Mom’s Enchiladas:Redux

 

My mother was famous for her creamy chicken enchiladas when I was growing up. Reading around a bit (like chowhound) a lot of people had a similar dish in the 70’s and 80’s- loaded with cheese, sour cream, and Campbell’s cream of chicken soup- and it doesn’t surprise me that many people remember this fondly.  These days I like to make them a little bit healthier than the original, and they taste fabulous.

Mom’s Enchiladas (Redux):

Ingredients:

• 1-2 chicken breasts
• 1 large bell pepper, diced
• half an onion, or small onion, diced
• small container of sour cream
• can cream of chicken/whatever soup
• can black beans
• can of chilies
• jalapenos
• mushrooms, or whatever veggies you want to add
• 20 corn tortillas

Cook the chicken however you prefer, I like to boil chicken. I also like to fork-shred the chicken while it’s hot and scald my fingers.

Chop the veggies. I chopped half a green bell pepper, half a red pepper, half a large onion, and let them sit in a warm skillet for a few minutes so they wouldn’t be too crunchy.

I also diced some jalapenos and mild chilies.Mix together the cream of mushroom or chicken soup, the beans, the sour cream, cheese, chilies, and the veggies.

When it is all ready, heat the tortillas by microwave method or stovetop. Microwave is a little faster (30 seconds with a damp paper towel covering the lot.)

Spoon the mixture into the tortillas, and place them into a pan. The pan should have a little bit of the filling or salsa on the bottom so that the tortillas don’t stick while cooking.

Roll each tortilla with a little bit of the filling and chicken inside, and place in the pan. Repeat until you are out of tortillas or running low on mix. Optional: top the enchiladas with the creamy sauce. This time I topped with a little bit of sauce, and a little bit of salsa. Salsa is a great way to reduce the calories.

Bake at 350 for 20 minutes, covered in tin foil. If desired you can also top with a cup of shredded cheese.

The lower calorie version is just as rich and good. My next mission might be to replace the Cream of Chicken soup with something healthier, so I’ll be on the lookout.

Enjoy!

Lunch: Tabouli and Spinach Salad

Breakfast was a hastily eaten fage and coffee. The cherry fage is like eating cheesecake. Yum!

Lunch was a slowly eaten treat! I begged my mother to make tabouli on Sunday so that I could bring some home (I brought her some homemade hummus as a trade). Her tabouli is very tasty and fresh, as she grows her own parsley (among other herbs), and the tomatoes were homegrown too.

On the side I had a spinach salad with grape tomatoes, walnuts, romano cheese, and chicken salad (shredded chicken, celery, and mayo). I had made an Italian style dressing, but ended up not using it because of the creaminess of the chicken salad.

Later in the day I had part of an apple and a little PB for a snack. The apple was disappointing though. I like the really crispy ones, like honeycrisp and pink lady. This was rather mushy.

The boyfriend was preparing dinner when I got home. It was a delicious meal of jambalaya, stewed okra, and navy beans. The navy beans were Blue Runner Creole Cream Style, every thing else was made by him. He makes very good from scratch jambalaya.

Tomorrow I will probably be having more of the spinach salad. It was delicious!

Dinner: Butter Beans and Sardines with Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Breakfast was thought up the night before. Two eggs, black beans, and cheddar cheese. Admittedly it was a failed omelet, reincarnated as a sloppy scramble. Also, I was going to have salsa, but passed. Very unlike me. Salsa is probably my favorite condiment.

The eggs and beans quieted my stomach until lunch, and that hardly ever happens to me. The only other breakfast that keeps me full is greek yogurt.

Lunch was chicken salad made with chopped celery, walnuts, mayo, and coarse mustard. This was rolled up in a whole wheat tortilla along with some shredded cabbage, and eaten with pretzels and green peppers. I need to remember this one!

The outer wrap was kind of odd tasting, so I discarded it after eating about half of the first one. The rest was eaten like a cabbage slaw which was good with the chicken and walnuts!

I didn’t snack at all today, probably because I ate filling meals.

Dinner was supposed to be roasted brussels sprouts and seafood stuffed potatoes, but we didn’t have shrimp like I expected.

Plan B: The boyfriend had something else while the brussels roasted steadily, and I made a nice mash of butter beans and sardines. Good to remember for hurricane season, because of the cans, and also just tasty and pretty healthy. I love the Season brand skinless, boneless sardines, and recommend them highly to the uninitiated sardine eater. A few months ago I thought I had spotted a great deal on amazon for a flat of the lovelies, but once the delivery arrived I saw that they were still all bones and skin. The skin isn’t bad, but I take the bones out. Crunchy.

