Chicken Enchilada and Peach Cream Skillet Goodness! Oh and homemade tortillas and fresh salsa!

Nothing says home in like Mexican food.  I grew up on good mexican food and no, I'm not talking about Allsups burritos (bringing back the highschool memories).  I can always remember being so excited when mom or our other friend Crill would make chicken enchiladas.  Living in TN now, we have found a few good Mexican restauarants but I always judge them on their chips and salsa.  I can OD on chips and salsa and then have a salsa hangover but that is one of my "comfort foods".  Well, my hubby had a big test yesterday and today is our 5 month-aversary so I decided we should celebrate.  I made some homemade salsa and had that for  a little breakfast snack and then made homemade tortillas which were surprisingly easy to make.  I'll post that recipe next because it was so fun! 

Here is the chicken enchilada recipe from mom.  I changed a little bit of it but not much.  MMMMMM and we  will have leftovers for days.  I thought it would be fun to have a dessert baked in the most beautiful green skillet that I received as a wedding gift and LOVE it! 


Chicken Enchilada

2 skinless chicken breasts
1 onion, chopped
2 cans cream of chicken soup
1 oz container of sour cream
1 4 oz can green chiles
1/4 cup milk
tortillas (flour works the best)
salsa with tomatoe chunks
Jalapeno cheese or just plain ole chedder cheese (get the package with the white and yellow cheese)
salt, pepper, garlic, cumin, more garlic and salsa

Heat water in a large pan and boil chicken until it is cooked through.  Then shred them into bite size pieces. 

Heat some oil in a saucepan and saute onions with garlic until they are nice and sauteed.  Take the saucepan off of the burner and add chicken soup, sour green, green chiles, salsa and salt and pepper.  I added some of the homemade salsa with the chunky tomatoes because I love the color and it looked pretty.  Add some salt and pepper and a little cumin to taste. 

Now divide this by half.  To one half add the shredded chicken and about a cup of cheese.  Lay out a tortillas and dump a bunch of this mixture into the middle.  Now roll up like a burrito and place seam side down in a 9x13 pan.  Repeat until add the goodness is gone. 

Now to the other half, add 1/4 cup of milk and some more seasoning if you want.  Pour this over all the enchiladas and make sure to get the mixture covering the bottom and the sides of the pan so the tortillas won't burn.  Now dump with more cheese.  Sprinkle with pepper and fresh cilantro.  Bake at 350 degrees for about 35 minutes.  OOOOO - la-la!  Mom, was that right? 

Ok so now on to the fun peach cream pie. 

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 (3 ounce) package non-instant vanilla pudding mix (I used lemon because that is all I had and it turned out really well)

3 tablespoons butter, softened

1 egg

1/2 cup milk

1 (29 ounce) can sliced peaches and 1 smaller can of peaches, drained and syrup reserved

1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup white sugar

cinnamon

Add flour salt, baking powder, pudding mix, butter, egg and milk and mix together for a few minutes.  Place in the bottom of a pie pan or a fun green skillet and bake at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes.  Let cool.  Meanwhile drain peaches and slice.  These need to be pretty drained so the bottom crust doesn't get soggy.....gross!  Arrange peaches on top of the crust. 

Beat cream cheese with sugar and add some cinnamon.  Pour this over the peaches and leave about a half inch space between the side of the pan so it won't burn.  Sprinkle some more cinnamon and sugar.  Bake at 350 degrees for 35-45 minutes.  You can either eat it hot or I liked it cooled down a little.  YUMMY and yes that is my husband giving his approval!

Happy 5 months and Happy test 1 of Anatomy completed.

Shrimp and Sausage gumbo

Here we go!  My house still smells like gumbo and my hands smell like onions and garlic.  I was so nervous and didn't take any pictures.  I wanted to get a picture of the roux but was so scared that I was going to burn it so this is a boring blog recipe post but here it is!

