Hey! Here’s a bonus episode. We totally screwed up because we forgot to tell you how to cook refried beans. This episode is part of our breakfast taco series and is featured in our brand-new and totally awesome Breakfast Taco Book!

It’s time for another Summer Update. This one’s about…Pool Party! I think I’m still recovering from a long, hard weekend of cold beers, underwater photos, limoncello shots, diving into the “No Diving” end, hot sausages, pimiento cheese, some stuff I shouldn’t talk about, and one lost flip flop. Several things to celebrate this past weekend: Mr. Alan’s un-birthday, BF’s nursing school milestone, and Mark’s new found awesomeness at playing DJ Hero. Let’s begin.

We had at our disposal an underwater camera. Under water is a great place to take pictures, as you will see. Notice my Port Aransas pedicure is still kickin' it!

My Hero! This picture is not underwater. Unless somebody got some under water cats and an under water Xbox. But I doubt that.

This is harder than it looks. That's what he said! Seriously though, I got water up my nose four times.

This is what the promo shot for British Bikini Astronauts would look like, if such a movie were made. Just sayin'.

And somewhere in there we had sausage wraps with pimiento cheese in them. They was gooood!

(And on the side, here’s my recipe for pimiento cheese which is very delicious despite what your friend told you. Also, has anyone seen my flip flop?)

Pimiento Cheese

1 1/2 cups grated sharp cheddar

6 ounces cream cheese, softened

2 Tablespoons mustard ( I like dijon or spicy brown, but whatever)

1 Tablespoon mayonnaise

4 oz jar pimientos, drained and chopped

Optional: 1 tablespoon capers, drained and chopped OR pickled jalapenos, chopped OR 2 tablespoons Ajvar

Mash all that together. It helps if the cream cheese is softened. Eat that with healthy stuff like celery sticks or just make a sandwich.

This is how I kick

Oh, Port Aransas. You done it to me again! It had been way too long since I walked on your brown beaches and accidentally drank of your salty waves which infiltrated my half-full Coors Light when I wasn’t looking. I had forgotten how relaxed you make me feel; and also tiny, insignificant, but sometimes powerful, too. Tiny when I watch the sea from the shore. Enormous when I pretend like I’m in Clash of the Titans and I stomp through the surf, kicking up sand and shells and heavy salt water drops. My goodness, you’re beautiful, too: the moon sparking off your surface at night and the clouds in the day making shadows. And the wind. The wind blows so hard we nearly lost hats, skirts, and more than one koozie. Sunglasses must be worn for eye protection! Be aware of flying sand and umbrella stands. At the ocean is my favorite place to be, I think.

My hair is the color of Velveeta

And as for the town of Port A proper, I love you, too. From the tippy-top of your pina-colada snow cones and your pink and blue houses on stilts; to your bike-riding, invisible harmonica-playing hobos and all the way down to the bottom of your blow-out bikini sales. You complete me. I could live in you. Even if it meant I had to eat fresh-from-the-boat seafood every day. Yes. Even if it meant that — my love for you is so great.

These ladies are laughing because I can't count money

But enough with the rhetoric. Port A can’t read and I know it. I’ll stuff my longing, my unrequited love, deep deep down into the recesses of my stomach and on top of it pile light beer and barbecue potato chips for the rest of this summer, until next year when I will retrace my steps to the beautiful Texas coastline and try my luck with Lady A all over again. In the meantime, I’ll tell you about what we ate while we were there this past weekend.

Port A is a total meat market

Okay, for starters, the BEST thing about my girlfriend Port A, food-wise, is the fresh seafood stores. There are several of them around the town. We tried two. Oceans of Seafood, which also has a great restaurant inside, (Hooray for peel and eat shrimp with spicy cocktail sauce and the best G.D. hushpuppies I’ve had in my life!) and another one whose name I didn’t “catch” (Ha!) but it’s on Alister Street just up from the grocery store. It was there that we got some big, yummy grouper fillets for dinner one night. And for cheapsies. We’ll take a pound and a half for the six of us, please. Perfect. (Ladies, take note: Freekzone does not eat the foods of the sea.)

Fish fry in the kitchen

Back at the condo, we’re faced with what to do with them given our extremely limited seasoning options. Luckily, I brought my trusty cast iron skillet and my Tabasco sauce. So we’re off to a pretty good start. We also had some limes left from the previous night’s daquiri explosion. And we found some garlic powder and Lawry’s seasoned salt (the Old Faithful of my father’s cooking). Freekzone had brought some flour to make fried chicken. We had already gotten tortillas, pico de gallo, and cilantro from the world’s weirdest grocery store. Fish tacos were the obvious conclusion.

