OK, good-- no more Mexican food.

To be perfectly honest with you up front, I'm glad this food cycle is over. Maybe it's because it followed too close to the Mediterranean cycle, which included Spanish food, or perhaps there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

I'm Mexi-flavored out.

To make this post even more uplifting, most of the "supplementary dishes" worked on in the previous few days (with a busy weekend in between again fogging my memory) were again off the beaten path of our recipe packets. We have two guys in our class who are Puerto Rican, and we did a lot of authentic cooking based off of their family recipes and styles they grew up with.

Very cool, yes, but some of the Spanish names are lost on me here. Of course, in super-duper professional blog mode, I have created titles for those dishes using quotation marks to set them off.

The "Garbanzo Bean Soup" was supposed to be a bit more stew-like, I believe, but too much stock was added. Oh well, it was still a very flavorful soup. I might have to hit up the Chef or the guys for the recipe because it would taste fantastical on a cold and/or rainy day.

I immediately regret referring to the "logs" in the second picture as "log-like" because they were far from wood in texture. If anything they were very soft, as they were a kind of dough mixed with various flavors (we had two selections-- one savory, one sweet). They were tasty, though perhaps a bit bland. Some of these dishes felt like they were missing something...

The Quesadillas-- still a dish I generally order my first time out at a restaurant if nothing else on the menu jumps out at me-- were pretty standard. Cheese and fixins, heated together on a grilled tortilla. There's millions of ways to make them, and ours were served with a Chipotle Mayo. I'd say that's a win, but they were nothing out of the ordinary.

This Arroz con Pollo I made today was *very* different from the same dish I made in Catering and Buffet kitchen. That one was much more cumin and tomato based, while this one relied more on an array of Mexican ingredients we were in short supply of in the kitchen. The recipe was heavy-handed with the salt a bit today too --BLAH!-- which made the dish less than appealing to me. Other people seemed to enjoy it though.

I don't know if I should be worried about my pallet, but I don't think your food should taste like a salt lick. <> Ugh, the average American pallet has been ruined by processed foods!

The last dish, whatever fancy name it may have, can be adequately summed up in the title I gave it. It was pretty much the exact tastes of Chicken Parm...just with steak. Now I'm not complaining, Chicken Parm is delicious, but it seemed out of place in this food cycle.

By the way, I should clear the air. In my last post I dished on the Apple Quinoa. I assumed it would be blah...and then I tried it today. Not bad...very refreshing...but still not something I could see myself going out of my way to make or order. It's just...strange.

OK...American food is our last food cycle this class, and I still have posts about jobs (if they surface), the PIT Marathon (waiting on some supplemental pics) and documentaries I've been watching via NetFlix (when I can find the time to write the post).

Oh, and also-- I'm sad...names for the NAME THE MASCOT contest stopped coming in about a week ago after a flurry of early entries. I mean if you people are done, I guess I have to produce some potential winners to be voted on (*cough* SEND MORE NAMES *cough*)!