Spring officially arrived over the weekend!
I love the flowers starting up in the yard, and I want to hurry more of them along. My favorite pop-up nursery is opening in two weeks, and I'm rather happy about the fact that the nice weather has allowed us to get planting beds cleaned out and ready for green things.
(It was super-nice to have Cameron here to help us out with the big, heavy spring spruce-ups: like major fruit tree prunings, too!! What will we do when he's gone off to school again??)
This last weekend was our local Home and Garden Show, and that always seems to kick off the spring season for me. We always have our store's booth there, with fireplaces, stoves and barbecue grills on display, so we spend a lot of time there. While there, I picked up some new accessories for Emma's fairy garden (a little bit on it HERE)... and she's excited about those with me!
I was so ON TREND, way before fairy gardens became the hot trend, back in the day when Alyssa and Darcie did our original fairy garden:
That was 13 years ago!! They look so YOUNG!!
I miss that age, but I sure love on my grown-up daughters now!!
Switching gears, now.
As I was sorting through pictures on the computer, I found this set, which goes with a recipe, so I figured I'd write it up now for you. It's Turkey Enchiladas -- one of our favorites, and we plan on it when we have leftovers to use up.
I grabbed a bunch of the ingredients, so you can see what you're up against you'll need to have ready:
Leftover cooked turkey is #1 on the list, but you can totally use chicken for this, too. Turkey Enchiladas are our go-to dinner for the Day After Thanksgiving.
Cut it up into bite-size pieces. You could also shred it, if you like. I just prefer the texture of chunks of meat instead of stringy meat. (Did I say that nicely enough?)
In a pot on the stove, mix 2 cans of Cream of Chicken Soup with one can of milk, 2 small cans of diced green chiles, and a heavy 2/3 cup of sour cream. Cook until the mixture is heated through.
Oh, whoops ....... add the turkey or chicken to the pot, as well.
While it's heating, prep your assembly station. I use a pizza pan to put the enchiladas together. Get your baking dishes (might want to hit them with some non-stick cooking spray), and your shredded cheddar cheese ready.
Heat a few tortillas at a time in the microwave. I usually put about 3 tortillas on a plate, with a damp paper towel under them, and another damp paper towel on top, and then zap them in the microwave. You want them to get warm and flexible, but not screaming hot.
For assembly, I use a large, slotted spoon like this:
Put a warm tortilla on the pan, and add some of the hot meat mixture with the slotted spoon. This allows most of the sauce to drip through and keeps the meat in the spoon. If there's too much sauce inside the tortilla, it's really hard to roll it up. And you want sauce at the end, anyway, for on top.
Then add a generous line of shredded cheddar cheese:
(I'm totally lazy and use the pre-shredded stuff from Costco.)
It should be slightly off center on the tortilla
Start rolling it up by bringing the two sides in towards the center:
Now you have something that's roughly rectangular-shaped. Next, start rolling from the filling end toward the empty end of the rectangle:
Keep tucking in the sides as you go, if necessary.
Don't try to roll too tightly, or you'll push all the filling out the empty end.
One more time?
If your tortilla isn't warm enough, it will crack as you try to roll it.
Then, put it seam side down in your baking dish. I can fit 5 enchiladas in my 7 1/2" x 11" Pyrex dish.
This recipe will do about 10 enchiladas.
When you've used the majority of the meat in the sauce pot, add more milk, to make the sauce flow well:
Then, switch from the slotted spoon to a ladle:
And ladle the remaining sauce over all the enchiladas. It's a good idea to shift the enchiladas so some sauce can get in between them where they touch. That can help keep the finished enchiladas from sticking to each other in the dish.
When all the sauce is on, top them with more shredded cheddar:
I'm such a control freak about this, I like to keep the cheddar in lines on top of each enchilada. It makes it easier to separate them when serving, and each one still has its own cheddar on top.
I know -- I really need to just let it go.
And, I didn't do it in these photos, but if you like black olives, I usually slice a few up and put a line of sliced olives on top of the cheese on each enchilada.
Since everything in them is basically already cooked, you're just heating them until the cheese is all melted, the sauce is hot and bubbly, and maybe they're starting to brown on the edges.
I usually bake them in the oven, but they can also be heated through in the microwave, too. Sometimes, I've even just placed one or two on the dinner plate, and microwaved them -- when someone is in a huge hurry to go somewhere that evening, and they have no time to wait for the enchiladas to cook. (Which one of my kids remembers doing that?)
They're pretty filling, and at most you can only manage two of them if you're super-hungry. But they also re-heat great, and never last long in our refrigerator! You can make a big meal out of them by having refried beans on the side. And Mexican rice (or cilantro-lime rice). And chips & salsa.
Ok, chips and salsa can really go with almost anything!
You can also put the whole baking dish in the freezer (right after adding all ingredients and before baking) and then you've got a freezer dinner ready to go. Super good that way, too!!
And it never hurts to grill up a few extra chicken breasts, just to have "leftover" chicken, on purpose!!
2 cans (10 1/2 ounces) Condensed Cream of Chicken Soup
1 can milk
2/3 cup sour cream
2 cups cooked turkey or chicken, chopped
2 small cans diced green chiles
10 flour tortillas (10-inch), warmed
2+ cups shredded Cheddar cheese ... or Monterey Jack cheese ... or hey, Pepper Jack would be great with this, too!!
Stir together the soup, milk, sour cream, chiles, and turkey in a saucepot. Cook until hot and bubbly. With a large slotted spoon, spread about 1/2 cup of the turkey mixture on of each warmed tortilla, just off center. Add shredded cheddar. Roll up the tortillas and place them, seam-side down, into a baking dish. Add milk to the remaining soup mixture, and pour over the filled enchiladas. Sprinkle with more cheese.
Bake at 350°F. for about 25 minutes or until the enchiladas are hot and bubbling.
P.S. Special thanks to Cameron, who took all those folding-the-enchilada photos for me, so I could have both hands involved!
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