The kitchen was small, but not too small

Beach Hair Rulz!

I sprinkled the grouper with lime juice, garlic powder, Tabasco, and seasoned salt and let that sit for about 30 minutes. Then gave them a pat with some paper towels, and dredged ever so lightly in flour (which was seasoned as well). Fried up in olive oil and somehow, magically, not burned although it had been years since I used an electric stovetop. My goodness. They were impressive. I thought I’d miss my favorite toppin’s (I refuse to buy a whole head of cabbage just to use half of it!) but I didn’t. The fish was so light and fresh — it needed hardly any adornment at all. Just thinking about it makes me want to go back there. I suppose I will have to make do with my memories. Until next year, Port A. Until next year. Kisses.

When I’m thinkin’ migas, I am definitely thinking Arby’s. Just kidding. Don’t know where that horrible “joke” came from. It’s late. I’m tired. And I could go for some spicy, cheesy migas right about now. Talkin’ Tex-mex migas, buddy!

That’s like the best scrambled eggs mixed with pico de gallo and topped with cheese and then you mix CHIPS right in there WITH the EGGS! It’s goddamn brilliant. Thank you, Mexico, for your culinary delights that continue to surprise and satisfy me in all the ways I wish a man could. Oh criminy! I’m kidding, guys! But you know I do love Mexican food. And my husband. And also Mexican food.

Migas originally came from Spain and, like many traditional recipes from around the world, was invented as a way to use up old bread. Migas means “crumbs” in Spanish. Boom. Learned you something. Watch the video and learn something else: How to make Migas and impress the pants off any sexy friend who’s lucky enough to spend the night at your house. “The pants? Really?” Oh yes, my love. Really really really. There is something inherently hot about migas. I’m not sure I know what yet, but by golly, I’ll get there someday. Right now I’m going to take a nap. And dream about migas.

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons oil
• 3 corn tortillas
• 6 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon, each, salt and pepper
• 1/3 cup chopped onion
• 1/3 cup chopped tomato (about one small roma), remove the seeds before you chop it
• 2 Tablespoons minced jalapeno
• 1/4 cup grated cheese
• 1/4 cup chopped cilantro

Heat up your oil in a heavy skillet over medium-high. Slice your tortillas into 1/4 inch strips. Fry those little boogers for a few minutes until they get crispied and browned. Remove from the skillet and set aside. Saute the vegetables, except cilantro, in the remaining oil for a couple minutes until softened. Add your eggs (which you have beaten the hell out of and salted and peppered like I showed you in the scrambled eggs video) and half the tortilla strips. Sprinkle them with cheese and continue to cook, disturbing infrequently, like I showed you in the scrambled eggs video. Add cilantro and the rest of the tortillas when the eggs are almost ready. TaDa! Migas! Now make a taco. Eat it. You’re welcome.

So this is one of those drinks that I had to come up with at the last minute based on what I had in the ol’ liquor cabinet (which in my house is really just a liquor shelf. Boohoo. Send me booze.) Thanks to the internet, it’s no problem now to find SOME drink that SOMEone drank SOMEwhere that includes, or doesn’t include, whatever ingredients you have, or don’t have.

In this case I happened to have ginger ale (leftover from New Year’s Eve party) and Tuaca (leftover from a girl-trip to Houston to see some WRESTLING!) and key limes (leftover from a failed attempt at making something “classy”). A few moments on the internet and voila! I caught this little beaut of a recipe: Tuscan Mule. It’s a variation of a Moscow Mule which uses vodka in place of the Tuaca. It’s a seriously corny name, but Moscow Mule is pretty corny, too, and I have been informed by Real Russians that the drink is not from Moscow. Really? Go figure. So it’s a safe bet that the Tuscan Mule is not from Tuscany, either. Still, it’s sweet, light and easy to make. I bet your lady would like it.

How to make a Tuscan Mule Cocktail

Combine in an eight ounce glass:

• Ice
• 1 ounce Tuaca
• Juice of half a lime (or one whole key lime)

Top it off with ginger ale and give it a li’l stir.

Pasta salad is the perfect thing to try “winging it” on in the kitchen. Like almost all salads, you can throw anything in there and it’ll be good. This is YOUR MOMENT. YOUR CHANCE to experiment. Be like Dr. Frankenstein but without all the lightning and stitches and stuff. Hell, maybe you’ll create a masterpiece of pasta salad and the family will sing your praises on high as they scarf it down, face in a wilted paper plate, shoveling it in with a spork, chugging from a plastic pitcher of Country Time lemonade. Wait. Spork? Not for my opus! Best to eat this pasta salad from an abalone shell , delicately, with a gilded fork and follow that with a rain-water spritzer. Just kidding. Ain’t no snobbery in pasta salad. It’s food for everybody.