 My roasted Brussels sprouts:

• preheat oven to 400
• rinse brussels sprouts and cut in half
• massage lightly in olive oil
• place in glass pan with minced garlic (one or two cloves)
• bake at 400 for 20 min
• flip at 20 minutes (optional: add 1/2 tbsp pine nuts at halfway point)
• cook another 20 minutes or until desired color

We prefer them almost burnt, and very garlicky. I usually roughly chop 2-3 cloves of garlic. Tonight I didn’t add pine nuts, it depends on what we are eating them with. I have heard that bacon is good, and lemon zest.

Now I am having an adult beverage.

 

We Love Fish Tacos

Last night I actually got some sleep! It was hard to wake up this morning in fact, because I was so deeply asleep. Nice.

For breakfast I had the usual yogurt, coffee, and apple.

 

Lunch was eaten a little early. I had the chili I made the other day from allrecipes., and a serving of Kashi crackers.

Behind the crackers is a picture of my father! I like having a picture of him at his desk (circa 1970?) on my desk at work. Sometimes I am sentimental.

On my lunch break I went to the library and checked out a bunch of cookbooks and a few nutrition books. One so far looks awesome! The Healthiest Diet in the World is the title, and I might have to buy it. Cookbooks and healthy living books are fun, but I try to check them out of the library first and give them a test run. Interestingly enough, when I googled this book in order to get a picture or a link, The World's Healthiest Foods came up first, both on google image search, and in Amazon. Of course this could be because I own the book already, but I would like to say I heartily recommend it as well!

Snacks this afternoon were sweet. I ate a pudding cup, and then an hour later a granola thin.

Dinner was fish tacos! Fish tacos are simple, light and tasty, thus perfect for summer in the south.

Today we had a perfectly ripe avocado to eat. This along with shredded cabbage and salsa, is really all you need. We used swai as the fish (any firm white fish, or even salmon will do). On the side was some largely ignored yellow rice and black beans. The rice was from a packet and was kind of gross, but the black beans will be reincarnated (hopefully) for breakfast.

All this was eaten outside on the slightly rained on front porch with a tall beer.

Melon-Choly

Breakfast this morning was half a cantaloupe and coffee. Totally meant to eat some greek yogurt, but time slept through my fingers.

 

I have not been able to sleep at all lately! Last night I had maybe 4 hours of sleep, and the night before around 2 or 3. (I stopped looking at the clock.) In the middle of the night I got up and looked for a book that I have apparently lost, about running, which has been on my mind. In my quest I came across 2 good reads for insomnia and anxiety. On the left is Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love by Lara Vapnyar, on the right is The Elephant Vanishes (stories) by Haruki Murakami. Both authors my mother and I discovered in The New Yorker.

Murakami is good for what ails you, and the story “Sleep” is perfect for nights such as the last two. Most of his work is moody, and evocative. I think of Murakami when I make spaghetti or float in a pool…

Soon I snacked on carrots and bell pepper with a little hummus.

Lunch was tuna seasoned with hot sauce found in a drawer, and Kashi crackers.

Dessert was a little chocolate covered granola snack that caught my eye in the store.

 

My boyfriend was studying and didn’t really want anything to eat for dinner. I decided to leisurely cook for myself while cleaning out some cabinets, but it didn’t turn out so well. I used some old pilaf that we had gotten in a bulk bin, an Indian inspired sauce from Target, broccoli, chicken, and an old sweet potato that needed to be eaten.

 

The bottom of dish was shredded chicken and the pilaf

topped with a little sauce, steamed broccoli, and medallions of sweet potato.

I ate about 1/3 of it with a Sam Adams Light.

Just for fun: My Drunk Kitchen

Wine and Roses, or Carnations

Maybe it was the red wine talking last night, but I have started to miss the ol’ blog. It has never been a very good blog, but I had fun doing it. The wine in question was Newman’s Own cabernet sauvignon, and not too shabby.

 

 

My boyfriend is sick, and I have been feeling down in the dumps. I bought some lovely flowers to cheer myself up.

Later I am going to try to fix the chili I started making yesterday. Does anyone else start making a recipe, and then realize you don’t have all the ingredients? I usually plow ahead and make substitutions, but I have never really made a good chili, so I wanted to follow the recipe exactly the first time. It’s seasoned with dark beer, chocolate, and coffee, which I am intrigued by. The best chili I have ever had was an Abita beer chili which I’m pretty sure was flavored with cocoa or coffee, or both. The recipe is Chili I from all recipes. Hopefully I will be back to show off a success.

What have I been up to in the past year?

In late May of last year I had a burst appendix! That was terrible, which is putting it mildly. The recovery and subsequent problems I had put a damper on working out. I still haven’t gotten back into the swing of things, and I feel sad about it.

I am still in school, and planning on continuing. That might be the biggest reason I stopped blogging, gardening, reading, and everything else in life. Seriously though, going to school and working full time is hard, and when I have time off I don’t feel motivated to do much.

I don’t know if I would go back to posting every meal every day, but I wouldn’t mind taking pictures of the cool summer meals we make. We’ll see .