Sour Cream Enchiladas and Guacamole

One of the great things about coworkers is sharing recipes. I'm very lucky that a girl in my office has a father that runs a Mexican restaurant and occasionally brings in Guacamole. And by that, I mean she cuts everything up and makes it in the office. Amazing! Well, I had some sour cream left over from my ranch dressing and I found some chubs of ground beef in the freezer that I needed to use. So I decided I'd grab some avocados and do something Tex-Mex.

As far as using the sour cream went, I LOVE Chicken sour Cream enchiladas. And the nephews always have tortillas around the house. It seemed to me, that switching in ground beef would work out all right, so I looked up some taco seasoning for it and found a promising enchilada recipe. Plus, I ran out of chili powder so I couldn't do a red sauce, and I had no chicken. So, improvising!

Chicken Enchiladas with Creamy Green Chile Sauce

This is the recipe I used as a guide. I picked it because I had most of the ingredients on hand, like the cilantro and green chiles. I think it's a little tough to ruin a recipe like this even when substituting things you have in the fridge. For example, other than using beef instead, I had cheddar, not monterey jack. And I used flour rather than corn tortillas. Use, they were a bit droopy, but they were tasty and I'm not that picky about them.

And they look pretty. So there! For the beef, I mixed up some seasoning and dumped what was left of a jar of jalapenos into it, plus half of my can of chiles as I had too many. If you buy pre-mixed seasonings you should search around on allrecipes or Yummly. Most of the time, you probably already own all the spices you need to make the mix.

Taco Seasoning

And of course, the aforementioned Guacamole recipe that is just perfect. Though I argue with one of the nephews as to whether or not Cilantro is a must. In my opinion, it is.

Guacamole 

Now to chase all that down, I decided to make a key lime pie. I've never made one before and rarely get a piece. Usually only if I go out to lunch with my sister and split one with her. But, we rarely get dessert, so...

Key Lime Pie

Note, the recipe uses sour cream. See a trend here? That's my justification for making pie right there. I was cleaning the sour cream out of the fridge... really...

Grating key limes, let it be said, it awful. Next time I try this I'm using big limes to see how it goes. Also, this little casserole dish is stoneware I got from World Market. It's awesome and cleans up great and is basically a 9" pie plate. The crust you see is just a standard Betty Crocker pie crust recipe out of Ye Olde cookbook.

And that little chunk out of the pie? That is a nephew, caught red-handed taking slivers. To "test" the pie before getting some. Right. Testing. Well, that is why I don't have a picture of an intact pie. :D

Why yes, it is a pretty tasty key lime recipe.

Onion Buns, Barbecue and Dark Chocolate Cake

I get the feeling I'm going to make people bored saying it, but baking bread rocks. It really does. I may never buy bread from a store again.

Confession time here, I am addicted to these little onion rolls from Albertson's Grocery. Problem is, they don't always keep long and they are often out. So hey, my other loaf came out great, I started looking for a recipe. I can do this!

For my sammiches, I bought a huge pork tenderloin from Costco and decided to go with pulled pork barbecue. It was a very simple, if odd, recipe.

Slow Cooker Pulled Pork

1 pork tenderloin (2 pound)
1 bottle root beer
1 bottle barbecue sauce
1 package buns

Basically, dump the pork and root beer in the slow cooker and low for 5-6 hours until it shreds easy. Take it out. Shred, mix in sauce. Slap on buns. Enjoy! Simple! I used Virgil's for the root beer because it's very flavorful and Rudy's for the sauce as they sell large bottles. Because my pork loin was 8 pounds, I blame Costco.

Now, the buns I went with were from the website of the flour I buy. They were fantastic. 6 star. Incredible. Possibly better than the barbecue. If I manage to wheedle some smoked ham from my sister (raises pigs), I think I could put people into a happy food coma with these.

King Arthur Flour Onion Buns

Filling
1 medium onion, diced
4 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon sugar

Dough
1/4 cup warm water
1 tablespoon yeast
1/2 cup milk, scalded and cooled
1 egg
4 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
3 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

Glaze
1 egg
1/4 teaspoon salt

Topping
Parmesan cheese

I'm not going to put the how-to here, just click the link for that. I am going to list what I changed after making it twice.
1. No scalded milk, because lazy. I just used water.
2. Halved butter used to cook onions because butter
3. Halved butter mixed in with dough, same reason. 
4. Chopped up butter and added it to onion mixture when it was done cooking so it would melt, because save me a pot and flavor butter with onion.
5. Added onions to flour before mixing dough, because I've tried adding the fruit/veggie thing after the first rising and it's messy. And it gets under your nails and it's gross. Now, if you've a bread machine you wouldn't have this issue. I don't, so I do! So I add it early and justify it by saying it mixes the onion flavor in more thoroughly. So there!

