* burning things

There’s something primal about burning things. Part satisfaction, part fear, part fascination. That soothing feeling while staring at a fire crackling in the fireplace, eating up the firewood; listening to the pine wood pop and sizzle. Feeling the heat radiate out and warm whatever side of you is facing it, while the backside is still freezing.
My new favorite dish lately is chile rellanos. You start this dish by burning the peppers on the stove top until they are charred to black all over and there is no green left. The skin sizzles and pops, the pepper inflates with the steam from inside, and the blackness starts to spread over the skin of the pepper. Its a bit like a science experiment in the kitchen.

I found this AMAZING recipe online by Elise Bauer of Simply Recipes [https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/chile_relleno_casserole/ ] that makes this dish an easy simple weekend dish, with the hardest part of the recipe being burning the peppers. Who has time to roast, stuff, batter and fry, and cook the chilies during the week!? It’s one of those recipes where you can char the peppers, stuff them and then freeze the stuffed peppers and make the rest of the recipe at a later time. Right now my CSA Box from Springdell Farms is full of Poblano peppers which is making me very happy. And I gladly spent an hour this morning burning/roasting those peppers on my gas stove to be stuffed and frozen later this afternoon.

I love to serve this dish with sour cream, tomato rice, and homemade guacamole. HOLY CANNOLI, I LOVE GUACAMOLE!! Both my son and I can easily sit & eat it with a spoon and fight over the last teeny tiny bit. My challenge with it is that I never have fresh limes on hand. And this is something you cannot make ahead. I’ve tried making guacamole without lime juice, and it doesn’t really taste as good. It’s missing that acidity, a the citrus tang of the lime juice. Enter stage left, lime vitality essential oil.

Young living’s vitality line oils are FDA approved for internal consumption. And just recently it was announce that all the YL vitality oils are made from non-GMO plants. The vitality line has a different label from the non-vitality line – the label is white instead of green. The reason for the different label is because the FDA requires the safe to ingest oils be labeled differently. And..here’s another tidbit… all the oils in the vitality line are the same as their counterpart in the non-vitality line. So lime vitality is the same oil as regular lime oil. All our oils have the same Seed to Seal Promise; they are all grown the same way with the same set of standards and care. So in this house we get just one bottle of lime oil, the regular green labeled bottle.

Having just the green labeled bottle can cause quite a dilemma if you don’t look closely at the name of the oil when you use it. A story my friend told me recently, that in her experience citronella and avocado do not mix! She grabbed the green labeled oil and put in a few drops. She did notice that the smell didn’t smell lime-y, but it was too late. I felt so bad, my friend had to throw out the whole batch of guacamole.

Using the lime vitality oil for guac is super simple, instead of using lime juice, substitute ONE drop of lime oil. Mix it all up and let it sit 5 minutes before tasting and adjusting the flavors.