Northern Girl in Nashville

25 Aug 2016 2 Comments

by alightningbug in Food, Foodie, Tea, Vacation Tags: , , , , , ,

Earlier this month I drove to Tennessee for a high school reunion. It was one of those x0th reunions. I won’t say which number. It was great to see friends, take in a few sights, and enjoy some southern cooking. I was nostalgic even before I hit the road.

Being born in Chicago, Illinois and living there until the age of 12 meant my tastebuds experienced childhood and early puberty in the up-north-and-Midwest then took an abrupt dive south as teen angst and adulthood hit me in the heart of Tennessee (and later the Carolinas and Virginia). 

Part Chicagoan and part Nashvillian, I am now 100% mishmash of north and south.

The flavors of the south sunk their roots deep in my soul and regularly give a little wiggle to make sure I’m paying attention. So when I crave comfort food, it is usually southern or country dishes. (Though, I will gladly accept pizza or sushi or tacos too.)

I love fried catfish and okra. Corn bread. And more recently pimento cheese spread (but it better be the good stuff). Tree-ripened peaches and homegrown strawberries…

While in the Nashville area (Lafayette, Mount Juliet, and Cookeville), I ate delicious, genuine southern biscuits and garden-grown corn-on-the-cob picked a few steps from the door and grown surrounded by a century farm (one in operation for over 100 years). I got to enjoy good food with dear friends. 

I drove a long way in a short amount of time (1300 miles crammed in to three days). But driving had its advantages.

Along the way there, I went through Sevierville, Tennessee. Sevier County is the original home of Dolly Parton. It has some beautiful land and views and is now filled with tourist attractions and outlet stores too. The one that caught my eye and pulled me off the interstate was the factory outlet store for Lodge Cast Iron.

I have long loved a good, well-seasoned cast iron skillet, and a cast iron Dutch Oven has been on my wish list for some time. The factory outlet store was filled with all these and more. I felt like a kid in a candy store with really heavy candy. I got a lid for my skillet at home and a very small Dutch oven. Just think of all the yummy food these heavy treasures can cook! 

I have a specific fondness for southern beverages too.

Iced tea is one of those. If you’re from the south you know that I mean sweet tea. Because in the south, if it isn’t sweet then it’s just a hot beverage gone cold.

So I’ve been on a mission this summer to make perfect ice tea and peach tea. Be in the lookout for a new Tea for Tuesday! 

My dialect is perhaps a bit more north than south, but it can jump almost all over the place. A little twang will pop out when I’m not expecting it (especially if I’ve talked to any southern friends recently).

It’s not just the drawl. In the south, for example, grown women can call each other “girl.” 

“Hey, girl!” “How y’all been, girl?” All sprinkled with a dash of twang that makes it seem perfectly okay to call somebody “honey” or “sweetheart” even if you just met and don’t even know their name.

Y’all are probably familiar with the term, “y’all.” In Chicago we said, “you guys.” It was unisex and if you had a strong Chicago accent it was pronounced, “youse guys.” Singular is “you” or “youse.”

I can say, “you,” or, “you guys,” just fine. And I occasionally say or write, “y’all,” too. (Maybe more times than I care to admit.)

But I have a hard time calling any grown woman, “girl.” Picture Arnold Schwarzenegger (as the terminator) saying, “hey, girl,” with a little southern twang. (Look at me! I’m trying to do slang!) Yep, that’s how I feel, and I’m pretty sure that’s how I sound too. It’s best if I just step away from the expression. 

But food is free game! My game. My tastebuds speak many languages.

My gracious hosts sent me on my way with an ample supply of yellow squash, tomatoes, pears, cucumbers, and corn too. 

Recipes ensued and there was much yummyness. 

There were happy memories too. I might have to go back again soon. (Or at the very least visit a Cracker Barrel.)


