Green chile enchiladas. This is a full circle meal. I made it with leftovers from the roast chicken I made the other day and the green chile sauce I made yesterday. I love when that happens.

This recipe is so easy to make that you could use a store bought rotisserie chicken or boil a chicken breast you may have on hand and shred it for the filling. Then you could also get a can of green chile enchilada sauce or try making a batch! It’s surprisingly simple and makes you feel like you know your shit. At least that’s how I felt.

So you will need just 4 ingredients:

Warm up your green chile sauce. Pour it in the baking dish and dip your tortilla in it to make it more pliable and therefore easier to roll. If your tortilla cracks don’t freak out. It won’t even show in the finished product and it will still taste great!

Now place the tortilla in the baking dish and put some cheese and chicken in the middle of the tortilla and roll it up.

Repeat till the baking dish is full. Pour on some more sauce and top with cheese.

You should put more cheese. We are trying to watch our dairy intake around here but please indulge for me. Please and Thank You.

Now bake this at 350F until bubbly and the cheese is melted. You could also broil this if you want a crustier top.

This was broiled for like 5 mins or so. I was watching it the whole time though, cuz it can go from golden to burnt pretty quick.

My hubby likes lettuce and olives on his enchiladas which I don’t understand. Let me know if anyone out there has ever heard of such a thing. I might add some green onions and cilantro to my lettuce next time. I didn’t have it with olives but I only took a pic of hubby’s plate so enjoy the olive-y-ness.

 He also likes a lot of lettuce. It’s more like an enchilada salad thing but it’s oh so good!

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Mmmm. Green chiles. I have mango in my DNA and chiles in my pores. I love chiles. I remember my first real experience with green chiles was when I went to New Mexico to visit my in-laws for X-mas a couple of years ago.  And they have something called “Christmas” where they put both green AND red chile sauce on your burrito. Imagine my excitement when I got Christmas on my burrito during Christmas-time! I was like a kid in a chile shop or candy store, not sure which. I remember the warm comforting green chile added to almost any food item like a light green baby blankie telling you everything will be alright. Memories.

As part of challenging myself on this blog I decided to make my own green chile sauce since I’ve been using the canned stuff thus far. It turned out great!! I’m gonna use it to make green chile chicken enchiladas tomorrow, with leftovers from the roast chicken I made the other day (full circle baby).

So this is what you need:

You don’t need an adorable husky and an underdeveloped carrot but aren’t they cute?! Huh?! Huh?? Side Note about the little silver square thing. It’s a bullion cube which I know has a lot of sodium but it tastes like home for me, so I use it. Any stock or broth would work here so use whatever you usually do.

First, you need to cut and deseed the chiles. Another side note, (I’m a little ADD today …. ok …. everyday) choose the chiles based on the heat level you want. Anaheim (what I used cuz hubby can’t handle spicy) is mild, Poblano is medium and the Pasilla chile is hotter. Chiles carry most of their heat in their seeds and white membrane so keep that in mind when you make the life-changing decision of whether or not to deseed your chiles. I deseeded. Because hubby.

Place your chiles cut-side down on a lined baking sheet (you’ll thank me later when you don’t have to wash that gunk off the pan) and broil.

Check it every now and then. You want the skins to look burnt black.

Mine could have actually burnt more around the edges. Maybe keeping them whole and rotating every few minutes is more effective (you can also roast chiles on an open flame on your stove) but I’m too lazy for either method.

Place the chiles in an air-tight container to allow them to steam.

Now heat some oil in a pan and roughly chop up 4 cloves of garlic (it’s really not that much in the grand scheme of things) and one onion.

Saute with cumin and S&P till golden brown.

Oh ya and now add your broth and let it simmer till the chiles are ready. Chiles need at least 15mins to steam. 

Then peel and dice chiles. Add them to the broth mixture and simmer for at least 5mins.

 Puree in blender or food processor and you have green chile sauce! Yay! Oh and don’t forget to taste and add S&P if it needs it. Enjoy!

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I have a confession to make. I used to use seasoning packets when I cooked. Ok, I know it’s not as dramatic as I made it sound. Still, I always felt like I was cheating when I did it. I mean don’t get me wrong, I’m not turning my nose up at it. I just wanna do things a bit more naturally nowadays and the packets I used to get were filled with additives and preservatives and yumminess. What does this have to do with shrimp fried rice you ask ?? Everything!

Hubby loves shrimp fried rice so I make it quite often and up until today I had always used a seasoning packet. Recently, my friend told me how she made shrimp fried rice without the packet and it turned out great. I had to recreate the yumminess without all the yuckiness. These are the substances I procured: 

You can click on the pic to see it bigger. If your finger is tired I’ll just tell you. Soy sauce, sesame oil, oyster sauce, Chinese five spice, ginger, garlic (which I forgot to include when I was setting this up, what? like you’re perfect?), green onions, egg and peas and carrots. Whew.

If you had to choose though I would omit the oyster sauce and the five spice. The sesame oil and soy sauce are essential, in my humble opinion. Also, I later found out that the whole shrimp stock process didn’t really add much flavor, so you can skip that part if you want to. I was just trying to inject as much flavor from all directions to soothe my seasoning packet withdrawals.

