Showing posts with label recipes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recipes. Show all posts

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Homemade Enchilada Sauce

I spend most of my day in the kitchen. That's due to both necessity and preference. In fact, I have a spot that I stand at in my kitchen that could be considered my perch, or maybe even my throne. It's where I lean over my laptop to find and refer to recipes, it's where most of the prep occurs, it's where (unfortunately) I eat most of meals from, and it's where my baby probably goes to first when he's trying to find me.

What I'm saying is: it's about time I post a recipe since finding and using recipes is pretty much my favorite thing to do (it really is a good thing that I enjoy this and other kitchen duties as much as I do).

At the end of this month -I can't believe it's finally June- Rob, Henry and I are flying to Switzerland to spend time with my sister and her husband who live there. One thing on our trip itinerary is to help Monica broaden her recipe repertoire by cooking some of our favorite meals while we're there and teaching her a few cooking tips in the process. The problem she's had and that we'll face is that Switzerland, of course, doesn't have all the food prepared and ready in the way that has become convenient for us American sisters.

Enter the need for homemade enchilada sauce.

I've been on a big enchilada kick lately and thought it was a good meal to share with Monica because it just contains some basic and easy elements (sauce on the bottom, sauce on the top, usually - but not always- cheese, and tortillas filled with.... anything) that she can have fun with. Yes, fun.

I've been testing out the recipes I'm going to make with her - even though I've made them many times. Just so they are super fresh in my mind when we go grocery shopping in Germany (cool!) and finally see what food they have, I'll know better what can be substituted, etc. Today I tested out some homemade enchilada sauce and it was a hit! Actually, we're having it tonight so I don't know that the other eaters will agree for sure. Regardless, I think it tasted much better than canned sauce, which I use but have never even liked very much, and it was so quick and easy to make. I'm just incredibly stoked to find a cheaper, easier, tastier, (slightly) fresher, and less sodium-er alternative to what I had been using before.

I combined a couple recipes (this and this, which are pretty much the same recipe) along with a couple suggestions from the comments on the blogs where I found the recipes. Comments are the most useful aspect of getting recipes off cooking blogs, IMO. Oh, and sorry, no pictures. I love online recipes with pictures, but you don't need them for this recipe anyway.

You know how when you read a blog post on a cooking blog and you're like, "enough talking, get to the recipe already!" Well, here's where I quit talking and get to the recipe already:

Homemade Enchilada Sauce

2-3 Tbl. chili powder
1 tsp. cumin
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/4 tsp. cinnamon (optional - I like the slight "mole-like" taste the cinnamon adds)
2 Tbl. flour (in case you're wondering, one of my reference recipes said substituting with a GF flour is okay)
1/2 tsp salt (you can wait and add at the end in order to add salt to taste)
1 8 oz can tomato sauce
1 1/2 cups chicken broth*
1 Tbl. of fresh or frozen cilantro (optional. I keep little cubes of Trader Joes frozen cilantro for occasions such as this!)

Combine dry ingredients in a small bowl (or not, but it can save time for prep). Pour tomato sauce, chicken broth into a small/medium sauce pan on medium heat. Add dry ingredients. Bring to a boil then reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until the sauce is as thick as you'd like. You can add more chicken broth or water to thin the sauce more. Add fresh or frozen cilantro as the sauce is simmering. Makes about 1 1/2 cups of sauce.

 *chicken broth: Monica also doesn't have canned chicken broth, a problem we've discussed before, so for a while now I've been attempting my own non-canned chicken broth in an attempt to save some money. I've made my own using the carcass (such a great word) of a rotisserie chicken - EASY! But even easier to make and store is this stuff I found at Costco for cheap. As in, cheaper than a jar of the same stuff that's half it's size at a regular grocery store (Costco sells it for abt. the same price as the Amazon link). It's just like any other broth/bouillon/granules - mix a tsp with boiling water to make a cup of broth. This jar makes 76 cups! That's like, a third of the price of canned broth. IF I buy that canned broth on sale. I am tempted to show you the math, but I'll assume that you're trusting me.

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Tuesday, August 2, 2011

August menu

I just posted about July's menu - and since I have August's menu ready, I thought I'd go ahead and do that one too! Of course, it's tentative - there's usually a couple meals I never end up getting to (especially this month since we're going to Hawaii for 10 days!!)- but what do you care?! A lot of these recipes will be new for me, or yet to be located (anyone have a good slow-cooker carnitas recipe?). So, sorry about that.

I should say one more thing: I'm a Weight Watcher. However, not a very good one as far as dinners are concerned. I try to choose meals with healthy ingredients in general. I'm also always cutting down on the amount of cheese and oil in the recipe and swapping other ingredients. I figured out the "points plus" for a couple of my favorite meals from last month (pad thai and honey-lime enchiladas) and, oh boy! Next time I make those I'll either have to plan the rest of my points around them, make them healthier, or just eat a smaller serving!).
*My goal for the month was to create a menu without much oven time - with the weather heating up (a little).
    I'm experimenting with ways to store and organize recipes I find online. I definitely use recipes I find online all the time (as evidenced by this and the previous post). I don't want to always be printing out recipes to store. Instead, I just put the laptop on the counter and work from there. I tried Pinterest for about a month and although it's a cool idea, it won't serve all my needs. Right now I'm testing out Evernote. At school we use OneNote, which would be perfect, but I don't have a copy at home and can't use my school account at home because I have a Mac here. Evernote seems to be the closest to it (plus, it's free).
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    July's menu

    My menu planning is very simple. I don't like to assign meals to specific days because I want to be able to be more flexible than that. For many reasons. Last month's main reason I needed flexibility was because of the poor weather - just didn't feel like making the grilled meal when it was raining outside (yep, it rained all throughout July, with very few exceptions).

    So, instead, I make a list of meals and just cross them off as I make them. This allows me to still grocery shop for the month and avoid major what-are-we-going-to-eat-tonight dilemmas. Another thing I started this month was to put an * next to the meals that had produce that would soon go bad, and I ate those meals first.

    One last feature of my menus - I only plan about 14-16 meals. With family dinners, date nights, church functions, etc., we don't eat at home every night of the week. Other nights I just pull something out of the pantry rather than have a predetermined meal from the list.

    Okay - here are the meals from last month with links to the recipes for those that have them. I recommend all the recipes, unless I note otherwise (I mainly use two cooking blogs - Jamie Cooks It Up, introduced to me by Kendra and Mel's Kitchen Cafe, introduced to me by Alicia. My mother-in-law just gave me the Our Best Bites cookbook, so next month's menu has a ton from their site).
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