Enchiladas de Pollo y Queso

Two weeks ago on a Tempt My Tummy Tuesday I meandered over to Lisa's site and found this post about the best enchiladas she had ever made. I then followed the link to Newlywed's site and found her recipes for Sticky Chicken and Enchiladas de Pollo y Queso (Cheesy Chicken Enchiladas). Right then and there I decided I had to try those recipes.

That very night I made Sticky Chicken and my family loved it. I cook a whole chicken about once a week anyway, but I usually bake it or boil it. I had never actually cooked one all day in the crockpot. It was so easy!

I also like to rub down my chicken with rosemary, lemon pepper, or best of all Country Bob's Seasoning Salt. The trouble is I can only buy Country Bob's in certain Wal-Mart stores...not the two I frequently go to. The spice rub on the sticky chicken was made from spices I already had around the house and gave the chicken a great flavor.

As suggested, I saved the leftover chicken and the drippings (1 cup of them) from the sticky chicken and used them the next night for the enchiladas. Once again the recipe was super simple and super delicious. If we weren't on this blasted diet we would have eaten the whole pan (or the 'whole enchilada' if you like puns) in one sitting.

Both of these recipes were absolutely DELICIOUS! So if you missed them the first time here are the links again for:

Sticky Chicken

Enchiladas de Pollo y Queso

And here is a little tip from me. I used to copy every good recipe I found on one of these carnivals and then paste it into a word document. That created a very random, very disorganized virtual cookbook. Now I've gotten smart (actually my computer crashed and I lost all of my recipes...at least until I get someone to reinstall everything on my new laptop) and I just save the post with the recipe in it to my favorites. I've created a Folder under the Links category that I call Recipe Links (I also have one for Scrapbooking and Card Links). I save the link and then I can click back to it anytime I want and get the recipe...plus I can surf around that site for more good ideas instead of wondering where the delectable treat came from in the first place.

Don't miss this opportunity to head over to Tempt My Tummy Tuesday or Kitchen Tip Tuesdays to find your dinner menu for tonight.

Manic Monday

Big Money! Big Money!

Ryker's favorite show on TV right now is Wheel Of Fortune. He can't get enough of it. We watch it every night at 6:30, much to Cainan's dismay. He claims the show lacks entertainment value when you don't know how to spell.

Ryker knows all about the prize puzzles and jackpot puzzles and bonus rounds. He thinks it's exciting to see what exotic location they are in each week. He roots for a specific player every episode and is upset when they don't win. You ought to see his excitement when someone spins the $1 Million spot on the wheel.

He is pretty good at guessing the puzzles, but he gets frustrated when I know the answer before he does. I must admit, I'm pretty good at the show. I almost always get the answer first in our household and oftentimes before the actual players. I am by no means saying that I would have any success on the actual show, however. First of all, I am not lucky, so I would be hitting "Bankrupt" fairly often and secondly I would be so nervous that I would forget everything I ever knew anyway.

It brings back memories of my mom doing the same thing to us. She could always get the puzzles when there were only like 3 letters on the board. It was extremely frustrating. (As was her ability to recognize any episode of Star Trek the Next Generation after 3.4 seconds of air time and exclaim, "Oh, we've already seen this one. Remember? It's the one where Worf meets that Klingon girl and sniffs her hand.") Of course, that was back in the dark ages when you had to pick R-S-T-L-N-E for yourself and that was all you got, when the categories were Place, Thing and Proper Noun, when Vanna actually spun the letters around instead of just touching the magic LCD panels, when we had to get up and turn the dial on the TV to change the channel.

Wow! A lot of things have changed for the better....except maybe Star Trek. It all went downhill after Next Generation. Long live Jean Luc Piccard!

He's Our You

That has to be the best episode title ever. LOST rarely pulls lines straight out of the show for their titles, but this one was just too good to pass up. Sawyer's "He's our you." definitely gets my vote for best line of the night.

What we learned:

Little Ben is quite the humanitarian (bringing the sandwiches and all) but he developed his evil genius mastermind skills at an early age too, apparently.

Horace's intimidation methods are laughable when appllied to Sayid. "I'm going to take it to the next level." Oooooh, I bet he talks now. Come on Horace, you're a lover not a fighter.

When she gets all dressed up to seduce somebody Alana looks just like Jordin Sparks.