Aren't they pretty? The little bowl is what I used to cut them. And they expanded quite a bit. I tried a biscuit cutter for the second batch and they were still a little large. Next time, I'm using a glass and making them more "slider" style.

I should add, I mixed up some ranch dressing for some leftover celery in the fridge. I don't like buying ranch as I usually won't eat a full bottle, I end up throwing half away. And likewise, I usually have leftover sour cream. The texture of home made ranch is much better. It's also pretty easy to make once you know what's in it.

Ranch Dressing

I flip the quantities of Mayo and Sour Cream in it, because I like sour cream.

That extra little thing on there? That's a Black Magic cake with chocolate cream cheese icing. And it's also fantastic. And I do mean award winning good :D

Black Magic Cake

Now you may look at this and think, coffee? Bleh! But I swear, you can't taste it. And I put espresso in it too. I'm sure you'd miss it if you used water but I suspect it helps the very dark chocolate color. It's also incredibly moist and while I'd love to layer this cake, that might be a feat of gymnastics that would not end well. It's not a cake that needs icing at all, but I happen to have a recipe I use for icing that I love that I altered for this cake.

The problem is that recipe is firmly in my head. It's from something my grandmother used to make that was really a quick no cook cheesecake. 

Quick Cream Cheese Filling/Icing

1 Large Tub Cool Whip
2 Blocks softened Cream Cheese
Powdered Sugar to taste (about 1/3 cup)
Vanilla if desired.

Mix together in blender and spread at will! The nice thing with this is you can make it diabetic friendly by using truvia and getting sugarfree cool whip. And it's great just on fruit or layered under pudding in a crust.

For the above cake recipe, I wanted more cream cheese taste, and the cake I made was a half recipe. So I didn't need that much. I used half a block of cream cheese and half a small tub of cool whip. Maybe 1/8 cup of powdered sugar and 1-2 tablespoons of cocoa. It was potent. I kept it in the fridge rather than icing the cake directly and spread it on as needed.

I'm going to take that cake to work and wreck many diets. Yes I am :D It was good. And it was gone before the barbecue.

Sesame Green Beans

Not everyone like vegetables. I'm here to say those people probably love off canned ones. Or really bad produce. Good veggies cooked right are awesome. And Sesame Green Beans are one of those that are 5 star. Simple, easy, tasty and a stable of most asian buffets for good reason. I got lucky because Costco started carrying bags of prewashed and stemmed fresh green beans. As soon as I saw them, I knew I'd be recipe hunting. And now that I'm posting this I wish I had snapped a picture.

Now, there are plenty of variations of this recipe out there, so feel free to shop. I simply made sure the one I picked had sesame oil in it, as not all of them do. But I was very happy with the results. The only change I'd make is possibly skipping the sesame seeds. They don't do anything for me and create a mess.

Japanese Style Sesame Green Beans

Now, I didn't just make green beans and eat them for days. I also made some Mandarin Chicken. It came out "okay" As in, I ate it all but I'll never make it again and I'm not linking it. There was no orange taste to it though everything was cooked nicely. I'll probably look for another recipe some other day.

Butternut Squash and Turkey

I admit, I've been waffling about posting this one. I made it and it still sounds weird to me. But, well, I wanted to cook something with butternut squash a couple weeks ago. So I popped open Allrecipes.com and plugged it in. The first recipe that pops up also uses ground turkey. And I have packets of that from Costco in the fridge. But, it was in the form of an Autumn Chili.

Yikes?

No Really, Turkey chili with Butternut Squash

So I figured what the hell, I'll try it. And it wasn't half bad. It was pretty filling. But I'll admit, I felt like it needed something. I had some leftover Sour Cream and I'd put a little bit on it. It helped. I think if I made this again I'd be tempted to switch out some of the Chicken Broth for milk  or some such. Basically, I just want to treat it like a stew instead of chili. Somehow, thinking of it as chili bothers me. Snobby? Maybe. But it does!

I'm going to go ahead and give it 4 stars though. While it wasn't something I'd take to a potluck, I'm pretty sure browsing the comments section on allrecipes would give me some good ideas to improve it to my taste.

Tea Bread

If  people know one thing about me, it's I love my tea. And I make baked goods. Despite the baking, I've never tried bread. But after getting addicted to Orrowheat bread and seeing it rise to 5$ a pop, I decided to try my  hand at baking my own. I was very concerned I'd create a dough-splosion in my kitchen. But it was far, far easier than I thought!

And of course, after getting confident, I had to look up adding tea to it. :3 Sure enough, not only did Google produce recipes but using some old chai I had. So, double bonus! Use up some old chai, have uber toast!

But enough of that, here's the basic recipe I picked to use for bread.

