Enchiladas & Appetizers

Tonight was a mexican night! I have been craving enchiladas for the past few days since I saw this post from Simply Recipes and realized I haven’t had them in a while and I had a can of green enchilada sauce in the cabinet (I know, I’ll try to make one of my own these days!) Enchiladas were also the very first meal that I cooked for Rich & I have not made them for him since then. I had also kept seeing ads and recipes for stuffed hot peppers (baked – not fried) and Rich had also been bugging me for some of those too –  so the menu was set!

When I went to the market yesterday, there were only 5 good looking jalapeno peppers left (and something got to the ones in our garden and none of them grew nicely). I picked them up anyway and was set to go!

• Jalapeno Peppers (sliced in 1/2 and seeded) – I used 6

  

• about 3 oz cream cheese (softened)
• 1/2 cup, combination of: mozzarella & cheddar
• 1/2 t: salt/garlic/pepper

All that I needed to do to make these was slice  peppers in half, place in greased dish, fill with cheese mixture & bake for about 15 minutes in a 350 degree oven until browned. These were delicious & will be made again (be careful when seeding the peppers goes without saying – but I wasn’t super careful and now my fingers I used to do that are burning!)

After a quick little snack – it was time to get down to making dinner (chicken was boiling from the time I got home and was ready to shred: to boil it just put in some salt, garlic, & a few seeds from those hot peppers). Here is my version of Enchiladas (at least the version that I made today)….

• 2 chicken breast (shredded)
• 1 can beans (black or pinto or whatever)
• spices (garlic, chipotle sauce, lime juice, etc – whatever you like)
• 1 can enchilada sauce

  

• 5 – 6 tortilla shells
• shredded cheese (5 oz?)
• cilantro

Then you want to mix the beans with the shredded chicken & seasonings that would be something you would be happy to eat on its own! Pour some sauce in the bottom of your dish, then place shell (warmed up so they are easy to roll) with a nice sized scoop of protein, put some cheese & cilantro and roll it up. When you place it in the dish, put it in seam side down. Repeat…. pour the rest of sauce over rolled shells – top with the rest of the cheese. Bake for about 20 minutes in 350 and then 3 minutes on broil & top with some more fresh cilantro!

This is not the quickest meal (but doesn’t take that long either) but it is well worth it! Its pretty healthy and inexpensive as well. Just as a side note: I was having my students write goals today & I wrote one of my goals that I was going to blog at least twice a week…. just an FYI! Happy Eating