Food Storage Friday: Chile Verde Burritos

 Whenever I have made chile verde sauce my family pretty much inhales it. Here's the secret to my awesome chile verde sauce: I throw in a bunch of stuff until it looks and tastes right and call it good. The recipe below is what I did most recently, but I can't guarantee that it will turn out the same next time. Peppers have a tendency to vary in flavor and hotness. You can't look at a pepper and know how potent it is going to be. If I mix everything together and it's too bland I throw in a dash of green Tabasco or sprinkle in some red pepper flakes. If it needs to be toned down a notch, I'll finely chop up 1/2 a bell pepper and add that to the sauce. May the force be with you in your endeavors.

Chile Verde Burritos
Food Storage Ingredients:
Re-fried beans
Canned pork (optional)

Fresh Ingredients:
tortillas
grated cheese (I've used cheddar, colby, monterey, pepper jack, and mozzarella, all with great results.)
sour cream
1-2 cloves of garlic, peeled
4 Anaheim peppers
3 banana peppers
4 jalapeno peppers
8 tomatillos
4 green onions, chopped

1. Remove pepper stems, leave the seeds. Remove and save tomatillo husks. Cut tomatillos in half, hamburger style. 2. Roast peppers, garlic and tomatillos until well blistered. (Generally 45 minutes @ 375. I did mine in my sun oven, and it took an hour and a half before I was satisfied with their appearance, but it's cooking times will widely vary.) 3. Puree tomatillo husks and roasted vegetables. 4. Simmer pureed pepper mixture with green onions on low for 15-20 minutes or until desired thickness. Add pork if desired. 5. Assemble burritos as desired. (Whenever I make these I like to make extras and freeze them.)

I like my green sauce to be nice and thick.

Notes: I have found that the best re-fried beans come from the LDS Church canneries; they are so delicious. (Don't worry you don't have to be LDS to buy food storage there. They love to encourage everyone to be prepared.) I also love that they are not actually re-fried and are completely fat free, unlike real re-fried beans which are made with lard. (Bleh.) I have heard people complain that they are bland, but it is all in how you cook them. According to the instructions you mix the dried bean flakes in boiling water and let them set. Before I let them set I mix in a pepper. Either a dried and crumbled Chipotle pepper, a chopped Anaheim or whatever other spicy pepper I have convenient. After the beans have absorbed the water, add a heaping teaspoon of sour cream and a sprinkling of cheddar cheese. Mix it all together and it makes great burritos, improves 7 layer dip, makes an easy Mexican food side or stand alone bean dip.

When I say Anaheims I mean these beauties

 And as for Anaheims, some stores refer to them as Anaheims, others as Cubanos. I'm not sure why. And when I planted Anaheims in my garden, none of the plants I could find had pictures that looked anything like the Anaheim peppers that I am familiar with. And the peppers that grew were small and red.

Food Storage Friday: Pepper Steak

After reading I Dare You To Eat It: Designing Food Storage You Would Actually Want To Eat by Liesa Card, (who btw is awesome, really she's my hero) I was inspired to make my own book of food storage recipes, which I would share with the internet in a free download form, to encourage anyone who needs ideas on making their food storage work for them. I've started this project almost a year ago, but between work, vacations and just life in general, it hasn't happened yet. The solution: Food Storage Friday. Every Friday I will post a new food storage recipe with a picture and any hints that I found helpful. When I have forty successful recipes, I'll compile them into one document for your easy downloading pleasure.  (Because what good is a food storage recipe if  no one is willing to eat it?) Plus this way you can see pictures for each one.

Food storage is more than just storing grains. You have to know what to do with it. You have to incorporate it into your diet on a fairly regular basis, so if/when you have to use it, it's not a shock to your system. You have to have a repertoire of recipes that you can easily refer to and use often so that you can rotate through it. If you can do these things eating food storage can improve your diet, save you time and dramatically decrease the amount you are spending on groceries.

On a recent trip to the grocery store I noticed that there was an amazing deal on both steaks and bell peppers, which inspired me to make this meal for dinner. The recipe I found and modified said that it serves 4. Is that four Sumo wrestlers? I got more like 8-10 servings out of this recipe and I didn't change it that much.

Pepper Steak Stir-fry and Rice
Food Storage Ingredients
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 Tablespoon cornstarch
1 (14.5 oz) can diced tomatoes, drained
1 (4 oz) can of sliced mushrooms, drained
1 (8 oz) can of sliced water chestnuts, drained (optional)

1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 catchup
1/2 cup water
4 cups of prepared rice (I prefer brown)

Fresh Ingredients
1 lb steak, sliced into 1/4" strips
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
2 large bell peppers, diced (I used red & yellow)
1 cup green onion, sliced

Combine soy sauce, garlic, and ginger. Add beef. Mix and set aside while preparing vegetables. Heat oil in large frying pan or wok. Add beef and stir-fry over high heat until browned. Turn heat up and add  fresh vegetables. Cook until vegetables are tender crisp, about 10 minutes. Mix cornstarch with water. Add to pan; stir and cook until thickened. Add tomatoes & catchup and heat through.

