Beef Enchiladas

I'd been craving enchiladas for quite some time. I made enchiladas once last summer and for some reason they completely stressed me out. I think I made them the complicated way. Oh, and the rice I made with them was crunchy... which ruined everything! You have to do everything twice, so I made them again last night. The easy way. Word from the wise: Don't take the road less traveled. Trust me.



Here's what you'll need. 1 lb. ground beef, about 1-2 cups of cheddar cheese, 1 can of enchilada sauce (you can make the packet stuff if you want), 1 onion, corn torillas, and however much green chili you want.



Cook your beef with your onion and drain. Add your green chili and let it simmer for a few minutes. Gotta let those flavors mix. MMMmmm.



Let's talk about corn tortillas. They are nothing like flour (duh) and must have special treatment. I didn't realize this until I put my beef mixture in and when I tried to roll it up, it split in half like a crappy hot dog bun. So, being the amateur cook I am, I googled how to fix that little problem. The easiest way to keep the tortillas from splitting is to heat them in a pan for about 25 seconds on each side on medium heat.



Then, add your beef mixture. Sprinkle a little cheddar cheese on the inside as well.



Roll them up and seam down, place them in a 9X13 pan. Before you put any tortillas in it, pour half of your enchilada sauce in the bottom. You might notice that some of mine look fried. That's because they are. One suggestion was to fry your tortilla for a short period of time in oil. It worked fine, but simply heating them up worked just as well.



Pour the rest of your enchilada sauce and add however much cheddar cheese you want.


Cover with foil and bake for about 15-20 minutes at 350. You just need to bake them long enough for the cheese to melt. Ole'! --I don't know ANY Spanish (I took French) so excuse my lack of correct words to describe something delicious.

The Guilty Post

Here it is. . the confession. Amy and I haven't been doing much cooking this week. :X I know, it's unforgivable. Actually, we had salmon two nights ago, but we've already posted about that. Amy's grandpa died, so she's in Wisconsin right now. And me. . well I'm having frozen pizza for dinner tonight. On Saturday night we went to see Eli Young Band (one of our favorite Texas country music bands.) Not about cooking, but might as well post something!

Easy Chili

Here's another wonderful crock pot recipe. Amy, Chelsea (our 3rd roommate. . there are four of us total) and I divided up the ingredients and put it together one morning before class. We like to cook together, so dividing up the ingredients makes it less expensive for everyone. Goes great with Jiffy cornbread muffins!

Here are the ingredients (you also need about 5 cloves of fresh garlic and one lb. of ground beef.) A great thing about chili is that you can put anything you want in it. OK. . not anything. Maybe I'm wrong, but neither Lucky Charms nor watermelon sounds good in chili.

Cook your ground beef in a skillet, drain it, dice your onion and pepper, whip out your can opener and dump all your cans in. Don't forget to add an entire jar of spaghetti sauce, or a little less if you want it less saucy. Is dump a bad word when talking about food? Warning: bananas were not part of this meal.
Two things:
1. We used rotel tomatos with green chili to make it spicy. If you want to use regular canned diced tomatos, be my guest. We're from Texas and like it hot.
2. I'm a rookie crock pot user and my mother introduced me to crock pot liners. BEST THING EVER INVENTED I TELL YOU! They make clean up so much faster.

We put our crock pot on high for six hours. You can decide how you want to do it depending on how much time you have.

This recipe would also work great on the stovetop, if you don't own a slow cooker. Just do everything the same and cook it in a pot.