Mo-cake-ah!

What better way to travel back to Disney World than through Brazil?  I guess it may be a little more south than you need to go, but it's worth it to get some mo-cake-ah!  Or as the natives spell it...Mocequa aka Brazilian Fish Stew.  I found this recipe in "A Taste of Epcot" which I picked up while we were in WDW on our honeymoon during the Food and Wine Festival.  Brazil is not a country you can typically find in the World Showcase, but that's the beauty of being there in the fall during the festival because a ton more countries show up to serve you delicious food.

When we were there last fall, I believe we had the Cheese Bread from the Brazilian booth.  I wish they had recipes from everything they served available because that and the Berliner from Germany (a yeast doughnut filled with apricot jam) were amazing and I'd love to recreate them at home.  I'm sure I can find similar things on the internet, but it wouldn't quite be the same.

Mocequa

The mocequa fish stew was pretty good.  I had very high hopes for it with all the colorful ingredients that went in but it came out a little bland.  Maybe I should've added more salt?  But what I thought it really needed was more zip.  The Poblano peppers didn't add very much spice at all.  I'll have to squirt on some rooster sauce into the leftovers to see if that's the kick it's missing.

For the fish I used a combination of tilapia and perch because Cub doesn't carry any of the recommended kinds - snapper, grouper, or mahi mahi.  Where is a good place to buy fish in Minnesota?  If you have a secret spot you should definitely let me know.  And this is one of those times I wish we had some plate-bowls.  You know the kind of plates that have a flat, deep bowl in them?  Yeah my husband didn't either but I swear they exist.  Kind of like this I think...apparently they are called rimmed soup bowls?

The cookbook recommends drinking Brazil's light, refreshing Xingo Black Beer (pronounced "shin-goo") which has hints of chocolate and roasted malts with the stew.  But personally I think I'd rather have my chocolate in some mo' cake...eh?

Build-A-Font Workshop

My dreams have finally come true!  That's right, today I created my very own fonts.  It was so easy and fun, I might just make some more tonight!  I'm very thankful that the makers of iFontMaker decided to make a Windows 8 version of their app.  I was seriously contemplating getting an iPad just so I could use it.

What better way to show off my cool new fonts than on some of my delicious food pictures?  On the left is a font I called "SkinnySnowmen" featured on a bowl of Spicy Southwest Pumpkin Soup I made last fall.  I made the soup for my brother and his girlfriend when they came to town to visit, and it was a big hit!

And on the right we have my new font called "Snowmen" on a plate of crispy, flaky catfish that I made while the boyfriend was away.  It was the first time I'd used my little deep fryer in a while, and it was a huge success.  I couldn't believe how great the fish turned out.  My favorite part though was the dipping sauce.  It was a great spicy alternative to tartar sauce.

Obviously I have snowmen on the brain today.  My house is still full of them...I think there are about a dozen of them staring at me right now while I type this.  And we got way more than enough snow the last few days to go make a real live Frosty, but instead I stayed inside creating these cool fonts.  I hope they push out some updates to the app as I think it could be even better.  The main thing I noticed is that it seems to only create fixed width fonts.  You'll notice that the i's take up the same amount of room as the w's and m's, which I'm not a huge fan of.  It makes the words too spaced out.  But I have faith that they'll fix that and some other things, hopefully soon!