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.

Henry is 1

Our little Henry is a 1 year old.  He had a rough birthday morning, and it resulted in this somewhat emo birthday picture.

Want to see how he's grown over this year?  Check out this animated GIF:

Faces

Henry TODAY (Yes, I'm actually posting pictures the day they were taken, not a month after the fact. Shocking.)

The "I'm curious about that camera" face

 The "I'm just plain ol' cute" face

 The "playing patty-cake is obligatory" face

 The "I'm not really interested in you mom" face

 The "that camera will be mine!" face

(Eleven and a half months old)

Henry is 11 months old.

Why is it that we get sad as our babies get closer to one year? I'm sure it's not every mom, but I know I'm not alone in the wish for a time machine to go back or, at the very least, to freeze time. I've loved every new stage but I miss the newborn. And it's not that I want another newborn... I want Henry as a newborn. I've thought about it a lot lately, and maybe it's because he's so different from the baby I met eleven months ago. When you've known a grown-up for 11 months they are pretty much the same now as they were back then. But eleven months ago I met a tiny newborn baby and fell in love with him right away. I have loved the three month old, the eight month old, and so on, but that little baby is so completely different now (an improvement, in many ways) and the time I had with the baby I first met was too fleeting. 

Okay. That was silly. Here's what Henry is up to as an eleven month old:

- Henry finally got his first tooth. Then his second, third, and fourth. There is a big ol' gap between his upper teeth and it's really cute (that's what I try to tell myself. And what I'll tell him if the gap remains).

- He says ball and duck. Or maybe it's dog or truck. Basically, "dut" means whatever he's looking at that's making him excited.

- No new motor milestones since last month, just continues to be even more steady standing, walking along furniture, or walking behind something he's pushing. He really enjoys sliding toys along the wood floor. This started with little toy cars - crawling while "driving" the car in his hand. But he'll use anything - a piece of mail, remote control, sock - whatever he can slide.

- Henry loves dogs and has had a couple recent opportunities to play with and crawl around them. He is so completely comfortable with them, having no problem with them being close to him or even licking his face.

- He had a cold last month, his worst time being sick yet. He slept okay and his mood was still pretty cheery, though. His appetite was adversely affected and still seems less than it used to be. He gets mad at us if we try to get him to eat more than he wants, which isn't much.

- Henry's interest in what's inside our cupboards has increased, which is aggravating. We haven't added any child-locks to cupboards because we're renting and don't want to add any permanent fixtures to the cupboard doors if we don't have to. But we might have to. His favorite cupboards/drawers contain the recycling bin, the skillets and the plastic wrap. Long gone are the days when he could barely reach the drawer with the harmless dish towels inside.

Those are a handful of the new things about Henry this month. Next month... a one year old!

How Henry does Sunday mornings

In our previous post I showed pictures of Henry's morning - but that was just up until he got out of bed. Here is the rest of Henry's morning...

After leaving the bedroom he played in the living room with his toy "car." We're borrowing this from our friends and he. loves. it. He thinks he's pretty cool as he walks behind the car, stopping every once in a while to service his vehicle - checking the tires, etc. Since practicing with the car, he also likes to push chairs around the wood floor, his stroller around stores, etc. Give him something he can push, and he's happy.

I just love seeing his little legs working so hard.

Soon he was on to some other toys.

 

His interest and focus is so fun to witness.

Time for breakfast. Some classic Henry faces.

And bath. Who doesn't love a wet, naked baby!?

Oh-so sweet.

And now Baby is ready for church (well, ready for a nap. We wake him right before leaving for church.).

But not before checking on the birds outside the window.

Playing in the morning.

We spend a long time in the morning in our bed. Rob brings Henry into our bed when he wakes up sometime between 5-6:30. He nurses and usually falls back asleep, then we all wake up together around 7am. Then, we just hang out there in bed. This started when Henry was spitting up a lot after I'd nurse him, so I'd want to keep him on my lap rather than be moving around and spitting up over everything. But now, it's just fun for us to hang out and play in bed. 

These pictures are from a lazy Sunday morning when we played some ball with Henry in our bed for a while. He's just so fun and cute that I had to share/document. These pictures are a month old and I feel like Baby has already changed so much!

Henry is 10 months old

Ten months old! It feels like he just turned 9 months old last week! It's difficult to think of some things that are different since then... but here are some:

- Henry gives kisses. Mostly to mom and sometimes to Dad (when his beard isn't too scratchy). 

- Henry is very stable when standing against objects and rarely falls down. He gets up on his knees now and has begun to walk behind a toy that he's pushing (which he seems to be pretty proud of) and walk along furniture. Wow - I just read the post from month 9 and was reminded that he was still scooting then! Over the last month he has scooted less and crawled more every week until now - he's crawling 100% of the time. And he's really good at it. What is "good?" Well, I don't know, but he's super fast and looks like he's been crawling forever!

- Nap duration has gone back up! 1.5 hours is the average. So nice for mom!

- Favorite activity is pulling items out of boxes or baskets. I love it. When I'm working on dinner I give him a box of wrapped granola bars to take out one-by-one and play with. When I'm getting ready in the morning I give him my basket of scarves to pull out and play with. He can sit and play with his dirty laundry (hmm. that sounds bad) for ten minutes.

- It's becoming apparent that he has some receptive (understanding) language. He knows "give me a kiss" and maybe even distinguishes between giving mom/dad a kiss. He knows to look for something when you start with "where?" Especially, "Where's daddy?" He might know "dog" and "drink." - it's my speech pathology background that doesn't let me believe he knows something until it's pretty obvious (80% occurrence rate for mastery... SLP joke). No expressive language - occasionally he'll mimic the tones of something we say and inconsistently clicks his tongue when he wants a drink (we know his meaning for various grunts, groans and squawks, but that hardly counts as expressive language).

-  Henry has become a little wary of water. He fell at the pool when we went swimming a couple of weeks ago and didn't want to get in the water after that (we're assuming the fall and the apprehension about the water are connected). We went swimming again last week and he took a while to get used to it. He has been the same with his bath. We want to balance ignoring his apprehension along with not pressuring him and hope that this little fear goes away in the next couple of months (we're going back to Hawaii at the end of the summer where we'll want to be in the pool or ocean all day long!).

- He is becoming quite the handful at church! Sitting in a worship service for an hour and 15 minutes every Sunday is hardly age-appropriate, but he seems like an extra wiggly baby. It doesn't give us any comfort for an 11 hour flight we have coming up in a few months!

- Henry's cousin, Xander, used to get in all the trouble for roughhousing with Henry, but we've begun to see that Henry usually has just as much to blame for being knocked over or pushed away. He's often taking toys away from Xander, stealing his water cup, or just plain bugging him.

- Still no teeth!