A New Enchilada!

Today, Mom, Kenzie and I ventured out to Wegman's. I have been once before, but with Mark and Jay (the two most ADHD people you could imagine).  They made me leave within 10 minutes of getting inside the super crowded place.  This time it was much different and mroe enjoyable!  It was still ridiculously crowded - Mom even got injured in an attempt to reach around a guy and get tomatoes and dragged her leg behind her like Frankenstein - but we had a lot of fun picking out the food for the recipes I have planned for the week, and grabbing random things we did not need at all.  I am pretty pumped about my triple-creme brie, Korean butter pears, and blood orange juice!

Anyway, like I said, this weekend, I have attempted to plan the week's meals ahead of time to minimize running to the grocery store every night.  I gave Kenzie the choice of what I should make tonight, and she chose honey lime enchiladas.  You may remember that back in February, I made enchiladas for Kenze's birthday, and they were a huge hit.  I wanted to try out a new recipe that I had seen on Pinterest.  I was intrigued by the honey-lime marinade, but also a little freaked out that the recipe called for a cup of heavy cream!  In addition, I needed a jar of green chile sauce.  While Wegman's appeared to have every other imaginable Mexican sauce, green chile was not one of them.  I am sure it was somewhere in that behemoth of a store, but I didn't find anything but a little can of chopped green chiles.  This had me quite worried, but determined.

Once we got home, I noticed that the recipe said to cook the chicken and shred it.  I am not the greatest cook, and am embarrassed to admit that my  mom had to explain that meant to boil it.  I was happy that by boiling the chicken, there was no need to touch raw, repulsive chicken breast or to hack out gross pieces.  Most of the yucky stuff melts in the water, and then I only had to shred it and be on the lookoout for weird things to toss to the dogs.... but probably everyone else on earth knows that already.  Then I made the marinade and let it sit while I thought about the lack of green chile sauce.  I ended up googling how to turn a can of green chiles into green chile sauce, and whipping that up while the chicken marinated.  I had 3 different people tell me that the kitchen smelled amazing while I was making it, so I am kind of glad that I made my own.  I think it made the enchiladas taste better. I would recommend making it if you try these, but double the recipe if you can; I didn't have enough chiles to do that, but I wished I had had more sauce to pour on top of the enchiladas.

When it was time to pour the remaining chile sauce on top of the enchiladas and add a cup of cream, I balked.  I poured the leftover sauce on top (there wasn't much left), and then used some of a can of green salsa, and maybe 2 tablespoons of the cream.  I just could not pour a cup of heavy cream onto any meal without feeling like a whale eating it.  The recipe also called for an entire pound of shredded cheese, and I can tell you that I did not use near that amount!  I'm trying to be slightly healthy, here!

The end result was something I was happy with.  Mom made some Mexican rice to go with it, and I ate my entire enchilada along with some rice.  So did Mom and Kenzie.  The enchiladas are a little sweet from the honey on the chicken, but you taste the lime, and my chile sauce was pretty damn good too!  Rachael didn't finish hers, and claimed something was spicy (I think it was the rice, because I hate spicy and nothing I put in was hot).  Nick hated it, and yet claimed to be "full" (this is something he says whenever he hates what I have cooked. He has never used the word "full" otherwise).  He fed more than half of his to the dogs.  Considering I had to make the chicken, the marinade, the chile sauce, and put the enchiladas together, this was not a quick recipe, so I was more than a little pissed. Kenzie says he hates sweet meat, so I am planning to retaliate tomorrow with this bizarre recipe I found for caramel apple pork chops!  Bwahahahah.  I may be evil, but I'm sensitive when it comes to my cooking!  I was sad that everyone wasn't a fan.  I realize now that I never even took pictures of the finished product, because when they came out of the oven, we were starving, and once we started eating, I was busy pouting and feeling bad for myself :)  Anyway: I would recommend these, with my little tweaks.  Definitely make your own green chile sauce, and try not to pour heavy cream all over the place :)

Recipes:
Honey lime enchiladas
Green chile sauce

Happy Birthday, Kenzie!

Today is Kenzie's 24th birthday, so I let her make requests for dinner and a cake.  She doesn't seem to have the best track record picking things lately - think "mutt muffins" - but hey, it's the birthday girl!  Hence, enchiladas and Oreo cake.

The first thing I tackled right after work was the triple layer Oreo cake.  Take it from me: do not make this cake.  Save yourself the time, and the pain and suffering.  The first step is to make the Oreo layer cake; that went fine, and lulled me into falce peace!  Then I made the 2 chocolate cakes, and somehow, they both exploded in the oven.  And I mean exploded; they poured out into the oven and made a huge mess (thanks to Mark for cleaning it!).  To make it worse, since so much overflowed, my cakes were deflated and ugly.  Hmph.  THEN I made the Oreo cream - and it was runny.  Then I made the chocolate frosting... and it was runny.  I added confectionary sugar until I got rid of all the flavors in both - and they were still runny.  Finally I gave up, schlepped it all together, and called it a day.  The birthday girl liked it, and so did most people who were here... everyone except for Mom, who announced, "Bad cake.  Not a good cake at all."  Rude!!!  I didn't have any myself, not liking cake and certainly hating this one in particular.  I wanted to just sulk about the disappointment of the Oreo cake, but there was no rest for the wicked!

I made chicken enchiladas, with assistance from Mark and Mom.  They came out great!  Everyone really liked them - I even had one and a half.  Nick didn't add barbecue sauce, and Kenzie didn't salt it!  That is always a huge compliment from those two.  The only things I changed about the recipe was not adding jalapenos, and I added a can of pinto beans to the sauce to give some more filling to the enchiladas.  Serve them with sour cream, and: delicioso!

P.S. Thanks to Mark for my new apron and chef hat, just in time for the Super Bowl on Sunday!

Recipes:
Triple Layer Oreo Cake
Enchiladas



Happy 24th Birthday!