3/4 cup oil
• 1/2 cup flour
• 2 large onions, chopped
  1 cup frozen okra
• 2 bell peppers, chopped
• 4 ribs celery, chopped
• 4 - 6 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 quarts chicken stock
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 teaspoons Creole seasoning, or to taste ( I used "Slap Yo Mama"  Yes that is the name of a seasoning.  Isn't that terrible?)
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme leaves and 1 teaspoon of parsley
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
• 2 pounds of cooked shrimp
• 2 pounds andouille or smoked sausage, cut into 1/2" pieces

In a large stockpot heat oil and add flour.  Stir, stir, stir like crazy with a large spoon or I used a large spatula because I read that it is was better.  Stir on medium heat like crazy for a while and get your workout music because your arm will hurt!  The roux should turn a color a little darker than peanut butter but don't let it burn!  Make sure you pre-chop all of your veggies because they will need to be dumped into the roux as soon as it's dark or the cooking term is "carmalized".  Add all the veggies together and then stir until them are tender (about 6-7 minutes).  Then add the chicken stock and the seasonings....get the Slap-Yo-Mama out!  HA!  Add the smoked sausage too and NOT Boudain (read the previous blog on my mistake in sausage)  Cook on low heat for hours and hours......I was hoping it would make it better to cook it for a LONG time.  About 30 minutes before serving, add the shrimp and okra.  Mistake number 2 - adding the okra at the beginning because it turns into okra mash......yummy! 

Serve hot over hot white rice and add more pepper or Slap-Yo-Mama depending on your spicy taste.  FUN!

Super Bowl Par-tay 2011!

Well first, it is snowing AGAIN this morning in TN.  I got on the treadmill which we have in our outside "shed" area and it is a 3 sided garage thing.  My treadmill faces the front so I can see outside.  I watched it rain and then turn into snow and then into a blizzard.....Ok, maybe not a blizzard but it's been snowing for the past few hours.  Then my hubby went outside and got a HUGE amount of snow and we made snow cream.  I've never made snow cream before but it sounded fun so I dumped about 10 cups of fresh snow into my mixer, added some milk, sugar, and vanilla extract and created the first ever Shamblin Snow Cream.  I then got creative and added some cinnamon and Rum extract that I grabbed from the cabinet.  Pretty yummy!  Brad had a couple of bites and then got the Blue Bell out.  :)  But I then added cocoa and he LOVED it!  Bingo!

This morning was not only good because of the snow but also because my team won the Super Bowl....Go Packers.  I LOVE football and the only logical reason why I chose the Packers is because I thought they were the underdogs and I liked the color green.  But we invited all our friends in Jackson (all 3 of them...hahaha) and got ready for some good ole football fun.  I have wanted to make gumbo for a LONG time now since Brad loves it.  I didn't grow up with Cajun food or anything like gumbo so I wasn't sure what to expect.  But I read up on it and even watched some videos on how to make roux.  It didn't look so hard, right?  I also read that the two mosts important parts of Gumbo were the roux and the sausage.  So I marched to Kroger to find some Cajun sausage.  I found some that said "Cajun" but neglected to figure our what Boudain sausage meant.  I came home and started chopping the veggies and then made the roux. The dreaded and fearful roux.  I had to talk myself through it and added the oil and flour and watched it turn into a beautiful dark roux without burning it!  YEAH!  Then I stuck the sausage in the oven.  I took the sausage out of the oven and started cutting the sausage but it began to fall apart.  I didnt' think anything about it and added it to the gumbo and covered the pot with the lid to simmer.  I came to check back on it after an hour and with one stir I realized that the sausage fell apart!  WHAT?  I called Brad over and he said, "Oh, I wondered why you were using that kind of sausage because it's not meant to be cut in gumbo."  Well, why didn't he tell me earlier?  So I walked away from my less than perfect gumbo. 

Game time came and our friends came over complete with their Steelers shirts!  Go team!  I was outnumbered as 3 of them were going to the Steelers while 2 of us were going for the Packers!  We had a fantastic time though and I'm officially loving having people over!  I even busted out some of my fancy smanzy wedding platters to serve the veggies and hummus. 

Our menu:
Shrimp and fall-apart-sausage gumbo
Garlic Lime hummus
Spicy cranberry little smokies
Mixed berry cobbler and ice cream
5 great friends.....Go Packers!

Recipe to follow.....