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Cilantro Pesto

Author: Isabel Orozco-Moore, https://www.isabeleats.com/cilantro-pesto/
Servings: 12 servings

Ingredients

  • 3 cups loosely packed cilantro
  • 1/2 cup olive oil
  • 1/2 cup sliced almonds
  • 1/3 cup cotija cheese. Don’t have cotija cheese? Use crumbled feta or shredded parmesan cheese instead.
  • 1/4 cup chopped red onion
  • 3 tablespoons lime juice – about 1 1/2 limes
  • 1 clove garlic
  • 1 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Instructions

  1. Add all ingredients to a food processor or blender and pulse until mostly smooth.

Notes

  • Makes about 1 1/2 cups pesto.
  • When measuring the cilantro, there’s no need to remove the leaves from the stems. Simply remove
  • and discard any extra long stems, and then loosely pack the cilantro into a measuring cup.
  • Don’t have cotija cheese? Use crumbled feta or shredded parmesan cheese instead. They both have a
  • similar flavor and the perfect amount of saltiness like cotija cheese!
  • Instead of sliced almonds, you can use pine nuts. Or if you have whole almonds, just give them a
  • quick chop before measuring them out.
  • Don’t have red onions? Use white onions instead, or you can completely leave them out.

Grits in the Rice Cooker

This post is a compilation of our various recipes for cooking grits in the Cuckoo rice cooker. The most recent experience is at the top, and at the bottom are the original ChatGPT responses, then my original plan based on those responses. Above that are our cooks working toward how to cook medium-ground Red Mill whole grits in our Cuckoo rice cooker set on Porridge.

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Pastrami from Store-bought Corn Beef & Cabbage-2026

3/17/2026 – St. Patrick’s Day – Bought a 3.6 lb. Murphy and David corned beef brisket from Rouces and smoked it with Pastrami seasonings.

After washing it well, we seasoned it with:

  • Freshly cracked coriander seed in the little coffee grinder—heavy coating.
  • Smoked black pepper sample packet from the Spice Sage
  • Brown mustard seed

3:15 PM – Put it into the preheated Recteq at 250°.

4:15 – Added to the smoker two quarters of a cabbage that had been slathered in olive oil + granulated garlic +granulated onion. IT of the meat is 150°.

7:30 – Pulled as needed to eat and IT was 185. Great rare coloring but still a little tough. Will wrapped in foil and roast it more tomorrow.