Because this recipe yields such a large quantity, I froze half of it.

Here we are, frozen & reheated, still good, although the yellow peppers look less appealing.

Here are a few other successful food storage recipes that I have already done:
Fat Free Pumpkin Apple Muffins
BBQ Chicken and Wheat Salad
Beef and Bean Burritos
BBQ Baked Beans
Mac and Cheese with Cauliflower

Buffalo Chicken Calzones Inspired by Erin's Food Files

I've been following Erin's Food Files for several months now. She makes a lot of things that look delicious, but until last week I hadn't actually made any of her recipes. (Sorry, Erin some of your recipes just seem a little more involved than I generally have time/patience for. Like the Red Velvet Cheesecake. Looks amazing, but not something I'll likely try soon.) I tried four with some successes, and I'm certain that I'll try a few more. I love that she uses whole wheat flour in so many of her recipes.

I saw the Buffalo Chicken Calzones and was certain that it would be a winner. However, I made two major changes. I decreased the hot pepper sauce by more than half and I added vegetables because I thought I could get away with it. As it turns out I was correct. It was still plenty hot and you can't taste the veggies. My husband said "I suspect there are several yummy things in here, but the only thing I can taste is Tabasco." So when I make this again I think I will sneak in even more veggies and decrease the pepper sauce. Also when I was sauteing the chicken I decreased the butter by 2/3rds. It still tasted great. To scope out the original (her pictures are better) and more of Erin's great culinary creations go here.

Buffalo Chicken Calzones

1 lb pizza dough (I used a whole wheat recipe from Skinny Bovine's Kitchen that is very good.)
1 lb boneless skinless chicken breasts, diced
1/4 cup hot pepper sauce
1 Tablespoon butter
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1/3 cup shredded pepper jack cheese
1 cup pizza sauce (I have recently found that I love Classico's spicy tomato & basil pasta sauce)
1/3 cup finely chopped baby spinach
2 Tablespoons cauliflower puree

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. 2. Cook chicken in oil and butter until no longer pink. Add pepper sauce and simmer for 10 minutes. 3. Meanwhile, mix pizza sauce and vegetables and roll out pizza dough into two flat circles. 4. When chicken is done assemble calzones. Put half of sauce, cheese and chicken on one side of each dough circle. Fold the other half over and press edges to seal. 5. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until dough is golden brown. This makes two very large calzones. Each serves at least two, and they freeze well.

She served hers with a bleu cheese dip. I was lazy and just used Litehouse Chunky Bleu Cheese dressing. But I'm sure her bleu cheese dip is great.

In the past week I also made her Oatmeal Wheat Bread. It was a big hit. My daughter decided that it should be named "Family Bread". We also made her Homemade Graham Crackers. They were ok, but didn't look anything like hers. She served hers with ice cream. I don't think mine could take that, they're too crumbly. I think they will turn into a crust for strawberry pie. I'm not sure what I did wrong there. I also tried her Beer Bread, but without the beer. I used root beer instead of pumpkin ale. It was ok, not as fantastic as I was hoping, but I will take all the credit for that failure. I've done beer bread with Sprite before, I'll have to try her recipe again that way.

BBQ Baked Beans

So last month when I did the pantry challenge, I discovered that I had a lot of canned pork in my pantry, and I wasn't really sure what to do with it. And I didn't ever do anything with it because the one thing I thought of required beans, which I discovered I was out of.  (Somehow I had never purchased dry beans before last week.) So now that we are doing regular grocery shopping again I thought I would give it a shot. When I was growing up, I remember my mom making these great BBQ beans with bacon and pineapple. I thought I could switch the can of pork for the bacon. So I called my mom for the recipe. She said "I don't know, just throw in some beans, some pineapple and whatever." Thanks, Mom for your detailed assistance. (I love you Mom!)
"Beans are high in fiber, low in fat". (The first person who can name what cartoon character sings that line gets a prize.) Beans also have protein, calcium, iron, folic acid, and phytochemicals. Plus they're cheap. Something I should probably incorporate into my diet more often. So here's my very first attempt at making BBQ beans, and I was actually rather pleased with the results, much better than I expected. Not as amazing as I remember my mom's being, but I liked them, and they were very easy to make. They do however, require a little prep beforehand. You can also easily make this vegetarian by omitting the pork/bacon.

BBQ Baked Beans
1 lb of dry beans-cooked and drained* (See below)
1/4 cup of dried onion
1/4 cup of brown sugar
1 cup BBQ sauce (the better your sauce, the better your beans)
1 can (15 oz) diced tomatoes, drained
1 can (21 oz) pineapple chunks, drained
1 can (14 oz) canned pork chunks, drained or 1 lb of sliced bacon, cooked and crumbled
2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp dry mustard
Mix all ingredients in crock pot. Cover and cook on low for 2-4 hours, or until beans are tender. Leftovers freeze well.

