Yum!!!

I had a craving for enchiladas...luckily I had the recipe in my email so I could stop by the store and make them tonight!

This is my mom's recipe, and is far superior to any enchiladas doused in that nasty red sauce. Once you have these I don't think you can go back.

My mom always just made them with the things below. But I've added mushrooms, hominy, zucchini, asparagus...all good.

Chicken Enchiladas

3 Tbs butter
1 Clove garlic
7 oz of green chiles (from a can)
1 Tbs Chili powder
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp pepper
1/4 cup flour
1.5 cups chicken broth
1 cup cream
6 green onions
1-2 chicken breasts
1/2 lb jack cheese
12-15 corn tortillas

Boil chicken and shred
Saute green onion, spices, garlic and chiles in butter 1 min
add flour, 1 min
Add broth and cream for 10 minutes. Add 1/2 the cheese

Heat the tortillas in oil to soften them, then place in the 9x13 casserole dish. Put shredded chicken in each, then fill with sauce. Roll the tortillas closed then cover all with the remaining sauce. Put the rest of the cheese over the top. Bake for 20 minutes at 400 degrees.

Mine turned out a little salty, I would have used low sodium chicken broth OR little or no salt OR maybe not added twice as much cheese :)





I was super excited at the store when I saw that they now sell Foster Farms chicken tenders frozen in a big bag, for only $5!!! I hate dealing with chicken, this is the perfect solution for me.

What I've been up to

Well we had that wonderful string of hot weather, I loved it. It's so nice to go out hiking when it's 95 degrees in the city. This rainy week was a bit of a downer after the preview of summer.


Attempting to summit Mary's Peak unsuccessfully due to massive amounts of snow.


My two new tomato plants! Meet Early Girl and Patio Pride (or something silly like that)


Awesome double rainbow outside my door the other day


Working on a wedding gift of (mostly) my photos


Hiking around Lewisburg saddle



Playing volleyball


Finding a creepy jumping spider on my garbage can of all places. I guess mainly it was creepy because it was in my house.



Enjoying all the spring blooms. I love the smell of iris, it reminds me of childhood.

Yucatan Day 11: Isla Mujeres

Journal entry:

We woke up early, at 7, and headed out to the ferry port to get to Isla Mujeres. We caught a ferry across and promptly rented a scooter. The first man we made a deal with had trouble starting his scooter and gave us barely any gas. Aaron had a bad feeling about it, the man easily gave us our money back. We felt bad, but you have to trust your gut. We went back to the main strip and got one there and we were off. First stop the turtle farm. 3 or 4 different kinds of sea turtles including two albino ones. The signage wasn't great, I wasn't familiar with any of the common names they used. A man showed me a flower I could feed to the land turtles. They also had food for sale to feed the sea turtles.
When we went to leave we couldn't open the locked compartment under the seat, where our helmets were. 2 men tried to help us open it to no avail. One of them was nice enough to let us borrow a helmet, so Aaron could ride back to the rental place. I guess they are very strict there about wearing a helmet, so even going a short distance wasn't ok. I waited at the farm, did another lap and fed an iguana a hibiscus blossom.
We rode to the end of the road then turned around, the island is very small, I think only 6 miles long or so? We had heard there was a shark you could see, we found it and were saddened to see 2 nurse sharks in a pen in the ocean with people all around chasing them, grabbing them, holding them out of the water for pictures. It was disgusting.
We left and headed to the most southern point. They had a sculpture garden out to the point with a small ruin at the end. They wanted $3 a person, so we said no thanks. We went in search of food, we wanted something cheap and authentic. I don't think the place we stopped was open, and they didn't have everything we ordered, but we got was really good. They made us a plate of fresh guacamole, fried tortillas, and salsas. For lunch we had quesadillas, grilled chicken, tortillas and crema fresca. We continued around the island back to the northern end and swam in the Caribbean and laid in beach chairs for an hour or two. We only had an hour and a half before the scooter needed to be back, so we did one more lap around the island, and went to catch the ferry. We were tired and a bit sunburnt when we got back. We went to a restaurant we had been to before with good smoothies. We liked the verde, it had celery, nopale, cucumber, parsley and pineapple. We got "Mexican Enchiladas" which were not what I thought we were getting, easily the worst meal we had. Enchiladas covered in this sweet brown sauce. We went on a quest for one last bakery - the bakeries in Merida were so good. We got directions to a grocery store nearby and got our fill. Then we went home to pack up for our flight home the next day.


Megan, this is after finding your giant marshmallows at a small shop where we stopped to get ice cream.

Joyous scooter riding around the Caribbean!



Albino turtle


Aaron and turtles




Where the locals live


Where the non-locals live


I could live with someone making me a plate of fresh guac everyday I think.


Our "unimpressive" dinnerware



A fish at the grocery store. Check out those chompers!


That's it! Our whole trip. We had a great time, but I was thankful to be home. Now I can start blogging about the present...