So consider this a starting point. Like a diving board into a sea of possiblities. Sorry, I should say “pastabilities”. Ooh. Sorry again.

Ingredients

• 9 ounces dried, smallish pasta (tortellini, bow-tie, rotini, whatever you have) – cooked according to package and rinsed lightly with cool water
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes
• 1 cup diced red bell pepper (about half a large pepper)
• 1 small zucchini, shredded
• 4-8 green onions, roasted if possible, sliced into 1/4 inch pieces
• Optional ingredients: canned chick peas, spinach or arugula, grated parmesan, artichoke hearts, olives

Dressing

• 1 ounce red wine vinegar
• 2 ounces olive oil (or whatever you have)
• 2 teaspoons dijon mustard
• 1/2 teaspoon salt and pepper, each
• 1/2 teaspoon dried basil
• 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano and crushed red pepper, each

Put dressing ingredients in a jar and shake well. Set aside while you prepare other ingredients.

Okay, okay, okay. I’ve read enough cookbooks and eaten enough (mediocre) peach cobblers to know that my mom’s recipe is not what people mean when they talk about peach cobbler. But this is what it means to me. It’s upside-down from most cobblers and more soft-cake-like than those tough, dry, biscuit-topped jobbies they serve at Luby’s and “home-style” restaurants like Grandy’s. Probably if Grandy’s made better cobbler (like this one), they wouldn’t have had to close all those locations in the 90′s. Suckers.

Anyway, Mama got this recipe from her Girl Scout troop leader in Lometa, Texas. They used to make it in a Dutch oven when they took camping trips. Isn’t that cute? A buncha scouts making cobbler over a fire. Telling ghost stories. Roasting weenies. Learning life skills. Earning badges. I’ve never found a recipe like it in a book. It’s the best!!! I’m not even exaggerating.

PEACH COBBLER: EAT IT.

2 cups fruit (sliced peaches, plums, or other stone fruit, whole berries, or a mix of fruits)
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 stick butter (or a whole stick like mama does)
3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup sugar (can be reduced to 1/2 cup)
3/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon baking powder

Mix the fruit with 1/4 cup sugar and let it sit while you get the other stuff ready. Turn the oven to 350 degrees F and put the butter in a two-quart baking dish. Put the dish in the oven while it’s preheating to melt the butter.
Mix dry ingredients and add milk. Stir. It might be lumpy. That’s okay.
When the butter is melted, take the pan out and pour in the batter. Spoon the fruit and its juice on top. Bake for 45-50 minutes. EAT IT.

Scrambled eggs sometimes get people all in a tizzy. There’s so many panic-inducing “tips” or “rules” out there in cookbooks and on the internet on how to properly cook eggs, it seems like it requires some special talent or skill or whatever that only a few people in the world possess and they shall be called the Egg Whisperers. Come on! Now that’s a buncha baloney!!! Eggs don’t require anything more than some butter and about five minutes of your time. Once you get scrambled eggs down, you’ll be making them for breakfast AND lunch. It’s true. My favorite sandwich when I was a kid was toast with mayonnaise and tomatoes and scrambled eggs with lots of pepper.

Yum. Yum, I say.

Here’s the deal with scrambled eggs:

1. Beat the hell out of them. Use a whisk if you have one. And you need not bother with adding water or milk. Just seriously whip those eggs. You want to get some air in there. If you’re making a whole lotta eggs, you can even use your blender!
2. Use an appropriately sized skillet. Probably the smallest one you have will be good. A thick layer of eggs is easier to control than a thin layer.
3. Use some butter!!! Or you can use a nonstick skillet with some spray oil if you must, I understand.
4. Be nice. Stir gently with a wooden or silicone spoon, if you got one. Cook over a medium heat and take them off the heat before they are completely dry — should still be shiny but in firm curds. There will be enough residual heat in them that they will finish cooking on your plate.

See? Isn’t that EASY? Don’t you want some eggs right now? I do.

P.S. If you want to make cheesy eggs like they serve at Waffle House (I do!), sprinkle the eggs with grated cheese as soon as you put them in the skillet so they can get cooked all up in that cheese’s face and that cheese can get all melty up in those eggs. Mmm.