Cucumber and Tomato Salad (a mix of genuine southern-grown cucumbers and tomatoes with northern-Virginia, balcony-grown tomatoes, red peppers, and fresh herbs) – totally refreshing yummyness on a hot day.

Fixing Pie (saving an undercooked pie)

28 Nov 2015 19 Comments

by alightningbug in Food, Foodie, NaBloPoMo, Recipes Tags: , , , ,

This year’s Thanksgiving pumpkin pie came out less than ideally cooked, and we were able to save it from a runny fate by rebaking it. Here’s what happened. 

It was one of the frozen pies my mom purchased from my daughter as a fundraiser for the the school’s music department. Last year we thought these pies were actually quite yummy, so we looked forward to enjoying them again.

The instructions on the box said to bake the pie at a temperature 50 degrees lower if baking in a convection oven. So my mom thought this would be a good time to try out the convection feature of her new oven. Needless to say it resulted in an undercooked pie even though she let it bake for a few extra minutes. Those 50 degrees made a huge difference.

Perhaps it was somewhat the result of unfamiliarity with a new oven, but I don’t think convection instructions are always correct when they tell you to bake at a lower temperature. Why is this anyway? I thought a convection oven was supposed to cook quicker. That doesn’t happen when baking at a lower temperature.

Anyway, come time that any of us felt like squeezing another morse of food into our stomaches after stuffing ourselves with turkey, gravy, sweet potato casserole, and stuffing, we took our bites of pie and hesitated. Parts of the crust were doughy and the pie was runny in the center even though it had throughly cooled in the fridge.

We ate our pieces anyway because … pie. The flavor was still very good, but overall that poor little pie really needed more heat.

So we re-baked it.

We’d already cut a couple of pieces out of the pie so now there was a gaping hole left behind where those pieces had been. We needed a way to keep the filling from running into the crevasse when it got hot and even runnier as it re-liquified.

So we formed a sort of placeholder out of greased aluminum foil. A slices-of-pie shape cup was fashioned to sit where the eaten pieces had been. Then we filled that foil cup with some water to weigh it down, and keep it stable. This prevented the pie filling from oozing too much as it reheated. It also helped to stabilize the temperature.

We then popped pie in the pre-heated oven at the higher (non-convection) temperature and 35 minutes later — voila. Fixed pie.

The crust was now a lovely golden brown instead of the pale doughy impostor it had been, and the filling was now able to stand up on it’s own without wandering about the pie plate.

This process may not work with every pie. But it saved this particular doughy, undercooked excuse of (delicious) pumpkin pie goo and made it into a real, stand-up, yummy pumpkin pie.


(This post is also for NaBloPoMo.)

—

Adding a footnote since this is a popular topic on Thanksgiving 2018. I hope this helps save few a pies from a runny fate this turkey day. Thank you for visiting and feel free to leave feedback in the comments.

The temperature should be as high as the original temperature, at least 350 degrees. Use a thermometer to be sure. If you think your oven is running cool, but you have no thermometer you might want to crank it up to 375 or more. Check the pie regularly to make sure it’s not burning to a crisp.

If I was going to do the same again, I’d cover the edges of the crust. There were some slightly burned areas after the rebake. Make a ring of foil around just the edges. Remove it the last 10 minutes to make sure the crust is golden and flaky.

Also adding that since some pumpkin pie contains raw eggs, it’s probably not a great idea to eat the pie raw or undercooked. Heating completely through should take care of any nasties. But if the pie sat out at room temperature semi-raw for days or if there’s any evidence of a foul taste or smell, then probably best to toss it.

Also, this rebake method should work with many other pies that suffered from too little heat and ended up doughy or runny. Just be careful about burning the crust on the rebake. May not be quite as good as getting it right the first time, but better than tossing the whole pie. A rebaked pie is better than no pie.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving

26 Nov 2015 Leave a comment

by alightningbug in Food, Foodie, NaBloPoMo Tags: , , , ,

Earlier in the day I caught a pot-holder on fire while checking on a pie. There were flames and everything. 

