Sunday Night Dinner: Enchilades Verdes

Josh and I have lived in South Texas our whole lives. Which means we're used to two major things. The heat and great Mexican food. Even our move to North Texas for school meant Mexican food that wasn't quite up to par with our hometown.

Well, you can imagine how I felt when I realized that our planned move to Oregon would mean a serious decline in the authenticity of my Mexican food! A challenge!!! I am going to be working on honing in the skills needed to make my favorite meals up north.

So, yesterday, I whipped up some Enchiladas Verdes. (Recipe adapted from All Recipes.com) With chicken, queso fresco, and an amazing verde salsa, this dish made my confidence spike! It was delicious! The general consensus was that the salsa was a bit on the spicy side (which is ironic because I only added 2 of the 5 required serrano peppers!!) but other than that it tasted authentic and amazing!

I served up these babies with a sprinklin' of queso fresco and cilantro and had Pomegranate Acai Margaritas to drink. (They were the Daily's Frozen pouches. Have you tried these? Amazing!!)

What have you been cooking up lately? Do you stick to a meal rotation? Experiment a lot? Or both? What's your favorite recipe?

Comforting Traditions

With 7 days to go, our apartment has been a whirlwind. Tomorrow we're leaving to go to our hometown and start prepping for the arrival of family and the wedding itself. This will probably be the most stressful trip to pack for in our lives. We're leaving our comfortable apartment in North Texas for two weeks to get married and go on our honeymoon. Very intimidating.

But we are ending our "single" lives in this apartment in a kind of cute way. We first moved in together in May of 2009 and on of the most exciting memories was the first meal I ever cooked for the both of us in that apartment. Truth-be-told it was a pretty random recipe from a Kraft magazine with a lame title. Much to my relief though, the meal turned out great. *You have no idea how nervous I was cooking it*

We renamed the dish "First Night Pasta" and that is what we are having for dinner tonight. It's just a little way to commemorate starting a new chapter in our life.

I thought I'd share the recipe with you. Bear with me because the physical recipe is long gone and I do most of it by eye now, but it is super yummy!

First Night Pasta

• 1 1/2 cups rigatoni pasta
• approx 2 cups fresh broccoli
• chicken cut into small pieces (I usually use half the container of breast tenderloins)
• approx. 1/2 cup chicken broth
• 3 oz. cream cheese
• 1/2 c. mozzarella cheese
  
  1. Preheat over to 350. Prepare pasta as instructed on package. Add broccoli about 3 months prior to pasta being al-dente.
  2. In a small sauce pan, prepare chicken until cooked through. Turn heat down to simmer. Add chicken broth, cream cheese, and mozzarella cheese. Stir until melted.
  3. Drain pasta and broccoli. Add chicken and sauce and stir until thoroughly mixed.
  4. Pour into casserole dish and sprinkle with Italian bread crumbs and a little mozzarella cheese. Bake at 350F for about 15 minutes.

Enjoy!!!