Yucatan Day 10: Cooking class in Merida

Journal entry:

We packed up and walked over to Los Dos for our cooking class. We were greeted by Chef David himself. His house was beautiful with an open courtyard complete with pool, tropical plants and a singing love bird. We had a light breakfast, then our first lesson about the history of the Yucatan. This included why the Mayans are at odds with the "Chilanos" from the mainland. Then we walked to the market with our shopping lists. David explained the different ingredients as we walked through the market.
When we got back there was cold hibiscus juice waiting for us, and we proceeded to learn to make tortillas. We did a taste comparison to the machine made tortillas we had purchased at the market. Then we fried the ones we had made up and filled the others with beans and fried these also, these formed the base of our lunch snacks. They finished preparing them for us with chicken, lettuce, onion, tomato. They are called Panuchos and salbutes. They were delicious. We topped them with an habanero sauce we had made - it was pretty hot. Aaron covered everything in it. Then we started on dinner...I sauteed leeks and onions for our cilantro soup in butter. Aaron stirred the rice in lard until it turned translucent. Then he added garlic, onions, stock and cilantro making it green. We also made chicken that had been brined by coating it in sour orange and anchiote paste. We then wrapped it up with a tomato, some onion and bell pepper and with this herb that smelled like formaldehyde in a banana leaf and smoked it in a homemade pib on his stove top.
We were then served beer and wine and then dinner. The soup was delicious, so buttery and good, topped with the machine made tortillas fried in lard and salted (easily the best chips I've ever eaten). Dinner was good also, but there was way more than I could eat. The chicken was tender and flavorful. The rice was good too. Dessert was sweetened plantains with honey and sorbet. They were made from tropical fruits I didn't know and couldn't remember the names of. The best though, was actually made from corn...it had a simple vanilla like flavor.
Then we hopped on a bus to Cancun for 4 hours. There was a weird movie (found out later it was Down in the Valley ) We were so confused as to what was going on in this movie, trying to figure it out in Spanish.
Aaron went to the back of the bus to use the bathroom, but couldn't figure out how to get the door open...we watched the next person go back so we could see how it was done. This older woman walked back, and just yanked as hard as she could. And that was how it was done, it was hilarious. When I went in, after very carefully hovering without touching anything (it was disgusting in there) while the bus bumped around, I found that it was also necessary to throw your shoulder into the door as if going in for a drug raid to get out.
We found a hostel quickly, a 4 bed room, as nothing else was available for $25 a night with air conditioning.



Our cooking friends in the dining room


The courtyard


Spices at the market


Chiles



Dinner


A pet, they had all sorts of animals at the market. Some were for eating, some were not.


Aaron learning to make tortillas


Our lunch


The kitchen



Aaron wrapping up the chicken


Sooo good, I would have been happy with just this!


Chicken pibil, rice and pickled onions


Dessert

Yucatan Day 9: Cenotes of Cuzama and Merida

Journal entry:

While walking around Merida the night before we found a tour company and booked a cenote tour for the next day, much to Alejandro's dismay. Alejandro was the constantly smoking manager at our hostel. He told us we could find our own way out to the cenotes for a lot less money than a tour (he was fairly adamant about it) . We decided we wanted a break from finding our own way and booked a tour through someone else. Our guide Jose picked us up and drove us to Cuzama. We asked him questions about everything from Mexican politics to the cost of rent to what the houses were like on the inside. You could only see walls with old doors in the city with no indication of what was behind them. When we arrived in Cuzama we hired a man and a horse to take us on a cart up a funny rail left over from the hacienda days. The first cenote was blue and fairly large. 8-10 motmots flew out as we walked up. Tons of blue damselflies were everywhere and let you get pretty close to them. Unfortunately we couldn't get either camera to really focus on them, so we only go one picture. We had the cenote to ourselves. There were some bats and swallows. The 3rd cenote had a narrow long shaft to descend. It was mostly enclosed with a few shafts of light. After a few minutes we were overrun with Puerto Rican youth. The 2nd cenote we didn't get in the water, it was fairly cool that day. A rainstorm started just as we got there. We watched the rain pour in through the roof. After a few minutes sediment came pouring into the crystal clear water creating a cloud. Aaron and I began eating some 2 day old pastries - one of which had meat and cheese in it. We decided to eat it anyway, but were displeased to find that one end was black with mold after each taking 3 bites. Thankfully neither of us got sick.
Jose took us to a Yucatecan restaurant where we ordered drinks and they brought out 6-8 different dish samples. Civeche, venison, Lebanese fried chickpea pockets, pumpkin seed dip, chips, sausages. Yummy. About $10 for 3 drinks and more food than the three of us could eat. After the lunch snack we were stuffed. We went back to the hostel and crashed for a bit.
We heard about a Mayan dance going on 6-8 blocks away. We were very tired, but decided to check it out since the dance the night before was so good. It was actually a local dance rather than a performance. We watched for a bit then went home to bed.
Note- Jose took us to a cemetery at my request (a perk to being the only ones on the tour) there were many shrines and we learned that 2 years after the bones are buried, they are dug up and placed in a box. The family plot is then reused.


Our driver putting our cart back on the track.


Me going down the rabbit hole!



The horse runs along side the track...I wouldn't be surprised if this is one of the few systems in the world like this, especially that is still being used.





Torrential downpour, it was nice to have a cave to get out of the rain in.


The cemetery



Remains


Back in Merida




I could have done without the powerlines, but there was no avoiding them