It was quickly extinguished, but the the whole kitchen smelled funny for a while. The pot-holder is still good. It’s just a little stinky. The pie turned out nicely.

Right now my tummy is still stuffed full of yummy food. This Thanksgiving was our first at my mom and stepdad’s new home. It has a great kitchen for cooking, but perhaps allows too many cooks working simultaneously. That can be a minor issue, but gets trickier when none of them know quite where to find things. It all worked out, and there’s much to be thankful for.

Wishing you and yours a lovely day and weekend!
   
   
  

The Secret to All Things Yum (Stuffing Edition)

19 Nov 2015 Leave a comment

by alightningbug in Food, Foodie, NaBloPoMo, Recipes Tags: , , , ,

I’m starting to think that the secret to all things yum is caramelized onions.

Well, caramelized onions for savory, cooked food. It would probably be the wrong kind of secret ingredient for cherry pie. Or Jell-o. And probably a little weird for peanut butter & jelly. But spicy peanut sauce may be another story …

For cooked and savory — if you have time to properly caramelize onions it will make practically everything taste better.

It’s like adding pure yum extract. More

Pumpkin Spice Coffee Creamer Revisited

09 Oct 2015 6 Comments

by alightningbug in Foodie, Tea Tags: , , , ,

It’s that time of year when warm days fade into cool. Colors turn orange, Brown, and red. And pumpkin spice everything can be found just about everywhere. It’s great if you like pumpkin spice! And may be tiring if you don’t. 

There are more pumpkin-spice-flavored products than ever — it’s invading practically everything edible (and some not so edible)! To name just a few, there are M&Ms, cake mix, potato chips, breakfast cereal, Greek yogurt, and Oreo cookies! (The Chobani pumpkin spice Greek yogurt is surprisingly good.) 

As WordPress Writing 101’s Day 16 Assignment is to “Search your stats for a post idea” this is a perfect time to revisit my Pumpkin Spice Coffee Creamer review from 2013. I’ve noticed those search terms popping up in my stats again lately. 

That review is here:

Pumpkin spice coffee creamer review from 2013. 

I love actual pumpkin pie and pumpkin bread and so does my daughter. We also like the spice in other things but it depends on what and on the spice blend itself. I can get sick of it. No thank you to pumpkin spice steak for example. Or maybe yes? Hmm, I might actually try that.

This year I’m revisiting two supermarket coffee creamers and adding two new ones. 

  • International Delight: Pumpkin Pie Spice 
  • Coffee-mate: Pumpkin Spice
  • Target’s Market Pantry brand: Pumpkin Pie Coffee Creamer 
  • Coffee-mate’s Natural Bliss: Pumpkin Spice 

The last two are new to the party. Good news — gone are the hydrogenated oils and fats of previous years’ coffee creamers! This is great if you watch the types of fat you ingest, and you should. Also gone is the corn-syrup sweetener. All four of these sweeten with actual sugar. (There are sugar-free versions of many of these too.) 

Three of them have the same 35 calories per serving with 15 of those calories from fat. The Target MP version has only 30 calories per serving with only 10 calories from fat.

International Delight: Pumpkin Pie Spice

Pumpkin spice is usually a blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, and ginger. My review from 2013 stated that International Delight’s offering was heavy on the ginger so that their Pumpkin Pie Spice coffee creamer tasted more like ginger bread. While I can still taste the ginger in their mix, this year’s seems somewhat less gingery and more balanced. I like this one overall. It isn’t as strongly spiced as Coffee-mate Pumpkin Spice. It’s fairly good when poured directly into coffee or tea and I don’t feel like I have to doctor it much if at all. I’m not too sick of it by the time I get to the bottom of my cup. The oil in it is palm oil which makes it nicely creamy but not too oily and filmy on my tongue. This is tied for first place as far as I’m concerned. Dave likes this one second best.

