Epic Enchiladas

The Menu: The most epic enchiladas ever, aka filled with homemade refried beans, chopped tomato, scallions, and cheddar cheese; and s'mores lasagna for dessert.

before above, and below: after

The Recipes:

Refried Beans. In your biggest frying pan, saute the dense white part of scallions in olive oil for a few minutes. Pour in 3 14.5 oz. cans of drained (do not forget to drain them!) canned pinto beans. Stir/cook for a few minutes, and then get out the mighty potato masher. Admire the potato masher's versatility (it's good for making banana bread, mashed potatoes, and refried beans! Who knew?) before going to town on the beans. Keep the heat on and keep stirring as you mash. Add water if things get to thick, and salt to taste. We kept the heat on low and kept stirring until it was time to fill our tortillas. Next time we'll mostly leave the heat on--once the pan's mostly empty, things dry out too much if you keep the heat on.

Epic Enchiladas. Preheat oven (we used 350). In a bowl large enough you can comfortably dip your tortillas in (the key is big and shallow; a cake pan might even work), stir together the contents of an 8 oz. can of tomato sauce and a 14 oz. can of enchilada sauce. (We used this combination to make the enchiladas fairly mild; use all enchilada sauce for a spicier dish. Having extra sauce isn't a problem - read on.) Dip both sides a tortilla (we used whole wheat flour tortillas) in the sauce, then lay on a clean, flat surface to fill. Spread refried beans, followed by chopped tomato, chopped scallions, and plenty of shredded cheddar cheese. Roll the tortilla up (the best you can; more filling makes it harder to roll but also taste better), and place in a large baking pan (something like a 9x13x2). Continue with the rest of the tortillas, until they're all filled and rolled. If they don't fit in the pan, either make the enchiladas get cozier, or get another pan. Drizzle your leftover sauce over all the tortillas, then sprinkle over the top the rest of your other ingredients (the tomatos, scallions, cheese, etc.). Bake at 350 for about 10 minutes, until the cheese bubbly. Serve steaming, cut like you would lasagna.

S'mores Lasagna. S'mores lasagna is built on the same concept as normal lasagna, except infinitely unhealthier. Start with an ungreased baking pan (another 9x13x2). Put in a generous layer of graham cracker crumbs (you either buy them as crumbs or smash existing graham crackers). Add a thick layer of chocolate chips, and put the pan in a hot (350ish) oven for a few minutes, until the chocolate gets pretty soft. Take the pan out and add a layer of marshmallows. Back in the oven, until the marshmallows get pretty soft, and repeat the process: more graham cracker crumbs, more chocolate chips, melt them somewhat, more marshmallows, melt them, until your doctor and/or dentist make you stop. If you want, smash the marshmallows down somewhat with a fork before adding the next layer of crumbs. When you're out of ingredients or your pan's full, put the whole pan in the freezer for about half an hour. (You could skip this step, but freezing the "lasagna" has two important functions: it makes the lasagna crunch like real s'mores, and possibly more importantly, takes away some of the shock of eating pure sugar, so you can eat more s'mores and feel less sick. :P) Store in the fridge to maintain some of the crunchiness, but to prevent them from being inedibly hard should they survive to the next day.

Rosemary Chicken & Vegetables Over Quinoa

The Menu: Rosemary Chicken & Vegetables Over Quinoa (& Lickety Split Cookies)

The Recipes:
Chicken & Vegetables. Preheat oven to 400. Wash and cut orange and yellow bell pepper, zucchini, and carrot and mix in large bowl (we had about 16 cups). Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle on very liberal amounts of ground black pepper, garlic powder, and rosemary; and mix well. Saute minced garlic in olive oil for a few minutes, until fragrant (we used about 12 cloves). Add cut (we used approximately bite-sized pieces), cleaned, and rinsed chicken and cook with rosemary until done on the outside. Add vegetables to the pan and bake for 15 minutes. Carefully remove from oven, dump everything back in the big bowl, mix it up, and add some more spices (do not discard the cooking juices!). Add about a half cup of water, and bake for 10-15 more minutes. Cover the pan if needed to prevent the chicken from drying out. Serve hot with cooking liquid over quinoa.
Quinoa. See post from April 3rd. To rinse, we sloshed quinoa around with a couple cups of water in the saucepan, and then poured onto a towel over a bowl. By squeezing out the water and carefully scraping the stuck quinoa off the towel, we were able to rinse and drain it pretty well.
Lickety-Split Cookies. Mix the following as fast and as loudly as you can in a big bowl, and cook on greased cookie sheet at 350 until done: 1/4 c butter, 3/4 c brown sugar, 1 egg, 1 tsp. vanilla, 1/2 tsp. baking soda, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1/2 c flour, 3/4 c whole wheat flour, 1 cup oatmeal, 3/4 c chocolate chips.

Chiocciole in a Tomato-Cream Sauce

The Menu: Organic whole wheat Chiocciole in a Tomato-Cream Sauce

Chiocciole (pronounced key-oh-chee-oh-lay) means snail in Italian; look closely at each end of each piece. The pasta almost doubled in size while cooking, and became nice and big. Check out a zillion amazing pasta shapes here: http://www.food-info.net/uk/products/pasta/shapes.htm.

 

The flash did a good job highlighting all the steam boiling off.

The Recipes:
Chiocciole. We used organic whole wheat, so it took about 20 minutes to cook thoroughly. Taste periodically, also testing for texture, to avoid overcooking.
Tomato-Cream Sauce. In a sizeable saucepan, saute a large onion, chopped well and many cloves of fresh garlic in olive oil over medium heat, making sure nothing burns. After 10-15 minutes, add 2 28 oz. cans diced tomatoes, 2 tbsp. dried basil, 1.5 tsp. white sugar, 1/2 tsp. dried oregano, 1/2 tsp. salt and 1/2 tsp. ground black pepper. Bring to boil and continue to boil 5 minutes or until most of the liquid evaporates. Remove from heat; stir in 1/2 cup cream. Reduce heat and simmer 5 more minutes. (Adapted from http://allrecipes.com/recipe/tomato-cream-sauce-for-pasta/detail.aspx)

Green Stir-Fry with Quinoa

The Menu: Scallions, Broccoli, Green Pepper, and Chicken Stir-Fry with Quinoa.

The Recipes:
Stir-Fry. Briefly cook cleaned and cut up chicken in hot oil until cooked on the outside. Remove from pan, and add cut and washed scallions, broccoli, and green pepper, and minced garlic. Drizzle with soy sauce, garlic powder, onion powder, etc. Add back chicken and mix well. Add more soy sauce, garlic powder, onion powder, and black pepper to taste. (Be careful with the soy sauce - it will make the food very salty very fast.) 
Quinoa. Follow package directions (Boil 1 cup of rinsed quinoa with 1.25 c water, then simmer 12 minutes).