menudo is tripe. I hate tripe. I hate the smell of it raw, I hate to handle it, and I hate the smell of it cooking. Making menudo was a two-day process and when it came to seasoning, he had to taste it and tell me what it needed because not one drop of that %&#@ was passing my lips. I made enough to have six or seven months worth of servings in the freezer so that I didn't have to go through it all that often. It was an act of love but it sure was an endurance trial.

Mahi mahi is Dorado. Of course they are a completely different fish than halibut but the texture of the flesh is similar. I'm not particularly fond of fish but Dorado is plentiful here and about the only one that I buy if I can't get Chilean salmon. Halibut is a cold water fish and something that is never available here. I do miss it.

I don't know if it is ever available to you but mahi-mahi or Dorado is a firm fleshed fish and is the only one that I like other than halibut.

Since I wrote that, one more opened up across the street and down one house. They are open from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. 5 days a week. They opened May 21st and since then we haven't seen one single customer there. I don't think that I will be ordering chicken from them.

While I do like pork belly, in order to stay with the theme of the topic there are parts of the pig that I just cannot abide. Head cheese makes me want to gag. There are probably good versions out there but my first experience was some horrible stuff that my mother-in-law made. Since then the very thought of it makes me nauseous. I'm with Heidi in that when you have something that is cooked to your liking, it makes all the difference in the world. When I get a hold of a particularly lean cut of pork belly I like to cut it in strips and prepare just as I would oven-style ribs with barbecue sauce. It's just like barbecue ribs without the bones.

I'm wondering how many pork belly heaters love bacon.

Now you tell me! Mine looked more like a navigational error.

In my pizza from last night, I kept trying to cut between the lines. Didn't work.

So far they haven't put ours on a diet yet. Pork is one of the best Meats in the country. And the chickens are allowed to get old enough to put some meat on their bones.

When you mentioned that recipe I went to Google and looked it up. It seems to me that the lengthy cooking of it would render out a lot of the fat and that most of the fat would then be in the sauce. Much like the fat is rendered out of chicharones. As soon as I get my package from Darienne I'll give it a try and let you know.

Exactly, it's got to be cooked correctly.