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Spanish Inquisition

 

I realized today as I was making this that it isn't really Spanish rice, per se, but when I named it the first time I was really impressed with myself (yet again). This is more of a "Mexican Inquisition", rather than a "Spanish Inquisition" -- but I thought the name was catchy. This is my recipe that I came up with, using leftover taco beef (taco filling). Since it's Leftover Tuesdays again this week, hosted by Rachel over at Rachel's Bite, I thought this would be a good time to post this recipe. It actually came about when my sister challenged me to make a recipe using the little packets of salsa that come with the Taco kit. It's about fifty cents cheaper to buy the whole taco kit over just the shells, so that's what we both do - leaving us with three packages of runny salsa to deal with. While cleaning out the fridge one day I found some leftover taco seasoned ground beef, so I threw that it to my basic Spanish Rice recipe. Then just to answer the challeng of the salsa, I added that as well, and voila! A great 'clean the fridge' supper, using up some of my leftovers. No leftover taco filling? No problem - I've added a simple taco seasoning recipe at the end of the Spanish Inquisition recipe. When I make my tacos from a kit, I also use 1.5lbs of beef, just so I'll have some leftovers to make this.

Irish Pub Stew

I have no picture for this recipe, which is unfortunate because it was REALLY good. I was intending to get a photo, but by the time I got home from work, the Irish Pub Stew was gone - eaten by the hoarde of boys here at home. This is a very easy, great tasting tomato based beef stew. It is also a crockpot recipe which doubles it's appeal for me. It does require that you brown the beef chunks first, which is not too much work if you are in a rush. And it does actually call for a can of tomato soup, but don't hold that against this irish stew. For the stewing beef in this recipe, I used a small outside round roast (on sale for $1.49lb) and cut it into bite sized chunks. Any tough cut of beef, roast or steak, will work for this recipe. Of course, you can always buy stewing beef already cut up at the grocery store, and that would work just fine for this recipe.

Chili chicken wraps

 

This is something I threw together yesterday before I found out we had supper at my mother's place. It's sort of an original - I read so many cookbooks that I'm sure it's not, but I didn't use a recipe when I made it. I wanted to use up some boneless, skinless chicken breasts I had in the freezer but I also wanted tacos, so I had to come up with something. This chicken is shredded after cooking, mixed with the chili spiced tomatoes, and served on a fajita wrap with cheese, lettuce and sour cream. The Chili chicken can be made in the crockpot and left to simmer all day, or made on your stovetop or in your oven. Whatever is easiest to do. The chili powder can be adjusted to taste, and there is room to use a little more chicken if you have more people to feed. Kick it up a notch with some cayenne or hot chili seasoning if you like things hot. Enjoy!

Apple Oatmeal Squares

 

This is actually a combination of two old apple square recipes - one came from the Tightwad Gazette, by Amy Dacyzyn and the other part of it is from an old church ladies cookbook I found lying around. I wanted this square to be like a date square without the dates. The Tightwad recipe (I think it was from the depression or something like that) does not call for sugar in the crumb topping, but the other recipe - an actual apple-date square recipe - did call for it. So like always, I improvised. And then I forgot half the ingredients as I was mixing it - so the picture may not be exactly what it will look like in its finished form. (I kept wondering why there was so little crumb mixture - once I added the oatmeal in, it seemed to work much better.)