Coffee-mate Pumpkin Spice Coffee Creamer

This one HAD partially-hydrogenated oils in its 2013 offering. I’m happy to say that the 2015 version no-longer lists hydrogenated or partially-hydrogenated oils in the ingredients. It has what I consider to be the most classic pumpkin-pie flavor of all of them. When I taste it, that’s exactly what I taste — pumpkin pie spice. As it was in 2013, this is still the heaviest on the spice flavor! It is so strong that I can’t put much of it into my coffee or tea without making it too spicy.  That’s easy to fix though — if you want really creamy coffee that isn’t as spicy just add some extra plain or vanilla creamer or even real milk or cream. It’s nice if you want to add flavor while keeping your beverage light on the sweet creaminess. A little dab will do ya! The strong spice is also good if you want to experiment with mixing flavors like pumpkin spice with caramel. It really holds up. So it has advantages and disadvantages. The texture of it is a typical coffee creamer effect. This is also tied for first place as far as I’m concerned. This is third in Dave’s opinion. It’s too spicy to him.

Target’s Market Pantry brand: Pumpkin Pie Coffee Creamer

I was happy to see this as an option this year, but I’m not that crazy about it. While lowest in calories and fat, it is the thickest creamer of all. The spice flavor isn’t bad. It’s slightly heavy on the ginger, but a pretty good blend. The problem is that it’s almost  cloyingly sweet and my tongue feels a coated after a cup. It’s weird that it’s so thick yet lowest in fat, so there must be something in it to give it more body. This backfires. I’m ready to be done by the time I get to the bottom of my cup (or even sooner). If you like really sweet, thick creamers, lighter on the spice flavor then you might really like this one though. The oil in it is sunflower oil which is actually a good thing so I wish I liked it more. This one is tied for second or last for me. Dave, who doesn’t like incense or scented candles, likes this one the best!

Coffee-mate’s Natural Bliss: Pumpkin Spice

I was excited about this one because the ingredients are so simple and awesome: nonfat milk, heavy cream, sugar, and natural flavor. That’s it! The blend itself isn’t bad, but it comes off little hodgepodge and maybe a bit heavy on the ginger and nutmeg. Not so much nutmeg that it tastes like eggnog though. It has more of a fresh-ginger taste as opposed to the others which seem like more of a dried-ground-ginger taste. Maybe that’s what bothers me. I like fresh ginger but that’s not what’s normally found in pumpkin pies. This one has a strange aftertaste too. I like it okay but I definitely don’t love it. This one is tied for second or least favorite for me. It is last on Dave’s list.
This year’s Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte is supposed to contain actual pumpkin flavor! I haven’t tried it yet. (I’ll have to fix that soon.) In previous years it was just a creamy spiced drink topped with whipped cream and chock-full-o calories. You can purchase an entire bottle of supermarket coffee creamer for the same price as one sweet beverage from Starbucks. While the Starbucks version was very yummy in the past, I still like the convenient budget- friendly option of a flavored coffee creamer for home.
There you have it, supermarket coffee creamer offerings for 2015! These are found with the other refrigerated coffee creamers in many grocery stores. Some even have special holiday-creamer displays. They’re a fun, seasonal offering for coffee, tea, or even flavoring plain milk and grown-up beverages. Enjoy!

Happy Labor Day! 

07 Sep 2015 2 Comments

by alightningbug in Food, Foodie, Vacation Tags: , ,

This fine Labor Day we’re traveling back from South Carolina where we were visiting my dad. Visits like these invariably involve lots of yummy food, fun, and a good bit of driving. 

We bowled, saw a movie, relaxed with my dad and ate a lot of yummy food.

Southern food like real barbecue, chicken, and cornbread is a guilty pleasure I’ve learned to relish on trips like these. My years of living near Nashville primed my taste buds. Why oh why does grease, sugar, and salt taste so good?. 

