Avocado Chicken Enchiladas

It's no secret that we love tacos, fajitas and enchiladas around here. I probably make either tacos or fajitas once a week around here, that's how much we love them. And frankly, it's always an easy meal.  With that said, I found this enchilada recipe and I cannot tell you how unbelievably easy and tasty it is!! As soon as I saw that avocado was one of the main ingredients I was sold. This one is definitely going  to become a regular in my house. Plus, with the exception of one or two ingredients, I always have these ingredients on hand. 

Ingredients for the Enchilada Sauce

1 tablespoon butter

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 tbsp flour

1 cup chicken stock  - (I used chicken broth which is the same thing or you could do vegetable stock too)

2 teaspoons of cumin

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon fresh ground pepper

1/2 cup chopped cilantro (I omitted the cilantro, Gabe hates it) 

1 cup mild or medium salsa verde (depending on how hot you want it)

1/2 cup fat free sour cream (I just used regular)

Ingredients for the Enchiladas

3-4 cups cooked chicken breasts, chopped or shredded

2 cups shredded Mexican blend cheese

3 avocados, peeled and chopped

8 flour tortillas

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In medium sauce pan, saute garlic in butter  for about 1 minute on Medium - High Heat. Stir in flour let it cook for about 2 more minutes.

 2. Next stir in the chicken broth, cumin, salt, pepper and bring to a simmer. Remove from heat and stir in the sour cream, salsa verde and cilantro until smooth (or at least as smooth as you can get.)

3. Prepare a 9×13 baking dish with nonstick spray. Add about 1/2 cup sauce to the bottom of the pan. and spread out until bottom of the baking dish is evenly coated.

4. Lay out a tortilla and add chicken, shredded cheese, and avocado to the end of the tortilla and roll. Then place the rolled tortilla seam-side down and repeat until the pan is full. 

5. Pour the remaining sauce over the enchiladas. Cover with 1 cup of cheese and bake for about 20 minutes or until cheese is bubbling.

*I usually just get medium size tortillas so our enchiladas where bigger and I only made 5 and still had leftovers. 

Pat's Frito Salad

Pat makes this salad in the summer. Casey loves it. The kids really like it too, especially Diddy. He keeps asking me to make "that bean salad." It is super fast and yummy.

Green Pepper
Red Pepper
Yellow Pepper
Purple Onion
Frozen Corn
Black beans
Chili Fritos

Dice ingredients and toss in a bowl with mayo. Stir in Chili Fritos close to serving time, so they don't get soggy. I just try to add equal amounts of all the ingredients and I found a little mayo goes a long way. The family loves it. Thanks Pat!!  

Pat's New Year's Chicken Wings

There. NOW we won't be stuck at the beach and NOT have the exact recipe. These are obviously my family's FAVORITE wing recipe.


5 lbs. chicken wings
1 c. brown sugar
1 t. dry mustard
1/8 t. ginger
3/4 c. Marsala wine
1 c. soy sauce
2 cloves minced garlic

Cook chicken on a baking sheet at 350 for 30 minutes. Make sauce and let it sit. Pour sauce over the chicken and cook for another 30 minutes. Then turn them over and cook 30 more minutes (1.5 hours total cooking)

Summer Pasta Salad

This is such a "girl" salad. We love it though. When my sis came to visit we downed a whole bowl. It just feels light. Plus, who doesn't want to eat something COLD then a hot meal sometimes on these hot days (I hear the west is having some KILLER heat!)

The trick is finding "mini" noodles. When I used regular-sized rotini it just soaked up ALL the dressing so I ended having to use 2 whole bottle or something. So in the store in the noodle section find a noodle that the box says "mini". They can be any shape.