Amish White Bread

Based on the comments for it, I tend to cut the sugar in half. I also proof my yeast by using my Hotshot to heat the water to 100 degrees then mixing it in a little pyrex measuring cup. Making it into Tea bread was very simple, simply cut open two tea bags and dump it into the water that is used to proof the yeast. Yes, dump it in. The tea recipe I found had a good point. You don't boil oregano or basil in water to use the spice, you dump it in.

For this trial, I was using one pack of Twinings French Vanilla Chai and one Pumpkin Spice Chai. I cut the sugar by about 1/3 and cut the recipe in half for one loaf.

And as you can see from the loaf, the tea adds nice little specks all through out.

Yes, I am proud this turned out so pretty. As far as tasty, to be honest I would not have bitten into this and immediately said, "Hey! This has tea/chai in it!" It has a very nice light taste to it and it smells awesome. I think it's a fun little trick to do, I might try adding another teabag next time for more oomph.

One last little thought. Having lived through a household period of, Eat Wheat Bread or Nothing... if you live with someone that is a wheat bread snob, you can use this trick to disguise your white bread. Between the specs and the browner color, it looks like wheat. :D

I'd stay away from the chai though, the ginger smell might give it away.

One last note I do want to touch on cost again. I can get 20lb of flour for about 14$, organic and unbleached. And I could easily get a bigger 40lb bag for less. So, three OrroWheat loaf for 5$ or... make myself over a dozen loaves, biscuits, pie crust or whatever I want. Easy choice.

Of Cats and Turtles

Pets are part of the holidays. That's a fact. And this year my cat was given a little stuffed turtle with a pocket for catnip. I caught her napping while using it as a pillow. So cute! And I really tried to get a picture with her eyes closed... but no, even with her hearing going the moment the camera beeped they'd pop open with that "What is that and why are you pointing it at me" look. Bah.

Cameras need a stealth mode.

Welcome!

If you came to visit, well thank you! Rather than rehash what I'm up to here, let's get down to it. Now my initial idea was to post what I was doing each week and what I thought of it. But, now that we are 3 months in, I've already tried several new recipes. And I do want to share what I learned from a few of them. Just well, not all at once. I think that would be overkill. So I'm going to start with what most people know me for. Cookies.

Oatmeal Spice Mix

1 1/2 Tablespoons Truvia (or similar Stevia sweetener to taste)
1 Teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons Cinnamon
2 Teaspoons Nutmeg
1 Teaspoon Cloves
Optional: 1 packet of vanilla breakfast shake mix

Directions: Add all to jar and shake. Add 1 teaspoon to heated water before adding oatmeal. You can do it after, but the salt/sweetener dissolves better this way.


I know, it's not a cookie. But it came from one! Let me explain.

At Christmas, I make a lot of cookies for people. This year, one was a classic Oatmeal Raisin. They tasted great, but they thin and fell apart. So I had to find another recipe. But, I really liked the taste from the first one. So I took the flour etc from the second, but kept the spices from the first. It worked like a charm!

And I had a huge box of oatmeal leftover. Hmm!

In my pantry, I also have a stash of empty herb jars that my sister gave me. :D

You might see where this is heading. I looked at the basic oatmeal directions, salt, and water, mixed in the cookie spices and some Truvia brand sweetener. Genius! Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Breakfast!

Truvia, btw, is stevia. Stevia is a natural and potent sweetener derived from a plant, globally used and finally picking up steam in the US. It's virtually 0 calorie. I can't say that I like it in everything, but I couldn't tell the difference in the oatmeal. And since it's potent, it fits nicely in the spice jar as we don't need much. It's also diabetic friendly.

But, back to the cookies! I also borrowed a little of the cooking method. My old cookie cookbook had a tip to simmer the raisins in water, to plump them up, before mixing them into the batter. They are 100% better this way, I promise. In the time that it takes to bring the water to boil and cook the oatmeal, the raisins are nice and plump. I suspect that even if you microwave your oatmeal, you'd find this to be true. Personally, I use the stovetop. Though, I cheat and preheat my water with my Hotshot teamaker to get it to boil a bit faster. A coffee maker's hot water spot would work too.

From my Christmas cookies I got a very tasty and delicious oatmeal recipe that is pretty low-calorie. Far better than the expensive sugar laden pouches for sale in the store. And no more difficult to make, at all.


That's what cooking experience does for you. Once you know what spices you like, you can apply them in other places. Now most of my other posts will likely be straight up recipes,but this is all new to me, so who knows? Rather than get too wordy, I'll sign this off with a list of last week and next week's goodies. I'll probably update this again next weekend. Feel free to comment and email me any suggestions or critiques on this!

Last weeks meals were: Mandarin Chicken. Sesame Green Beans. Baked Buffalo Chicken. Herbed Potato Salad. Spinach Feta Bread. Apple Brie Braid. This week I'm trying a Turkey Butternut Squash Chili and some Spring Rolls.