Monday, February 28, 2011

Salad enchiladas

This is a vegetarian dish, and adding meat to it is not needed.



Small amount of chopped lettuce
Chopped onion
Chopped tomatoes
Chopped black olives
Shredded cheese (either Mexican Cotija, cheddar, or already mixed & grated cheese)
Enchilada sauce (10 oz can of sauce for 8 enchiladas)
Corn tortillas

I serve three tortillas for most women, and five tortillas for most men.  I chop the ingredients before I prepare the tortillas.  I put each tortilla’s amount of onion, tomatoes, olives and cheese into a small dish (1 tsp chopped onion, 1 TBSP chopped tomatoes, 1 TBSP chopped olives, 1/8 cup cheese).  So for eight tortillas, I will have eight small dishes of loosely layered ingredients in the small dishes.  Each dish gets the measured small amount of all the ingredients. 



Some people prefer the Mexican Cotija cheese (shown on the right), but I prefer the taste of mixed grated Mexican cheese (shown on the left).

Spread a small amount of chopped lettuce on each plate. 

Heat oil in one skillet and enchilada sauce in the other.  I don’t use a lot of oil and it is all gone by the time I heat the last tortilla.

Warm the tortilla in hot oil for a short period, just to get it soft, then put it in the enchilada sauce to coat it. 

Put the saucy tortilla flat on the bed of lettuce and turn one of the small dishes of the mix (onion, tomatoes, olives, and cheese) on top of it. 

Back to the skillets, cook another tortilla and then coat it with enchilada sauce, then put it on top of the first tortilla with the ingredients on it.  Again, turn a small dish of the mix on top of it. 

Do this a total of three enchiladas for a woman’s plate and five enchiladas for a man’s plate. 

Finish the dish off with a bit of the leftover enchilada sauce.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Yummy Coffee Cake

We're having a potluck at work ... what we call "all day grazing" ... What to fix?  I decided to make a coffee cake for breakfast.



I found an easy start for it ... a box of Krusteaz Cinnamon Crumb Cake.  



The directions on the box say to use the package of cake mix, water and an egg to mix.  There is also a package of cinnamon in the box.  The directions also say to make it in an 8x8 pan.  Sometimes I do that.  This time I used a bundt pan.  Lightly spray any pan you use.  

After mixing the cake mix, use half of it in the bottom of your pan.  Then add a half can of apple pie filling (any brand), spooning the apples on top of the cake mix and around the ring in the bundt pan (or in your 8x8 pan).  

  
Spread two or three handfuls of pecan bits or halves over the apple pie filling.  

Using the cinnamon mix package from the Krusteaz Cinnamon Crumb cake spread about half of the cinnamon package on top of the apples and pecans.  Follow the cinnamon with the rest of the cake mix and the rest of the cinnamon.  Using a long toothpick, stir the whole mix slightly.  Top it all off with a few more pecans.

Bake in the oven for about 45 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Now comes the fun part.  I took my cake from the oven and inverted in on a dish.  How ugly.  All the golden color and pretty pecans were now on the bottom of the cake.  I like a nice presentation so I inverted it again on the plate.  Now the cake was beautiful ... all golden with pecans!

It is so tasty ... Try it!