- 1 box mini noodles
-cucumber, cut up
-celery cut up (you HAVE to have celery, the salad needs the crunch, even though I'm not a HUGE celery fan)
- red grapes, halved
-grilled chicken (cooked and chopped up...........we've done it w/o chicken before but w/ the meat it feels more 
maindish-y)
-One bottle of Poppyseed dressing.....like Briana's.....the one w/ the big peach on the front. (have another bottle on hand just in case you like it more wet. Every noodle is different so it's hard to say how much it will soak up or not)

You cook up the noodles, rinse, Let cool. And add everything else. It tastes best if you let it sit in the fridge for a few hours (I make it during naptime). You can make the ratio however you want, I love a lot of grapes and cucumbers in it and Brooks prefers more meat. Whatever.
Cut up some watermelon to serve and you have a perfect light, summer meal.

Note: When I had Iris someone brought me this as a meal. I loved LOVED it that I asked her for the recipe. When she told me the dressing was just a bottle of salad dressing, I couldn't BELIEVE it!!! And when I've taken this to people they ask about the dressing because it's so good. Funny huh. Must mix w/ the other flavors of the food.....

Frozen Key Lime Pie - 4 Ingredients

Ingredients:

1       9inch graham cracker crust (or oreo)
1       can sweetened condensed milk
1       8oz container cool whip
1/2c  fresh or concentrate lime juice  

*You can add green food coloring to make it look more like a key lime pie 
**You can add a garnish to the top like lime slices, lime zest, chocolate shavings or cool whip

Mix condensed milk, cool whip and lime juice together. Add mixture to graham cracker crust. Freeze for at least 4 hours.

DELICIOUS!!

Aebleskivers & Butterscotch Syrup

I thought about not posting this, because you have to have a special type of pan to make these. They're a Danish breakfast pastry. However, they are so delicious I wanted to post it. Melissa makes these at Christmas time and fills them with jelly. I don't fill mine, but make a butterscotch syrup that my roommate made with them in college. Even if you don't get the pan and make the Aebleskivers, the syrup is so delicious! 

This is what the pan looks like to make them....it's called an Aebleskiver Pan.
   
Aebleskivers 
2 Cups flour
1 Teasppon salt
1 Teasppon baking soda
2 Cups buttermilk
3 Eggs - separated

**I don't buy buttermilk for this, put 2 tablespoons of lemon juice or vinegar in with the 2 cups of whatever milk you have and it thickens and curdles it to act as buttermilk.    

Sift together or whisk the flour, salt and baking soda. Add buttermilk and egg yolks. Beat egg whites until light and fluffly, forming soft peaks. Gently fold egg whites into batter.

Heat Aebleskiver pan on medium heat (fyi, it gets really hot and so I end up turning it down to medium-low heat after it initially heats up, about 10mins) Grease each cup thoroughly with spray oil and fill 2/3 full with batter. Cook approximately 1 to 1-1/2mins (per side) until golden brown, flip using a toothpick. 

OPTIONAL: Fill each cup only 1/3 full with batter place a small amount of fruit or jelly in each cup and cover with an additional 1/3 batter.

OPTIONAL: Add a teaspoon of cinnamon to the batter, it's delicious.

Makes about 35-40.

Butterscotch Syrup
1-1/2 Cup sugar
1-1/2 cubes butter
3/4 Cups milk
1 Teaspoon baking soda
2 Teaspoon vanilla

Melt butter in pan, then add sugar, milk and baking soda. Cook 7mins stirring constantly and barely boiling. Take off heat and add vanila. 

We like to dip our aebleskivers in the syrup and eat with our fingers!

I half this recipe a lot because it makes so much, then we save whats leftover and use it on pancakes or french toast.         

Won Ton Chicken Salad

Here you go Lins....

1 head romaine lettuce
1 head iceberg lettuce
3 chicken breasts cooked and shredded
1 can sliced water chestnuts
1/2 pkg wontons fried and broken into pieces
1 small bag slivered almonds

Dressing:
1 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup SEASONED rice vinegar
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp pepper
4-6 green onions

Blend the ingredients for the dressing in blender until smooth and pour over salad RIGHT before serving.
(Case and I think the more green onion the more flavor it has, so I would do all 6 and I usually go about half to three fourths the way up the stem.) Also, I usually like to cook and shred the chicken the night before and sometimes I cook the wontons the night before and just break them up when I'm ready to use them. If I make this all at once, it feels like it takes forever! If I break it up, it feels like it was easy!!