Cooked Beans
The secret to cooking beans so that they won't give you horrendous gas is to change the water and cook them long and slow. (Also eating beans on a regular basis decreases their ill-effects on the body.) I soaked mine overnight, then drained the water. Then I put them in the crockpot, covered them with three inches of water and cooked them on low for 8 hours. Then I drained and rinsed them again before adding them to the recipe above. This time I used a pound of red beans, but you could just as easily use white, pink, kidney or pinto.

The Verdict: My husband and I really liked them, and I now I have found something else I can do with canned pork chunks that my kids won't eat. We love variety.

Beef and Bean Burritos

These are so easy and a big hit with my family. The actual making of the meal is pretty quick as long as you have your meat ready from the crock pot. Leftover burritos freeze well and lack all the who knows what that you get from freezer burritos from the store.

Beef and Bean Burritos
1 roast (I usually use beef, but pork also works)
1 packet of taco seasoning (2, if it's a particularly big roast)
1/2 c water
refried beans (Made fresh or from a can, whatever your time table looks like)
burrito-sized tortillas
grated cheese- cheddar, mozzarella or pepper jack
Tabasco sauce (optional)
sour cream (optional)
enchilada sauce (optional)

1. Trim fat from roast as desired. Put roast in crock pot with water. Cover with packet of taco seasoning. Cook on low for 6-8 hours. (This depends on the size of the roast and desired tenderness.) 2. Put roast in a bowl and shred with two forks. It should fall apart pretty easily. Add about 1/4 c of seasoned water from the crock pot and stir into shredded meat. If a large roast add another packet of taco seasoning to the meat and stir. 3. Spread a 1/3 c (more or less) of beans on a tortilla. Top with 1/3 c of shredded meat. Sprinkle with cheese and Tabasco sauce as desired. 4. Microwave for 45 seconds to melt cheese. If desired top with enchilada sauce and grated cheese before micro waving.

Freezer Meals

Yesterday my good friend and I decided to get together, cook a bunch of meals and freeze them. (Mostly we are doing this because my new stove and fridge STILL haven't arrived yet and the only appliances I have are my microwave and my deep freeze. She is a great friend to suggest and volunteer we do this at her place.) Now I've heard people rave before about the wonders of making meals and deep freezing them, but honestly it always sounded like more work than it is worth. Yes, they're nice to have, but they take awhile to do and it isn't often that I have large blocks of time available when my kids aren't making some new mess for me to clean up.
 I've decided that the secret is a good friend (preferably a friend who has kids who like to play with your kids.) So we each picked a few recipes that we liked, brought the ingredients & pans for said recipes and started cooking. We each made a batch big enough to feed each of our families and froze it all in tupperware. (We each have a family of 4, so we made enough of each recipe to get a lunch and dinner for each of us.) Yes, with all the various interruptions that come with kids and life in general, it took several hours.  But we had a great time talking and cooking, and our kids had a great time playing together. And after several hours of cooking I now have about a weeks worth of microwave lunches and dinners, at a fraction of the cost of buying them from the store. (To make this weeks worth of food I used what I already had in my pantry and freezer and $12 worth of groceries.) And when you split it up with a friend like this, you get more variety. Yesterday we made pizza, chicken manicotti, spaghetti, (I made homemade spaghetti sauce and used it for the first three) beef stew and shepherd's pie. Now I have several meals ready that my family likes to eat that I just need to reheat. We're definitely going to do this again. Here's the chicken manicotti recipe that is a favorite of my husband's.

Chicken Manicotti
3 cloves garlic finely chopped (or 1 Tablespoon of garlic powder)
2 cans cooked chicken (14.5 oz each)
2 boxes manicotti shells
1 cup fresh spinach  finely chopped (or 3/4 c frozen spinach, defrosted and drained)
5-6 cups spaghetti sauce
2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
1 cup shredded Italian cheese blend
15 oz of ricotta cheese
1 cup of water
1/2 lb of Italian sausage cooked and drained
1. Mix ricotta cheese, Italian cheese, chicken, spinach, and garlic until a smooth thick consistency.
2.Spread 1 cup of sauce in each of two 13"x9"x2" baking dishes.
3. Stuff uncooked manicotti with chicken mixture. Place manicotti in sauced baking dishes.
 Sprinkle with additional sausage. Cover with remaining spaghetti sauce. Sprinkle with mozzarella.
4.Drizzle 1/2 c water around the edge of each pan. Bake each pan at 375 for 45 minutes.
 Freezes well before and after baking. If baking a frozen pan bake for 2 hours. Freezes for up to 3 months.