My dad manages a stellar pulled pork, some of which we have frozen in a cooler in the back if the car. We’ll enjoy that at home. Yesterday we ate rotissery chicken that he cooked on the grill. Tender, juicy, and that awesome  browned crispy skin. I love the brown crispy skin!

Now I’m munching on fried catfish at the Cracker Barrel. I love those crispy edges! Second verse same as the first. Cracker Barrel actually manages an excellent fried catfish. My daughter had fried chicken salad which is like a hybrid of southern and contemporary eats.

We finished with pumpkin custard n’ ginger snaps. Also yummy and kind of an excellent way to welcome in the fall days ahead.



Summer Remnants, Recipes

24 Aug 2015 Leave a comment

by alightningbug in Food, Foodie, Plant Life and Balcony Gardening, Recipes Tags: , ,

One thing that makes this time of year extra yummy is harvest — there are still lots of yummy fruits and veggies to be had from gardens and farmers’ markets. I’ve been seeing a lot of farmers’-market specials, many adding bulk discounts as they have lots of ripe produce and want to move it while it’s still sooo good. It’s great to stock up if you have room in your freezer or for canning. Or just make lots of yummy stuff to eat soon!

One recipe that can help:

Cowboy Caviar

Contrary to the name it doesn’t require cows, boys, fish eggs or eggs of any kind. This is basically a bean salad with corn, tomatoes, peppers, and herbs. It can be eaten like a salsa with corn chips. It can be a topping on a salad. It can be heated and spooned over rice, added raw or heated to burritos, tacos, or nachos.  

It’s fairly healthy with protein, fiber, and fresh veg. It goes quickly around here so I usually double the recipe.

Cowboy Caviar ingredients:

1 can (15 ounce) black beans, drained (or equivalent)

1 can (15 ounce) black-eyed peas, drained (or equivalent) I like the seasoned kind.

1 can (14.5 ounce) diced tomatoes, lightly drained (good using diced tomatoes with chilies) or about 1-1/2 cups of fresh, diced tomatoes. That’s what I’m talking about. 

1 can (15 ounces) corn, drained or 2 cups fresh-cut or frozen corn

1/2 red (or green) bell pepper diced (or similar amount of other sweet peppers) 

1/2 small onion, diced

2 or 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped (or 2 teaspoons garlic powder)

About a cup or half a bunch of chopped cilantro (leave out if you don’t like cilantro)

About a 1/2 cup or 1/4 of a bunch of fresh chopped parsley

1 or 2 fresh chopped jalapeño peppers (to taste) 

Salt and pepper (to taste, it doesn’t need much salt, just a couple of pinches)

2 tablespoons raw apple cider vinegar

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 cup Italian salad dressing (Paul Newman’s Lite Italian works nicely)

Mix it all in a large bowl adding the vinegar, olive oil, and Italian dressing last. We like to let it sit out of the fridge for an hour to let the flavors mix. Enjoy!  

Store covered in the fridge for up to 2 weeks. The vinegar in the apple cider vinegar and salad dressing helps to preserve it longer than if it were just fresh-diced ingredients.



What I Cooked with Our Balcony Garden Harvest

21 Aug 2015 3 Comments

by alightningbug in Food, Foodie, Plant Life and Balcony Gardening, Recipes Tags: , , , ,

Stuffed Gypsy Peppers.

With quinoa, caramelized onions & garlic, garbanzo beans (chickpeas), corn, diced tomatoes, southwest seasoned grilled chicken, salt & pepper, and the bunch of herbs in the photo from the other day (spicy oregano, flat & curly parsley, Thai basil, and maybe a sprig of mint).  Topped with a blend of mozzarella and parm and roasted in our convection toaster oven until the peppers looked a little roasted and the cheese was melty and lightly browned. For the two of us who like spicy, I topped them with sliced semi-ripe jalapeño peppers.*

It turned out really yummy! We all liked it and ate all the leftovers before they could become leftovers.