You’ll need a cup or rice and two cups water. I usually use a 1 to 2 ratio for rice. Unless I wanted it dryer, then I use like 1 to 1 1/2. Oh, and I loooove basmati rice. I use it no matter what. Except for risotto. That would be gross. I think. Rinse the rice till the water runs clear.

I almost forgot the main ingredient! Shrimp. These are shell-on jumbo wild caught shrimp from Sprouts. Yum.  

So you will need to devein then peel these. Unless you bought them already peeled and deveined.

Pull out and discard that black wormlike demon thing and try not to puke and pass out at the same time. Pull yourself together, put your gangsta face on cuz you just deveined a shrimp and rinse and peel the shrimp. Place the peel in a saucepan and marinate the shrimp in soy sauce. I hate bland shrimp in shrimp fried rice. If you don’t share my sentiments bro then skip the marination part.

Add water and simmer shells for 5-10mins. Press down on the the shells to get as much flavor out of them as you can while they simmer. Then strain out the shells and reserve the liquid. You just made shrimp stock!

Put two cups of the shrimp stock you just made (!) and one cup of rice in a pot. Bring to boil, stir, cover and reduce to simmer for 10mins. Then fluff with a fork.

Now you need to make your scrambled egg. Set that aside. If you don’t like eggs in your fried rice then you can skip this part too. It’s all about making it how you like it and don’t you forget it!

 Prep the veggies time! Cut up the green onions and grate the ginger and garlic.

Now cook your shrimp and veggies in the same hot pot.

Put the top on the pot and make the fried rice seasoning. This is what I used on my first attempt to replace the dreaded seasoning packet:

Mix a drizzle of sesame oil, a drop or two of oyster sauce and a little soy sauce into a bowl. Mix and taste. If it needs some saltiness, add soy sauce. If it needs savoriness (a.k.a. umami), add more sesame oil. Sprinkle a dash of the five spice for good measure. I added more sesame oil and soy sauce, incase you were wondering.

 By now your rice should be done. Add it to the shrimp and veggies, pour the sauce and stir. Add more of any sauce depending on what you feel it needs. Enjoy!

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I love roast chicken. I just wanna put that out there. Let it marinate and collect the juices. Isn’t she a beauty? I must say, nothing like a whole roast chicken to make you feel like you know your way around a kitchen. Except a roast turkey maybe. But is bigger always better? Hah! Loaded question.

Back to the chicken. This is my first time making a roast chicken so I did a little research (read: googled “roast chicken”) and came across this roast chicken tournament for best roast chicken recipe and ended up making a chicken that was a mixture of all the different recipes.

I don’t have a roasting rack or twine so I used veggies as a rack and this technique of trussing a chicken without twine. I roasted it at 425F for 1 hour and a half. Next time around I will try 1 hour and 15mins because the breasts could have been a bit more moist. I want to try different vegetables as well. This time I used onions, carrots and potatoes. I wonder what butternut squash and roast chicken would taste like?

This is what you need for this recipe:

My chicken was a little under 5 lbs. Adjust the time according the the size of your bird.

After tucking the chicken’s wings .. ew ew .. you need to season the inside of the chicken (Don’t forget to take out the little bag of evil inside them). If you don’t season the inside of your chicken it will be a fake chicken whose only seasoned on the outside but then inside she’s just an unseasoned bitch. You don’t want that. So season the inside of your chicken. Add salt and pepper liberally (not conservatively and not politically) and I put in some lemons but this is your chance to look into your soul (or your refrigerator) and use whatever combination you like.

After you oil the birdie sprinkle trusty rusty salt and pepper and whatever else you have in your spice cabinet. Today my mood was of the seasoned salt and paprika variety.

To truss or not to truss? That is the question. I forgot to get twine from the store so at first I decided not to truss. Then I decided I wouldn’t let a piece of string rule my life and found a way to truss without anything but the chicken itself (link to the video above, pics of me doing it below, choose wisely 😉 )

Repeat with the other side and you have trussed your chicken.

Pop that sucker in the oven at 425F for about an hour until the juice runs clear or a meat thermometer reads at least 165F (stick it in between the leg and the breast).

In the last 5-10 minutes of cooking I roasted some asparagus in the oven with a little olive oil and good ol’ S&P.

Bend the asparagus till it snaps naturally where it should. The bottom part is tough and the leafy top is nice and tender.

Once the chicken comes out let it chill out and rest for 10mins. It just got out of a hot ass oven so give it a minute to collect its juices and get tender before you cut into it.

Yum. The carrots burned. That’s why next time around I will reduce the time a little. A good judge of time and temp is using the late and great Julia Child’s method of cooking it found here.

Enjoy!! Let me know what veggies you would use! And subscribe to my blog by typing your email in the box below!! So exciting!! So many exclamation points!!

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Ok so it was really early in the morning and there wasn’t even any sunlight so this picture isn’t what I would have wanted it to be. Sowwy.

But on the bright side, I had a really tasty and super healthy smoothie. And you can too! It’s insanely easy. I could have made juice with my blender as well, I would just have to strain it through a sieve or some cheesecloth. Please refer back to the first sentence. Waaaay to early to break out the sieve. Jus sayin’.

