Hungry for this effect, and despondent after buying four different grocery store brands in vain, I searched the net and found this recipe.

It was perfect.

Delicious Blue Cheese Dressing

12 ounces sour cream
8 ounces blue cheese, crumbled
1/2 cup mayonnaise (Hellman’s or Dukes)
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon onion salt
2 cloves garlic, minced

Mix all ingredients together, except blue cheese. Add bleu cheese and stir just enough to distribute evenly. The mixture will be very thick. If you like, add a little more buttermilk to thin it out.

Pour the finished dressing into large container and store in refrigerator. It will keep indefinitely.

Yields 3 cups, perhaps? Enough for 10 or 20 salads!

I find it tastes best on a very simple salad: Chopped Romaine lettuce with sliced Roma tomatoes, a handful of baby carrots, and a few small rings of red onion on top as garnish.

Anybody who understands that the only proper way to sell avocados is in bags of 6 at a time, has my money.

When I first moved to Los Angeles, I would shop at Albertson’s first, and then stop by Trader Joe’s for specialty items I couldn’t find at Albertson’s.

At some point, however, I realized that the prices at Trader Joe’s prices were almost universally lower than at the chain supermarkets — at which time my Trader Joe’s fanaticism was born.

Until last month, we had to make the hour-long pilgrimage to Santa Fe to satisfy our Trader Joe’s cravings.

So with all that in mind, I was glad to see Diana recommend this Insider’s Guide to Trader Joe’s, which introduces New Yorkers to the phenomenon, on the occasion of their first Trader Joe’s store.
To round out their list, here are a few of my own favorite products:

• Spinach punjab simmer sauce. This stuff can turn a half-pound of lean hamburger into a deliciously flavorful main course. Terrific with steamed broccoli and carrots on the side.
• Italian dry salami. Located over by the racks of beef jerky. Made with wine and no nitrates. Worked well on my homemade pizza last weekend.
• Snackmasters beef jerky. Needless to say, I’m not a vegetarian. And this stuff is about the best beef jerkey I’ve tried: Not too salty, not too bland.
• Dry roasted and salted almonds. WOW. I can never eat just one handful. And I’ve found they work well as a way to add protein to a bowl of cold cereal (with Rice Dream vanilla “dairy beverage” since I don’t eat milk). Their entire nut section is full of good stuff, so if you’re not an almond fan, you can probably find something else that’s just up your (pun unavoidable) aisle.
• San Peligrino by the case. Kathy and I have learned to love San Peligrino with a twist of lemon. We’ve tried several other brands of sparkling water, in a pinch, and none of them have this loveable relationship to lemon. And Trader Joe’s usually has the best prices by the case.
• Those bags of avocados. In my quest to follow my O Blood Type Diet and reduce the amount of milk products that I eat, avocados have become a staple of my diet; they’re a delicious substitute for cheese. Leave them out on the counter until they give slightly to pressure (but aren’t squishy). Then they’re ripe and you can store them in the refrigerator for a week or more before they start going bad.

Bad experiences with Trader Joe’s? Haven’t had many. Their bread doesn’t hold up to the local bakery, but it’s rare that store-bought bread does.

And I hate, hate, hate their Victorian clip-art laden web site. Too impractical and they don’t keep their list of locations very up-to-date. (And trust me, I was watching for a few months, there.)

So, in general, if you live in a city where there is a Trader Joe’s, and haven’t tried them yet, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

The book includes not only his engaging stories of visiting dozens of the best gourmet pizza parlors around the world, but also the best pizza-making tricks and recipes he discovered along his journey.

The author’s taste in pizza matches my own: Thin crust, please, and great dough gets you 80% of the way to great pizza.

Reinhart also authored the acclaimed bread-baking guide The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread, so there is no doubt this man knows his bread.

He says the trick to truly incredible pizza dough is to let the uncooked dough sit overnight in the refrigerator, which gives the yeast time to do its trick, breaking down the carbohydrates into sugars and delivering a richer, more sumptuous flavor.

I’ve only read the first chapter, and skimmed the rest of the book, but I’m hooked. I’m dying to make my own homemade pizza.