We have to add A Separate Reality to our LOST Books list. (How appropriate.)

Someone, my guess is Whidmore, hired Alana to get Sayid on that flight, while failing to mention to her that it would probably crash.

Mad scientists are somehow less intimidating when they have a southern accent.

Ben really shouldn’t wear hats.

Questions that were raised:

Is Ben really dead? (No way.)

Was it just my DVR dying or was the whole episode really “jerky” for everybody?

Is Sayid going to be wearing purple all season? Maybe he’ll get a jumpsuit soon.


Where is Farraday and what happened to him?

Where have I seen that drawling mad scientist guy before? I know he's been in some other show.

*Updated: The Mad Scientist is Larry from the Bob Newheart Show. You probably remember his brothers Darryl and Darryl.

Check out LOST Untangled at http://www.abc.go.com/ for a real laugh and a look at what Daniel Dae Kim (Jin) has to say about the significance of the books that appear on LOST.

Head over to The LOST Books Challenge to read more theories.

Popovers

In my constant dieting it is the bread I miss the most. So when I found this delicious recipe in my Weight Watchers cookbook I was really thrilled.

These popovers are like a very light and airy biscuit. They really rise in the oven as teh moisture in teh batter heats up and turns to steam. Be sure not to open the oven door and let any of the steam escape while they are baking.

Peppery Popovers

2 large eggs

1 cup fat free milk

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 t. salt

freshly ground pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 450. Spray a muffin tin with nonstick spray.

With an electric mixer, beat the eggs until frothy. Beat in the milk, flour, salt and pepper.

Spoon 1/4 cup batter in to each cup. Bake 15 minutes; reduce heat to 400 and bake until browned, about 12 minutes longer. Serve immediately.

Per popover: 86 cal, 1 g fat, 0 g sat. fat, 54 mg chol, 177 mg sod, 14 g carb, 0 g fib, 4 g pro, 46 mg calc. 2 Points

For more great tips and recipes check out Kitchen Tip Tuesdays or Tempt My Tummy Tuesdays.

Manic Monday

The System

My husband likes sports. Fantasy sports. (The only kind a 36 year old man should be playing. Just look at the scars on his ankle if you don't believe me.) Fantasy Football. Fantasy NASCAR. And now Fantasy Tournament Picks.

He has tried to drag me into his fantasy world little by little. Every year he drafts Kurt Warner for his Fantasy Football team just for me. (And I must say it worked pretty well for him last year. The Super Bowl and all.) Then he convinced me to join a Fantasy NASCAR league with him too. I'll admit that is fun. But this year he wanted me to do the Final Four tournament bracket thing too.

NASCAR is one thing. I follow NASCAR. I pretty much know what I'm doing. As a matter of fact I probably know more than he does because I actually stay awake during the races. But college basketball? I've watched maybe 2 games in the last 10 years. I have no clue who should, or will, beat who. But in a spirit of marital unity I created a team and made my picks. Of course, with absolutely no knowledge of the teams I had to resort to "The System".

I have developed a highly logical system for picking who will win any kind of sporting event, not just basketball. It is all based on the mascots. For example when the Running Utes of Utah come up against the Demon Deacons of Wake Forest it is clear that Utah will win. What kind of Native American warrior couldn't defeat some kind of crazed preacher?

Or even more obvious....the Sun Devils of Arizona triumph over the Orange of Syracuse. The Orange? They are just a color? Come on, have some creativity! Some match ups just really aren't fair. I fear that my husband's beloved Cardinals of Louisville are doomed when they come up against the Spartans of Michigan State in the Midwest Regional finals. Any Spartan worth his weight in gold could kill a cardinal with one hand tied behind his back.

But lest you think this is a simple system with predetermined results, I assure you it can get quite complicated. When a Volunteer from Tennessee goes up against a Cowboy from Oklahoma who will win? Both potentially have guns. Both are very determined and strong and outdoorsy. It's a tough call. Ultimately I went with the Cowboys because they have horses and the Volunteers will probably be on foot. And when I had the Missouri Tigers matched up against the Memphis Tigers I had no idea what to do. In that case, and others, I had to resort to other streams of logic.

