Dinner, Dessert, & An Update

Life has been exhausting lately, which is way better than when it was boring and depressing. I've now got two jobs and am well on my way to starting a third! Holy cow! It's good for me though because two of the jobs slow WAY down around November and one wont pick back up until the summer. But before I get into all of that, Nate and I have been super good lately :-) And you all know how happy that makes me. He's such a sweet heart. So while he cut the grass the other night, I made us dinner and dessert. And since my fab friend, Tonya, has started a food blog and keeps getting me in the mood to share culinary explorations, I've decided to do a cooking post this time along with my update. I've been craving Chicken Enchiladas lately, but I don't want the frozen dinner kind, no no no! I want the homemade kind because we all know it tastes SO much better. I found a lovely simple recipe here at Musings of a Housewife and modified it just a little because it sounded just a tad bland for my taste... so I just added a few things to spice it up :-D

First I gathered all my ingredients: Chicken, cream, enchilada sauce, cheese, salsa, and tortillas and then I added some Tabasco Chipotle pepper sauce.

Next comes the cutting up and cooking of the chicken. The lady in the blog cooked whole pieces of chicken and then cut it up into pieces before putting it into the tortillas...I find it's much easier to cook the chicken if you cut it up raw and toss it in a pan on the stove, smaller pieces just cook faster.

After the chicken had been thoroughly cooked, I placed it in a mixing bowl, added the salsa and tossed the two together with a spoon. Then I got a little frisky and added a few shakes of the Tabasco sauce to it.

Next take your cream and pour it in a bowl, this is another spot I deviated from her original recipe. Here I mixed cream and Enchilada Sauce and a bit of the Tabasco together with a spoon and THEN I dipped the tortilla's into the mixture. After talking to my sister today on the phone I figured out why the blog recipe said to do this. My sis mentioned that her enchilada's always turn out a bit too crunchy, well I guess if you don't moisten the tortillas before baking them that's what happens, so add some tenderness to your Enchiladas.

After moistening the tortillas I scooped out the chicken mixture and placed it off to one side then rolled and placed it in a baking dish.

Then I poured all the remaining cream mixture over the top of the dish letting is soak through to the bottom a bit (this was SUCH a good idea!)

Add your cheese, again here's my deviation from the original poster's recipe...I decided to get the 2 cheese Mexican mixture from Food Lion (it's got a bit more spice). So I sprinkled the ENTIRE bag of cheese onto the dish just before popping it into the preheated oven @ 350 for 30 mins.

While the oven was finishing up the job for me, I had bought this LOVELY Caesar salad kit...they sell several levels here, go for the Ultimate if you take this route...it's got all the fixins. I tossed together my salad and shoved it in the fridge then spent some time flirting with my honey and cutting up apples for the Apple Wrapper Pie I made for dessert (unfortunately, I ran out of gas and didn't feel like posting pics and a recipe for that...maybe next time).

After it was all done cooking and chilling we threw it all very uncerimoniously onto plates and chowed down, together of course :-)

Alright! Now that I've finally gotten that out there in the open, you should try it! Heck even make some modifications yourself! It's an amazing and simple dish. Okay so on to my update. Here's where my beach life has taken me....

As you know if you've been keeping up with things, I was here for a whole month jobless and bored out of my gourd. I then was offered a job with Bluewater down in Wrightsville as a hostess. I took this very low paying job with the hopes of soon finding another job to help make up the difference financially. After about a month of working here and not making anywhere near enough money to meet all my financial needs, I was offered yet another job, this time with Lifetouch Studios School photography as, yes you guessed it!  A photographer. So three days a week I take pictures of kids in schools all up the NC coast and the rest of the week I'm running people back and forth to tables...this is all VERY painfully exhausting. My body isn't used to this much physical labor during a day and while it may not seem like much to you, try sitting behind a desk for nearly 6 years and then when you're almost 30 years old taking jobs where you stand all. Day. Long! It's hard on the body to accept more so than the mind. But, do not consider this complaints, I like my jobs so far and I like doing something new with my life. It's actually fun.

And recently I was offered a position as an appointment setter with my dearest friend Emily's company whom she is an HR Rep for, at there office here at the coast. It pays very well and I can work from home, the beach, Nate's house, or even my car... so I'm very stoked about the many blessings and opportunities that have cropped up in my life these days. I hope that I can keep  bringing you delightful news, even if I do toss a few complaints your way...afterall, I wouldn't be me if I didn't :-)