my mother hates cilantro

.... but i love it!
i'm going to start posting recipes i use so i can keep a log of it! im making this tonight for dinner!


Cilantro Chili Pizza, ala Cafe Pesto

Preheat the oven to 500F, preferable with a pizza stone on the middle shelf. Allow the oven to heat 30 minutes or more.

Meanwhile, prep your favorite pizza dough. If using refrigerated pizza dough, allow it to come to room temperature before shaping. Preparation of the pesto and chili sauces can be accomplished in the time it takes for the pizza dough to rest:


Cilantro Pesto

This recipe makes more pesto than needed for pizza. Use the leftovers as a marinade for grilling, or go crazy making this pizza for all of your friends.

In a food processor or blender combine:

1/2 cup peeled garlic cloves
1 cup of cilantro leaves, stems and roots
1 Tbs of ground pepper
1 tsp of salt
with enough canola or olive oil to help grind the ingredients into a paste
Store in the refrigerator or freezer with a slight film of oil on the pesto surface to help maintain the bright green color.


Sweet Hot Garlic Sauce

This is my number one favorite ingredient, to always be found in my refrigerator. It is excellent paired with fried crispy foods, grilled meats, drizzled on curries, and on top of this pizza. Fortunately this tasty sauce is becoming increasingly common in grocery stores, often called Nahm Jeem Gratiem, or Tuong Ot Ngot.

In a sauce pan combine

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup vinegar
2 Tbs minced garlic
1 tsp salt
Bring to a boil and reduce the heat to low, simmering to reduce and thicken to a syrupy sauce approximately 20 minutes or more. When thickened, stir in 1 Tbs of chili garlic sauce and allow to cool to room temperture. Store in the refrigerator.


Shape your pizza dough in the size you want, stretching it out thin with your fingers and hands. Place it on a piece of waxed paper, trimmed to match the foot print of the pizza dough shape and transfer the dough to a pizza peel for easy sliding onto the pizza stone.

Spread several tablespoons of the cilantro pesto on the surface of the dough. Sprinkle with a slight pinch of salt. Continue to top the pizza with chopped sundried tomatoes,red onion slices and chopped red bell pepper.

Slide the pizza onto your hot pizza stone and cook until the bottom is crusty brown, approximately 5-8 minutes.

Immediately top the pizza with crumbled goat cheese upon removing it from the oven. And lastly, the most important step, drizzle the pizza with Sweet Hot Garlic Sauce.

The Sun

I was writing an email to my friend, and it just sounds like maybe you all would like to read about, a funny blog post, about my day. Well, I woke up around 7:30, hit the snooze button until 8:00. I went to the kitchen to make tea or something, and I ran into my roommate Robby-bob, and he asked me if we could do some yoga. I said sure! So I got the yoga mats (I have two) and brought them to the common room at the vegetarian cooperative where I live. We did a few "om's" and the sun salutation mantra I learned in yoga class a month ago at the Living Yoga Center in Champaign.

It always feels so nice to do yoga in the morning, I always feel great in general. I feel that yoga helps make me a more compassionate human being, providing me with energy I didn't know I had, and just overall able to live my life fully and accept the challenges I face everyday. but I feel like I don't have enough time to do it, and get enough sleep and get good grades and be a healthy well-balanced human being! anyway, I was facing towards the sun, observing how the sun's rays shine in the morning through the red maple trees, on a cool autumn dawn. I felt a strong appreciation for the sun, feeling a oneness with nature, and how the sun's rays fuel life on Earth. IT makes sense too--the sun's rays are captured by plants, which convert it t a usable form by other life forms, which obtain their energy from that. Even if you eat meat, the animals where your meat comes from ate plants (unless it was a tertiary consumer), which comes ultimately from the sun. All of our substance comes from the sun originally. No wonder why so many indigenous cultures worshipped the sun. If there was no sun, life wouldn't exist on Earth! IF the Earth was a little bit closer or a little far away, life wouldn't be able to exist the way that it does! It's pretty amazing how big and great and totally beyond us the sun is.

I have come to all the aforementioned conclusions before; this was not the first time I experienced this. I just thought I would let whoever happens to be reading this know a little more of where I'm coming from.

I experienced one of the most intense experiences of my whole life when I was at Camp Michigania by myself for two weeks, in the middle of winter. No city lights, no car, no internet in the place I was staying, no humans, no nothing. Just me, the cold, and the woods. The sun set SOOOOO EARLY, up north Michigan, right? i didn't have a clock, and I tried to get my body to swing with the natural rhythms of the sun. I would wake up before the sun would rise, just praying that the sun would rise that morning, because every night was so dark. I don't think people get the opportunities I have been presented in my life. It really made me realize a lot about life, and put things in perspective. I can share more if people are interested.
Peace and love!