So today I bought a pizza stone and baker’s peel. And thanks to Amazon Prime‘s free 2-day shipping, I’ll have them both on my doorstep Tuesday afternoon.

Hopefully by this time next week I can write up a report on how my first batch of pizza turned out. Stay tuned.

3 avocados
2 limes, juiced
4 garlic cloves, pressed
1 medium red onion (use only one quarter), minced
1 ripe, medium tomato (use only one half), minced
2t ground cumin
1t Tapatío pepper sauce
1t salt

Cut the avocados in half length-wise, remove the pit, and use a spoon to scoop out the insides into a large mixing bowl. Add the other ingredients, and then mash the avocado and ingredients together with a large fork.

Once the avocados are mostly mashed, use the fork to “whip” the avocado (running the fork rapidly around the insides of the mixing bowl) into a creamy texture that still has lumps in it. Do not use any mechanical mixing device, however, as it will destroy the texture of the guacamole.

Add more lime juice, salt, and Tapatío as desired. Enough lime juice to make it tangy-fresh, enough salt to make the flavors pop out, and enough Tapatío to satisfy your need for heat.

Transfer the results to a serving bowl and enjoy. The lime juice will keep the guacamole from turning brown. You can keep it in a tupperware container in the fridge for many days, to use as a dip or as a garnish for other dishes.

Sautee in bottom of a large stock pot, on medium-high heat:

6+ garlic cloves, minced
1 red bell pepper, diced
2 T extra virgin olive oil

Once the onions and garlic are lightly carmelized from the heat, add in the following, and chop the meat into fine pieces with your spatula as it cooks:

4 lb extra lean ground beef
3 T mild red chili powder
3 T ground cumin
1 t ground cloves

Once the meat is medium rare (still just lightly pink in some places), add in the following and bring to a boil:

3 cans black-eyed peas, drained
1 can diced tomatoes (28 oz)
2 cans tomato sauce (16 oz)
1 medium carrot, diced small
1 large red onion, diced
1 T Better Than Bouillon (beef)
1 T Kahlúa liquor
1 t liquid hickory smoke
3 t chipotle powder (use less for less heat; don’t buy any chipotle labeled “hot”)
salt (preferably sea or rock salt)

Once the ingredients start to boil, stir again, cover the pot and lower the heat to the lowest setting on your stove. Simmer for about two hours, stirring occasionally. Enjoy the house-filling aroma of chipotle and Kahlúa.

Serve in large bowls with a dollop of lime guacamole on top.

Last updated: 20 Dec 2008

Tired of driving to their restaurant four times weekly, I took a crack at making it myself tonight, and the results were delicious. Here is my version of the Chilaca Bowl.

It’s basically a taco salad without the taco shells. Quite healthy!

INGREDIENTS
1 lb extra lean ground beef
15 ounces of green chili (or green-chili-based salsa)
2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
1 15oz can refried black beans
1 cup rice (or 1 pkg prepared rice mix)
1 cup lightly chopped fresh spinach or green leaf lettuce
1 avocado, halved/pitted and sliced
1 tomato, diced
1 scallion (green onion), diced
1T mild red chili powder
1/2t chipotle chili powder
Caesar dressing

DIRECTIONS
Rinse the rice thoroughly and cook it per the directions on the packaging. Warm the refried beans in a covered sauce pan, but keep the heat low and stir occasionally so they they don’t burn. Begin frying the beef in a large pan, chopping and turning the meat periodically with a spatula. Once the beef is medium-rare, add the green chilis and garlic, and continue cooking uncovered, so any excess water will evaporate. Add mild red chili powder and chipotle chili powder to taste (warning: chipotle is HOT, but imparts a lovely smoky flavor).

PRESENTATION
Makes 3 to 4 servings. Begin by placing a large dollop of refried beans in the bottom of each bowl. Follow this with a nice-sized scoop of rice. Then the beef. Top it off with the spinach, caesar dressing, avocado slices, diced tomato, and scallions.

Enjoy. And let me know how it turns out. Tonight I actually made 6X the volume of the above recipe, so I would have lots of leftovers.

I put the beans/rice/meat part in tupperware bowls to refrigerate or freeze, so all I need to do is warm it up and put the diced vegetables on top for a fresh homemade meal on the fly.