I have Julia Child to partly thank for the yum factor. We saw her kitchen at the Smithsonian the other day. When we got home I was inspired to stream the movie Julie and Julia. I’d never seen it. It was a cute movie. Julia is amazing. Then I looked up Julia Child on YouTube and watched some of her old PBS show The French Chef. One of the sections was on French Onion Soup.

I’ve never been a huge fan of onions — probably due to the fact that I think I’m partly allergic to them. Too many (cooked or raw) and I feel like I’m coming down with the flu — achy, tired, sore throat, etc. But even when I most disliked onions, earlier in my life, I still kind of liked French Onion Soup and blooming onions too. So as my daughter loves onions (how is she even related to me?) I decided to put onions in our stuffed Gypsy Peppers.

Until watching Julia Child again on YouTube, I have to admit I never properly caramelized onions. Oh, I could brown the heck out of them, but I completely missed the part about actually cooking them before browning them. It makes quite a difference.

I took the “busy mom hack” approach to cooking my onions and zapped them in the microwave until cooked. Then I put them in the frying pan on low heat with some butter and olive oil. They got beautifully caramelized! It added so much flavor to the quinoa and the overall filling for the gypsy peppers.

We had more filling than gypsy peppers, so we just served extra on the plate next to the stuffed pepper — kind of made it look like it was spilling out of the pepper onto the plate. Topped with a sliced cherry tomato and sprig of Thai basil for a garnish. I think it adds a bit of 1970s je ne sais quoi.

They gypsy peppers themselves were to die for! Letting then ripen may have meant fewer total gypsy peppers for our harvest, but the sweetness and flavor were amazing. So sweet! Beautiful color! They are really ideal for stuffing as I didn’t pre-cook them at all. The skin was perfect just filled with our stuffing mix and then cooked in our convection toaster oven.

I only hope that our remaining gypsy peppers get this good. And I hope I can duplicate this again.

*I’ll try to add actual measurements at some point. I didn’t use a recipe. But it was about a can of garbanzos (drained), 2 cups of cooked quinoa, 1/2 a medium-large sweet onion (diced and caramelized), several cloves of garlic, and 1 large diced tomato. Herbs, salt, and pepper to taste. I used all of the herbs seen in the photo here.

Balcony Garden Harvest

18 Aug 2015 1 Comment

by alightningbug in Food, Foodie, Plant Life and Balcony Gardening Tags: , , ,

Balcony garden harvest with herbs, gypsy peppers, jalapeño, and several types of tomatoes. This is part of what’s for dinner. Glad to have picked our gypsy peppers before they got nibbled by critters!

Check out what we cooked, Stuffed Gypsy Peppers.

“Time-Saving” Food

23 Nov 2014 1 Comment

by alightningbug in Foodie, Mom Stuff, Recipes, Time-saving Tags: ,

After blogging about time-saving “food” here’s my take on the flip side – “time-saving” food.

Last year I broke down and joined the legions of cooks and moms who own and use a slow cooker. Since then I’ve discovered a new pet peeve. I hate to see recipes for slow cookers that label themselves, “time-savers,” but in reality are far from.

Time-saving recipes need to save time. Just because food is cooked in a slow cooker and could be ready when I get home doesn’t mean it saved time. If I had to get up at 3:00 in the morning to prep the food then I will probably be too tired to eat it when I get home. Zero time saved. Or if a recipe calls for only 4 or 5 hours of cook time, then it is not a weekday recipe that will save time. I’m not going home on my lunch hour to make dinner!

I want recipes like this:
1.) put raw food in Crock Pot
2.) cook on low for 9-10 hours
3.) enjoy!

But there are recipes aplenty that require lots of prep like chopping, layering, and cooking the food before it goes into the pot. Why would I want to pre-cook anything before I put it in a COOKER? Except maybe double-cooked pork, but that’s … Oh you know what I mean.

