Enchiladas, A REALLY GOOD SALAD RECOMMENDATION, and my son's concoction

My son must be a food blogger in the making.  On our last night of the soup last week, he turned it into his own "creation", and wanted me to write down the recipe and take a picture.  So here it is, in all of its glory:

I can't find the recipe card, but it's basically the last of the soup, a cracker, and a piece of cornbread with honey all mixed together.   Yummy huh?  Well, he liked it.

Yesterday I had a great girls' lunch with my buddy Maryanne.  We used to chat all of the time in the morning at work, and now...well, I quit that company 3.5 years ago, and she quit last year to stay at home with her 1.5 year old.  And now we never see each other.  It's terrible.  But on a positive note, our lives are so lame on the weekend that she can call me at 11:15 on a Saturday and we can go to lunch at noon. Yay!

Our "place" is CPK (California Pizza Kitchen).  She always orders the broccoli sun-dried tomato fusilli.  I could order for her.  I change each time, and this time I was feeling salad (about 75% of the time, I am feeling salad).  Eliminating deli meats and soft cheeses narrows down the choices for me easily.  The base salad (Roasted Vegetable Salad) I had, I believe, was vegan (I can't speak for the dressing), but I added shrimp.  It's "new" on the menu and is a roasted vegetable salad.  It's a dijon vinaigrette over romaine, and warm roasted veggies - asparagus, corn, peppers, eggplant, artichokes, sun-dried tomatoes.  And avocado on top.  Delish! (and left room for dessert).  I just love it when I can eat out and fill up on many cups of vegetables.

Last night I made enchiladas for dinner.  I think the best enchiladas are made from leftover bits and pieces.  These were quite tasty and ... different ... because I used the easter ham, with potato, pinto beans, onions, hot peppers, and corn.  Served with our world famous kale chips!

I think I may try vegan enchiladas next time with potatoes, beans, and kale.  I still have that vegan cheese I bought accidentally. Should use it.  I should check to see when it expires.

Beans!

So, last week I opted to use $5 of my $50/week budget to buy a 10lb bag of pinto beans. What a GREAT way to stick to the budget!

And this week, I blew it. $110 and counting. I knew it would happen someday...that there would be a day when I ran out of a bunch of things at once. And a day when I just got tired of the mental mathematics required to stuff all these items that I WANT into $50. But still, I did pretty good while it lasted, and I'm still going to pay cash for my groceries and try to stick to $50 starting next week.

Last night was bean night! How do you "dress up" beans so you don't feel deprived. Frankly, I LOVE beans, so that's not necessary for me. But the answer is "tacos!" with homemade corn tortillas. Homemade tortillas are so delicious, so awesome, and so easy. But a little time consuming.

I'm sorry that I have no new pictures. We were so hungry that we sat down and mowed through 13 of the 16 tortillas that I made in about 30 minutes. But here's an old picture of the last time I made homemade tortillas.

Sadly, as I was preparing peppers and onions, I realized the problem with a week where I don't cook for 2 nights in a row: a moldy onion and a half moldy bell pepper. Ah well, they go into the compost. I salvaged half of the bell pepper anyway.

Bean ingredients:

1 lb pinto beans, soaked: $0.53
1 bunch limp chard, washed, boiled 5 min: $1.50
to taste: dry onion flakes, garlic powder, salt, cumin, chili powder: 0.25

Drain and rinse soaked pintos. Cover with water. Cook pintos (I use a pressure cooker). Feel proud that you've cooked so many beans in the cooker now, that you don't need to get out your measuring cup for water.

Leave the beans in the pot when they are done and add spices and simmer.

In the meantime, chop the boiled chard and add it to the beans with the spices.

Peppers, onions, beef:
1 Tbsp canola oil: 0.03
1 onion: $0.25
1/2 red bell: $0.40
Plus lost to moldiness: $0.65
1/2 lb beef: 2.50

Saute onions and peppers until soft (I usually start them covered on low and finish on medium to med-high), then add the pre-cooked frozen beef. I used 1/2 lb of grass fed beef.

Tortillas:
Buy masa. Follow instructions on the bag. It was probably $0.50 to 0.80 for 16 tortillas.

Toppings:
whatever you like. We used store-bought guacamole (haven't made it to the farmer's market for avos), sour cream, salsa, shredded cheese. But also good with cabbage, onion, cilantro, lime...
$2.53


Total: $9.19. There's a bunch of beans left and three tortillas.

Pork Carnitas and Fresh Tortillas

So, my neighbors had a BBQ for their daughter's 2nd birthday a few weeks ago. With fresh tortillas. I love fresh tortillas. So much so that I went out and bought a tortilla press. On occasion, we've looked for them at the thrift store. No such luck. And we bought the tortilla press at Sur La Table. So it wasn't terribly cheap.

On my Fridays, which is temporarily a day off for me, and a day when my son is still in school (didn't make sense to drop a day when it's temporary, and Friday has both pizza and Naitza, who is a little girl he kinda has a crush on. Did I mention he's FOUR??) - I try to make something that is a bit more labor intensive but also will last a long time.

This week, I'd planned to test drive the new tortilla press. My spouse and I made homemade corn tortillas years ago, using two plates and all our strength, without the benefit of leverage that you get from a press. I'd also planned on making black bean fejoida to stuff them with.

Then, I went on my grocery run. And I found pork shoulder (all natural, no hormones, not confined to cages) at Whole Foods. So I bought two pounds. When I got home, I used google as my friend and found this recipe for pork carnitas in the crockpot.

I adjusted it, of course. Because I used the recipe and my recipe for black bean fejoida and combined them. It was easy and DELICIOUS.

And the fresh tortillas....who knew they were so easy? I mean, a couple minutes to mix, then you roll into balls, then you flatten and cook. And they reheat well too. Except one note: even the plastic spatulas that are supposely rated to 500F will not likely survive a really hot cast iron pan. I got to experience how to scrub and reseason a cast iron pan.

This made quite a bit of filling. We had it for dinner Friday, lunch Saturday, dinner Sunday, lunch Monday, and will be lunch Tuesday.

Pork Carnitas
2 lb pork shoulder: $5.98
1 onion, chopped in food processor: 0.33
1 can diced tomatoes, pureed in food processor: 0.62
1/2 can tomatoes and chiles, pureed: 0.62
1 T. chili powder: 0.10
1 T. cumin: 0.10
1 T. cocoa: 0.10
5 piece green garlic, chopped in food processor: 1.00 (you can use a few cloves regular garlic, I had the green from the farm)
4 c. cooked black beans: 0.75 (especially cheap when you cook from dried and put in the freezer for later)

Total: $9.60 for about 10 cups, or $0.96 per cup. The amount that goes into one small tortilla is about $0.20.

Corn tortillas: makes 16
2 c. masa: $0.41 (at $2.99/5 lb)
1/4 tsp salt
water
2.6 cents each


Sauteed greens: $0.18
chard from the garden (I think this is still last year's chard) and beet greens: $0
1/2 sauteed onion: 0.15
1 Tbsp canola oil: 0.03


All in all, here was our dinner:
8 tortillas: 0.20
8 servings carnitas: 1.60
shredded cheese: 0.31
1/2 batch cooked greens: 0.09
sour cream for garnish: 0.25
1/2 pt. strawberries: 1.50
tortilla chips: 0.50
Total for 3: $4.45

I apologize for the washed out photo. It happens.

Edited to add: I cooked the pork in the crockpot on high for 5 hours. That's where the "easy" part came in. And I added the black beans for the last hour only, because mine were still frozen. Once the meat was fully cooked, I micro'd the beans and tossed them in.