Ok so you can use almost any combo of fruits and veggie that you like. (Side note: apples have lots of fiber so if you’re going to go the straining route you might wanna save yourself some unnecessary rage and anxiety and go easy on the apples). Here’s what I used:

Now the juice part is totally optional. If you wanna be hardcore about your shit then just add water. But I’m a pussy about my shit so I add mango juice. Btw it is a scientific fact that I have mango in my DNA. I looooooooove mango. Aaaaanyway. Here:

It’s really good! It tastes sweet because of all the fruits in there. You could add kale or many other types of fruits and veggies. Just go where the wind blows you. hehe … blows.

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Hey! How was your Valentine’s Day? I hope you enjoyed it whether you’re single or not. Hubby and I had an amazing crab dinner (check out the recipe by clicking riiiiiiiight here), and I had an idea. I wanted to make a Bellini Bar type of thing, where I have several different fruit purees to mix with Champs.

So first I got an assortment of frozen fruit. You can use fresh of course, I just happened to have frozen on hand.

Then I found myself in a fruity cycle of blending, straining and tasting.

 You may need to add liquid to the fruit, especially if they’re frozen, to help it blend. I added water to all of them except the strawberries, only because I happened to have some strawberry and kiwi juice on hand.

Strain the purees into cups. I made 4 purees: peach, mango, strawberry and blueberries mixed with blackberries.

It’s so easy to make and really fun for parties. Especially girl’s night! Ahhh I love girl’s night…

Pics!

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Ok, so my husband and I love this place called Joe’s Crab Shack. If you haven’t been, you should go. It’s not fancy at all … which you probably guessed when you read “Shack.” It basically has the decor of T.G.I.F. and Applebee’s, you know, where it looks like a tornado threw up on the walls. But the food is so yummy! We usually get the same thing every time. Yes, we are those people. No shame in our game 😉

So we usually get the Dungeness crab and we choose the BBQ seasoning. The bucket it comes in has fresh corn and boiled red potatoes. When we first met and we were super skinny, we would share a bucket. Recently we were in the car, on our way to the Crab Shack, and hubby was like “I want my own bucket.” Instantly I responded, “Me 2. I want my own bucket too.” And that was it. We are a two bucket household now.

As you can imagine, two buckets are not so cheap and after a while I decided that we should try to replicate it at home. It worked! After careful googling and maneuvering, I took what I liked from several recipes and made my own version. It’s super basic and hits the spot each time.

Ok so first you need crabs, the shellfish not the STD. We went to Ranch 99 and on the way there I was talking about all the amazing pics I would take of the fishtanks for my blog . And what happened as soon as I got there? Major ADD attack. I couldn’t control myself. I was all: “OMG a whole aisle just for sauces?!” .. “Ew what’s that?? What. Is. That.” .. “Ooooo yummy!” .. “Babe! The fish head is looking at me!!!” … You get the idea, what I’m trying to say is I forgot to take any pictures at the store.

But then we made it home!

They’re alive! Keep the crabs in a sink or container until you’re ready to boil/steam them. We boiled everything, the crab, corn and potatoes. You could steam everything or you could roast the potatoes in the oven to get a nice crispy outer shell. Whatever you like, this recipe is super flexible.

While everything is heating up, I made the spice rub. You will need these spices:

Ignore the candy canes still there from X-mas. Many thanks. Pour 3 tablespoons of oil in a small bowl.

Then add 3 teaspoons of salt (you can save this step till the end just so that you can choose your own level of saltiness, it’s a very personal thing). Add two *heaping* teaspoons of Old Bay, a heaping teaspoon of paprika, 1/2 teaspoon of garlic salt and pepper:

Mix it all together with a brush. This will be the sorcery with which you will baste your crustacean:

Boiling the crab is easy. Just put the live crab (I know I know) in boiling water (I used plain cuz my rub is so flavorful, but hubby’s mama suggested flavoring the water which I might try next time) and when they are pink and floating they are ready, about 15mins or so.

Boil the corn and potatoes until they are tender.

Once the crabs are done you will need to de-shell them. Here is a great instructional video:

How to De-Shell Dungeness Crab

Yay! This was a great V-day meal!! How did you spend your V-day??

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This recipe is so easy and really low in fat and calories. I used frozen catfish fillets (insert your judgement here). I try to get fresh fish but sometimes I get frozen, ok?! Sometimes I go to sleep with a sink full of dishes. Ok I do that everyday. I dunno how I got here … oh ya frozen fish. OK so if you use fish just cut the cooking time in half and check from then on.

You’ll need these things:

Preheat your oven to 425F. I heavily season my food, cuz I ain’t no chicken. Adjust to your taste and all that good shit.

After seasoning, add some pico de gallo, that’s the “salsa” part. Get it? Huh? Huh?

Bake for 10mins if fresh or 20mins if frozen. This is what it looks like after baking:

Slice up some lemons and squeeze as a finishing touch. No fat was used at all and look at all that juice!! OMG frozen might actually be better here because all that water creates moisture and science and shit.

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