Mexican Casserole

Happy Wednesday! I hope you're having a fantastic day so far. :) And a fantastic week!

This is one of those recipes I made SO long ago, I'm really having to remember how we liked it. LOL! I actually made DOUBLE of the recipe, and had this little casserole dish left over for Kenn and me. I put it in the freezer, and baked it off about two weeks after I made the dinner for some friends going through stuff.

What is it? :D It's Mexican Casserole from Plain Chicken.

I'm giving this a YES, PLEASE! I may have actually quadrupled the recipe, now that I'm thinking back on it. It was a MESS of casserole fixin's! :D I like that my photo and her photo look very similar - that always makes me feel better.

It was filling and flavorful without being too spicy. It froze well, and it traveled well when I took it to my friends. (I took it unbaked so they could have it hot whenever they wanted to cook it!) And I KNOW it fed a LOT of people. I made the refried beans I love so much (because they're so easy!) and rice.

OK, I'm outta here! :) Have a wonderful day! BE BLESSED!

Crockpot "Refried" Beans

Good Monday afternoon! :) I know it's a bit later than normal, but I wasn't home much this weekend. I'm house managing for Lamplighter's Theater Company, and between church and the show, there wasn't a lot of spare time to be found! :)

That doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about what to post. :D I made this recipe last week; it's from Pennies & Pancakes, for Crockpot "Refried" Beans.

Let me just say, from the start, this gets a YES, PLEASE! :) It's a great, inexpensive, adjustable recipe. The only thing I measured was the water, because I didn't want to have it be too soupy or too dry.

The flavor is GREAT on these! I found I didn't need all the cooking time listed; be sure your beans aren't crunchy, for sure, but mine were done about a half-hour after I turned my pot down to LOW. I cut the recipe in half; we don't eat a LOT of refried beans, and I didn't want them going to waste - even though they're so inexpensive to make!

I will recommend this to you, too: keep some of the liquid if you drain off some from your beans. I was worried when I mashed them that I hadn't gotten rid of enough liquid. But they really tightened up, and I now wish I'd left just a bit more. If you keep some of the liquid, you can add it when your beans start to cool. But I don't think I'll be using canned beans if I can do a little planning ahead; these really were tasty!!!!!!

I had these vegetarian beans and melted cheese with organic blue corn tortilla chips for dinner one night; I felt so virtuous! :D And I highly recommend that, if you like cilantro, you sprinkle a little on whatever you serve these beans with. It's one of the top 5 nutrient-dense foods on the PLANET, and it gives a great freshness to the taste. But whatever floats your boat! :)

OK, I'm outta here. Have a WONDERFUL week! Be BLESSED!!! (And be sure to come back Wednesday, for a Valentine's suggestion!)

Copycat: Cafe Rio's Chicken Tortilla Soup

It's FRIDAY! :) Are you ready for some weekend?!?!? :)

Today's recipe is for a copycat of a place I've never heard of, Cafe Rio. If you have one near you, what do you think of their food? Anyway. :D The website that brings you this recipe is the same as Wednesday's, Favorite Family Recipes - because that pico de gallo I reviewed Wednesday is in this soup!

This is one of the meals I made while my parents were visiting my sister. I don't think they'd like it much, but I may be wrong. Maybe it's just Dad who wouldn't like it. :D Because we did! It gets a YES, PLEASE! - except the leftovers, not so much.

This is an assembled soup, which made it nice because I could do prep work the day before - like making the pico, baking the chicken and freezing what I didn't want to use for another meal. And it's a healthy soup - lots of fresh vegetables, not too high in sodium, chicken.... It's pretty, too! :)

When I reheated the chicken to put into the soup bowls, I ladled in some broth - with all the spices, etc., in the broth, it gave the seasoning to the chicken I wanted. I added a little cumin to the chicken, too, but couldn't find any cayenne pepper in the grocery the day I went. That was the strangest thing...! And I didn't use any taco seasoning; Kenn doesn't like it, and I didn't want to buy a package that we weren't going to use all of it, anyway. :)

The tortilla strips absolutely made this soup. Well, for ME, anyway. :D I've never made them fresh before, and oooooooh, were they good just out of the oil and salted. :D I stored them in a paper bag, so it would absorb the extra oil and they would stay crispy.

This will probably be a soup I make when we have people over on the beach; I can get almost everything ready the day before, and keep the broth and beans in a crock pot while we're doing things on the beach. :) It's Kenn's idea of what food should be: fresh and flavorful.

And I'll make extra tortilla strips next time. ;)

OK, I'm outta here. Have a WONDERFUL day! Enjoy your weekend - and let me know if you try anything new!!