I get that browning adds flavor, but I wonder how much of that flavor really holds up when food is cooked in a slow cooker all day. I’ll try a comparison some time. Even if it does enhance the taste, is it worth it on a regular basis?

To save time you can start with food that’s already totally cooked like rotisserie chicken. If you shop around you can find rotisserie chicken that don’t cost much more than buying a raw chicken. These can be a huge time-saver! But you can’t feed your family only rotisserie chickens, and you’ll want to watch salt and other flavorings that might be added to store-bought rotisserie chicken. For that matter, you can slow cook your own chicken in a crock pot. Save the bones from either, put them in a slow cooker all day, strain and you’ll have a great (not too hard) chicken stock. This is one if the times home-cooked makes a big difference in taste. Freeze or refrigerate and you can use it to make lots of easy soups.

There are time-saving ways to cook food out there! But not all slow-cooker recipes are created equal.

When Taste of Home shared this recipe for Slow Cooker Enchiladas on Facebook it was the perfect example of a not-so-time-saving recipe. There was a lot of good and bad feedback:

Slow-cooker Enchiladas

Yes, it looks totally delish! And I would love to try it. But it has everything that bugs me about a “time-saving” slow-cooker recipe — ingredients that must be chopped and pre-cooked twice before the goop is then layered multiple times with tortillas in a slow cooker and left to cook for only 5-7 hours. What part of that is supposed to help with a busy schedule?

I wouldn’t be so bothered if it just advertised itself as a tasty recipe and left it at that. I will make time for increased yum factor on a weekend, some weekends anyway. (And I still take issue with pre-cooking food before I put it in a Crock Pot.) But the cook describes herself as a “busy wife and mother” and says this is a handy recipe. The implied saving of time – that’s kind of where it lost me.

Because in the amount of time it would take me to prepare and cook these enchiladas I could have prepared and cooked an entire Thanksgiving turkey! With stuffing! And cranberry sauce. Not all from scratch, mind you, but it would be yummy food.

The slow-cooker enchilada recipe apparently allows the author to cook dinner after lunchtime and keep it warm until the entire family is home for dinner. I’m sure it works well for people who are home after lunch and can chop, cook, re-cook, layer, and turn on a crock pot for dinner.

But what about people who can’t do that? I don’t think those tortillas will stand up to 10 hours in a slow cooker. I tried that with pasta once. It was delicious-smelling paste!

Once you cook everything as the recipe suggests, I’m worried that the tortillas will get mushy even at 5-7 hours. Maybe refrigerate the cooked goop then spoon it out and reheat in an oven, toaster oven, or microwave when you get home? You could even eat it another day. Reheating it in an oven or toaster oven could even give the tortillas brown, crispy edges and it’s probably less than 20 mins to the table once you get home. Still too much work?

With the slow-cooker in mind, the recipe is basically salvageable with a few busy-mom hacks:

1) Dump raw meat into slow cooker along with seasonings and canned foodstuffs.
2) Cook on low for 8-10 hours.
3) Warm tortillas in toaster oven or a hot pan. Or not. Or use corn chips or crispy tostadas.
4) Spoon goop over tortillas (or chips or tostadas) and top with cheese. ENJOY!

If you sub corn chips for the tortillas, you probably can’t call these enchiladas anymore. So top with some lettuce and tomatoes for a delish taco salad.

If you’re worried about how much fat may be in the dish when you can’t drain the meat ahead, then start with a very low-fat meat. OR skim the fat after everything is cooked. It floats to the top. Cook with free-range, grass-fed beef, and you’ll want to eat a lot of that healthy fat anyway.

I’m going to suggest yet another variation on this, and later I’ll post a simple Slow-Cooker recipe for Misc Mex Meat Goop. Cook it in a slow cooker and eat it how you like — in soft flour tortillas for burritos, over corn chips, in taco shells, or rolled into enchiladas and topped with a quick sauce. Real time-saving food!

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