There are some picks that I make with my heart and my head instead of my system. For instance, for the first round I just went with the higher rank in most cases, then I resorted to my system for the future rounds. I also had to pick some schools just because of their location. I had to let Pittsburgh get all the way to the Regional finals against Duke because my brother lives there...even though I'm pretty sure a Seminole could take down a Panther. Of course I had to take Missouri all the way (I mean ALL-THE-WAY) because my brother-in-law graduated from med school there and my sister and her family still live in Columbia (as does Carl Edwards, but I didn't even take that in to account...I promise *wink*wink*).

Of course I advanced Duke to the Final Four because they're Duke. Even I know how good Duke is. I remember Christian Laitner and the Coach "Crew-za-wew-ski" commercials. In honor of Brian's favorite team, I went ahead and took the Louisville Cardinals as far as I could before the aforementioned Spartans took them down. And finally, if I were to ever care about college basketball and have a favorite team I'm sure it would be the Fighting Illini, so I took them to the final too.

So that's it, in all of it's convoluted glory. I will admit that it will make watching hundreds of hours of basketball over the next two weeks much more interesting. "But how is it working for me?", you ask.

Well, the Illini let me down big time and totally screwed up my bracket all the way across. (I kind of expected that based on the raised eyebrows Brian gave me when I announced my Final Four selections. Also based on that incredulous look I have a feeling Missouri may not be the Champs this year.) But I am currently 12 for 16.

I didn't realize that a Terrapin could just pull into it's shell thereby defeating a Golden Bear, and having no clear idea of what an Aggie actually is I couldn't accurately determine if she/he/it had a chance of beating a Cougar from BYU or not.

Considering everything, I think I am doing pretty well.....better than Brian actually. But who's counting?

BTW, I'm not the only one with, shall we say, questionable Tournament picking strategies. Check out Shannon's post from last year about her interesting logic....and her husband's subsequent eye rolls.

Swagbucks

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It is super easy to use. You just search through their site instead of Gooogle or Yahoo or whatever. The search engine is powered by Google so you get the same content that you would with a normal Google search anyway. You can even download the toolbar so it makes it even easier....that's what I did.

If you are interested in signing up go here.*

*This is a referral link so you will be signing up under me and we both win!!!

Namaste

Lots of tension in this week's episode. Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Juliette....we're right back where we started 3 years ago.....30 years in the future....4 days ago....whatever. All of the pretending not to know each other and trying not to let anyone get killed creates a lot of tension too. You could cut the air with a knife for the entire hour.

This week's episode solved a couple of small mysteries. For one, I'm releived to find out that they didn't crash again....just more like had a rough landing. Secondly, the baby is Ethan. Makes sense. Gonna be hard to kill a guy you watched grow up, though.

Of course, I do still have some questions. Why didn't Sun disappear? Where is Farraday? Where did he go? What happened to him and what instructions did he leave for Sawyer and Juliette? What happened to Ole One Eye that used to run the Flame? I thought we might see him again. How did Sawyer have anything that would fit Hurley? A baggy sweatshirt is not sufficient.

LOL line of the night:

Dr. Chang to Jack: "Based on your aptitude test you'll be doing janitorial work."

And I must say, thank goodness for the jumpsuits. I don't think I could stand everybody wearing all those 70s clothes.

Yay, Sun!!!!! It had to feel good to knock Ben's block off with that oar. I was wondering how he would get left behind with the injured people from the plane crash/landing. I'm glad she did it but I feel like she may regret it. Ben might have known how to get back to "when" Jin and the others are. Of course now she's found Christian/Jacob (that guy is like a bad penny, he just keeps showing up) so he can probably give her the details. I was crushed that Sun was not "when" Jin is. I'm so ready for that reunion.

Little Ben is there already. I knew it!!! So, do all of the other fake Dharma people know who he is? Surely they've met him and put two and two together. And I was speculating that Dr. Chang was Miles' Dad and we'd see a big moment when Miles realizes that he did grow up on the island, but so far that hasn't materialized. Is is possible that Miles and the Doc haven't run into each other yet? How big of an island is it?

So based on the scenes from next week I'm anticipating a good cat fight (or at least the first rumblings of it) between Kate and Juliette. (My husband is hoping it will be in the mud again.) I'm also thrilled/afraid that Sayid may see it as his duty to kill Little Ben. As always, I can't wait to see what happens.

Breaking News

I just found out about this free recipe book. (Thanks to Missy)

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