While typically thought of as breakfast food, Home Fries are also sometimes served as a side dish with supper. (Think about that the next time you forget to put the potatoes in with the roasty chicken. Oh SNAP!) I’d even go so far as to say that a pile of perfectly made Home Fries can be served AS supper, provided you throw a little cheese or crispy bacon and onions in there. Or top with a fried egg and Yumsies! Breakfast for dinner.

The thing about perfect Home Fries is don’t put too many in the pan. Use a pan that’s big enough so you only have one layer of potatoes going on in there at a time so every potatoey piece is touching hot oil at some point in his little, fried life. The OTHER thing about perfect Home Fries is you have to cook them twice. Like the best french fries are twice-cooked, so be the best hashbrowns. So says the Queen of Hashbrowns. (Bow down, ye CareBear Cousins, Cabbage Patch kids and kittycat dolls.)

The first go round is to make sure the insides are soft. The second time is to make the outsides real, real crispy. My preferred method for the first cooking is to boil whole potatoes, let them cool, then cut them up. This is almost NEVER practical, however, since how am I supposed to know that the next day I’m going to want some hot, crunchy Home Fries with my beer so I better cook some potatoes before I go to bed? I mean, come on — that just ain’t happenin’, my cooking brothers and sisters.

What usually and actually happens in the morning is this: microwave to the rescue! Cut up your potatoes into 1/4 inch or 1/2 inch cubes (however small or large you like your fries), put them on a plate with some water – just enough to cover the bottom of the plate, like 2 tablespoons – stick them in the microwave for a couple minutes. Stir. Microwave a few more minutes, until the potatoes are soft. Be Careful! That plate is hot as hell! Drain the water off and let them sit on the hot plate while your skillet heats up. The heat from the plate will dry them completely. Then you just cook them up in the oil like usual.

Ingredients

• Cooked, diced potatoes (about a cup per person)
• 2 teaspoons of oil per cup of potatoes
• salt and pepper
• diced onions (optional)

Heat a heavy skillet on high for one minute. Add your oil. It should immediately turn hyper-fluid and start moving and shimmering all over that skillet. Move the skillet around to get the oil everywhere. Add your potatoes in one layer. Leave them alone for a minute. Shake the pan. They should be moving freely. Leave them alone again. Shake the pan every minute or so to make sure they aren’t sticking. When they’re good and brown, stir them around. Shake the pan some more. They will probably take about 8 minutes total. If you want onions, add them in after about five minutes. Just keep shaking, flipping, browning until they are toasty as a pair of kittycat mittens. Salt and pepper those puppies and you got it made in the shade.

P.S. In Spain, these are called patatas bravas and are served alongside a special, spicy sauce as a tapa. Proving that potatoes and drinkin’ are great company, the world over.

This is a classic middle eastern salad, traditionally served as part of the mezze, which is kind of like tapas in Spain or “drinkin’ snacks” in my house. Don’t tell the sheik, but I eat it for breakfast, too. That’s right, with yogurt! What the fudge? — That’s crazy! — I know!

It’s a wheat grain-based salad that uses bulghur (or bulgur or bulgar), also sometimes called cracked wheat (although they are not exactly the same thing). What it is though, is wheat grains that have been parboiled, dried, and cracked into small pieces. Since it’s already cooked, all you have to do is rehydrate it. It’s easy to prepare and it’s a whole grain. What’s better than that? — A million dollars? — Okay. Agreed.

Anyway, tabouli (or tabouleh) is a great thing to take to a potluck for a change of pace from the usual mayonnaise-fests. It’s light and fresh and goes great with spicy barbecue-sauced meats or grilled seafood. PLUS (and this is very important to me) you can add other vegetables you may have on hand and while I suppose you couldn’t really call it tabouli anymore, everyone will call it “super delish”! Double plus, it gets better the longer it sits in your ‘fridgerator, unlike the aformentioned mayonnaise-fests.

Here’s how to do it.

• 1 cup medium-grind bulghur (might be labeled as #2 grade)
• 1 cup boiling water
• 1 cup each diced tomato and cucumber
• 1/2 cup diced onion (soak in ice water to crisp it and mellow it) or green onions (don’t need to soak those)
• 1 cup chopped parsley
• 1/4 cup chopped mint (or cilantro or dill if mint isn’t available)

Dressing:

• 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
• 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil (it really does make a difference in this case)
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon each salt and pepper

Mix the bulghur and water in a bowl and cover. Let it sit about 15 minutes, or as long as it takes you to cut up everything. Cut up everything. Mix the dressing ingredients together. Mix the bulghur and vegetables and herbs. Pour the dressing over it all and mix well. Let it sit about an hour for flavors to blend. Eat it.