10-5-11 Dinner Blog

Chicken Enchiladas (or Burritos) with Fruit and Cherry Tomatoes

Everything happens for a reason.

Some of neatest inventions have come about “by mistake”.  Take Mrs. Wakefield, for example, owner of the “Toll House Inn” in 1930, who substituted broken chocolate pieces for cocoas powder one day, thinking the chocolate would permeate the entire cookie.  It didn’t and Toll House Cookies were born.

Our mistake with Wednesday night’s meal doesn’t promise fame or riches, but it was a good one.  On Sunday when I was pre-prepping for the week, my husband wanted to help. This is a topic for a different day, but Busy Lives Healthy Eats has gotten the interest of everyone in the family and they all want to be involved!  Nice!  Anyway, knowing that it was easy and used a food processor, (machines are manly), I gave him the recipe for the chicken enchiladas and asked him to make the tomatillo salsa. (This is an optional part of the recipe – you can substitute salsa verde or any salsa if time and energy are in question.)

My husband busied himself with a few quick chops and quickly reported he was done.  I was surprised at how much salsa it made!  Wow!  All that from 10 tomatillos!  It took me a minute to figure out that the zucchini, onion, and corn, that was supposed to go in the enchilada whole, was now pulsed to a pulp in the salsa.  YIKES!  But my initial sense of alarm, was tempered by the fact that a) I was getting help in the kitchen; and b) This might be a chance to create my own Jessica Seinfeld recipe – lemonade from lemons!

Wednesday Night Dinner Prep

It was 4:30 and I had some time. I got out my ‘salsa’ and all the other ingredients for dinner.  First, I shredded 1.5 lbs of the chicken from Monday’s dinner and cut up 2 avocados.  Then I mixed 1.5 C grated cheese, 1.5 C ‘salsa’, 1.5 lbs. shredded chicken, and the 2 avocados in a large bowl, and scooped some of the mixture  into warmed whole wheat tortillas.

How to Fold a Burrito

And with a few minutes left until the chicken was done, I laid out plates, portioning some watermelon and few cherry tomatoes that are plentiful right now.

Baking the enchiladas *or burritos)

Once the chicken was done, I gave everyone one burrito, spooning some salsa on top.

The Verdict

The first bite, yielded some constructive criticism.  The kids thought it was good but bland.  I agreed and was very disappointed.  The original recipe called for 1 jalapeno.  Knowing my kids, that was not going to fly, so I left it out.  Bland was the result.  But fear not, my son had the answer!  “I think it needs mango”, he said.  As luck would have it, I had purchased a mango when I shopped on Sunday!  So. asking the kids to stop eating for a minute, I raced to cut and chop a mango, mixed it in with the salsa, and waited impatiently while everyone tasted their “new” meal.

“New and improved”!  My son and daughter both gave it a 9.5.  My husband who came home later and was immediately given the new and improved salsa gave it a 10!  The mistake of putting all the enchilada ingredients (except for the cheese and chicken) in a food processor was far from a mistake.  Rather than layering all the ingredients on the tortilla, I just put one scoop!  And because the zucchini was blended in, and it just looked like salsa, everyone ate it with smiles!  Thanks Jessica! Perhaps I should try broccoli in their next time!

The watermelon was sweet but the tomatoes were even sweeter!  They tasted like candy! – Really!  My son took some in his school lunch on Thursday!

And the pumpkin?  I totally forgot about it warming in the microwave.  Oh well, everyone was quite satisfied with their dinner – one burrito each and some fruit was more than enough.  Pumpkin is on the menu for Thursday night!