Girls Weekend and Brilliant Ideas: Chicken Burrito Lasagna

Oh hey guys,
This past weekend was one for the books. Except for a few dramatic moments I enjoyed every second of it. Gavin has been camping with his dad and brother since last week, so Dahlia and I made the most of girl time. We painted nails about 7 times, ate Oreos for dinner, went to the movies, stayed up as late as we wanted while watching Taylor Swift music videos in bed and even spent an hour in the ER due to an unfortunate incident involving me, a block of cheese and my new chef's knife. It was so magical to hear Dahlia say more than once, "its girls weekend and we do whatever we want!" She really is just the coolest.

When the weekend ended and the sugar hangover wore off I knew I needed to make a real dinner, but I was still living the lazy life in my bathrobe so I had to make do with what I had on hand. I had a GENIUS idea to make a chicken burrito lasagna. I thought I was being so clever but it turns out loads of people have made this before. Don't you hate that? You think you invented something amazing and you just happen to look on that stupid google and find out that Suzie from Minnesota has been doing this since before you were even born. dumb. So here is the recipe!

Chicken Burrito Lasagna

food you need:
6 flour tortillas sliced into 2" strips
1 can of refried beans
1 red bell pepper sliced
1 yellow bell pepper sliced
1/2 an onion
2 cloves of minced garlic
1 jalapeno seeds removed and thinly sliced
1 tsp of Tapatio
1 jar of Herdez Salsa Verde
2 cups of shredded cheddar cheese
2 cups of shredded chicken
1 cup of spanish rice (ok confession time, I started to type out my reciped for this and it got really confusing, so just buy a box of it, or do what I did and throw a bunch of random spicy things in a skillet with some rice and chicken broth)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350. Make your spanish rice whichever way you want! Then in a large skillet heat evoo and add onion and garlic and cook till onion is translucent. Add in peppers, tapatio and chicken and cook for about three minutes. Remove from heat. Now its time to start layering your lasagna! place strips so they cover the bottom of a medium sized casserole dish, layer beans, rice, chicken and peppers mixture, 1/2 the jar of salsa and1/2 of the cheese, put more tortilla strips on top of that and repeat the layering steps. make sure that you cover the top with plenty of cheese because cheese is so awesome. Cook until cheese is brownish and bubbly, about 40 minutes. serve with sour cream and green onions.

I ate the leftovers for breakfast, because well, its my house and no one was home to judge me. Its way awesome on day 2. Perfect leftovers. See, I am so smart.

Capers, Vlada and Daytime Television: Chicken Diablo, A Love Story.

So lets talk about capers. I love capers. Anytime I go to a restaurant and there is a dish with capers involved I know that's what im getting. Because I like you guys, I will admit that there have been a couple of dark moments in my life where I've been cooking with capers and maybe ate a whole spoonful out of the jar. ok, maybe two spoonfuls. Those jars are pretty tiny people! That's like half the jar! I'm slightly proud and ashamed at the same time. Enough about capers though, Lets talk about my other best friend, Vlada.

Vlada and I have been friends for the past decade. She is the capers to my lox and cream cheese. At one point in our early 20's we thought it would be a great idea to film a cooking show called "Butter and Booze" well we took the booze part a little too seriously and that ended that about halfway through the recipe. By some magical fate we've have both ended up in Northern California to spend our adult years together. Having friends is fun, Having friends that knew you when you when you were still wearing glitter eye shadow and drinking Long Island Ice Tea's is basically the most fun. We both are currently figuring out together what its like to be in a relationship with nice men, navigating our way through motherhood and judging the cast of every daytime TV show and what they are wearing (spoiler alert, they are all squares with bad outfits). This recipe is adapted from The Chew, I say adapted because obviously we made it better and added way more jazz to the mix .Its super simple, looks and tastes like you spent hours and is ready in 20 minutes. If you do your job right you only have one pan to clean. BAM! perfect meal.

You need this stuff to make it:
1/4 cup of olive oil
4 boneless skin-on chicken thighs
salt and pepper
1/2 cup of water
1 large red pepper (thinly sliced)
1/2  of a red onion (chopped)
2 cloves of garlic (thinly sliced)
1 jalapeno (seeds removed and thinly sliced)
14 oz can of organic crushed tomatoes
 2 tablespoons of capers
1/2 cup roughly chopped flat leaf parsley


How to cook it:
Dry chicken with paper towel and season both sides with salt and pepper. Heat olive oil in a large pan and add chicken skin-side down with tongs. Drying the chicken before you season it will prevent it from popping in the oil. Cook on medium high heat for about 4-5 minutes. Flip chicken and cook for another 2 minutes. Add red onion, garlic, jalapeno, half the parsley and a little salt.  Let cook for another minute or so.  Add water and deglaze the pan with a wooden spoon, scraping up all of the fun chicken skin goodness. Cook until water is reduced by half which should take like 1-2 minutes. Add the can of crushed tomatoes with the juices, capers and cover. reduce heat and let flavors merry together for about 5 or so minutes, remove from heat and add the rest of the parsley and adjust seasoning to taste.

 You can serve this over just about anything! Mashed potatoes, quinoa, maybe a fun pasta! Really anything, or its great as just a main dish but that wonderful sauce deserves to be soaked up by something. Make this for dinner and tell me how great I am and how much you really wish that Vlada and I would actually film a real cooking show.

xo

Dahlia as a 6 year old.

Dahlia turned six! 6!!! Can you believe that?! I couldn't all day. In the days leading up to her birthday she constantly reminded me of her maturity. "Oh, sippy cups are for babies, I think I can use a grown up cup." or  "waking up early is for 5 year old's" and just like that I was waking her up for school. It was seriously like a light switch flipped and suddenly the cutest little human had turned into an adorable teenager with missing teeth. She is the coolest girl on the planet. I bet you think your kid is too, but you don't know Dahlia and someday she will run this country with those witty comebacks and smile. 

We wanted to invite all of the kiddos from her class to her party so we(ok me) decided on an ice cream social theme. 5 and 6 year olds hopped up on sugar seemed like too good of a time to pass up. So it happened and it was awesome.

First I made invites and that took a really long time. It's a good thing that Netflix exists.

Then the party happened and we had so much fun! Well I mean, I made a lot of crafts and then had many many melt downs and then the party happened. I will spare you those details though, because blogging is supposed to be about how easy and flawless things happen right? Perfect party with no swear words or tears? check and check.

Just so we're clear, this cake made me cry. I am not a baker and last year I swore I would buy a cake and not attempt to make one. Pinterest really makes you feel like you can do it though! BUT I can't. Next year I will probably forget and try again and by the time she turns 40, I will have perfected the birthday cake with poise and grace.

                                                   

 This is Zachary. He is the ultimate photo bomber. He just slide right into to every photo and staked his claim on Dahlia. I'm really glad he's funny AND Dahlia just about died when I invited him over for a play date.

 

Pinata's? I mean, I remember being pretty excited about them, but I had NO IDEA what a hit it would actually be. All the candy got knocked out within 5 minutes but that just meant that we taped it back up so the kids could hit it some more. Also, Dahlia looks like something from Game of Thrones in that last photo so that is neat.

She is such a great kid and I can't wait to see what she brings to the table this year. I'm a pretty lucky lady to know this girl and I can't wait for many more birthdays to come!

When You Find a Nice Man Meatloaf

So listen, when I was a super cute, super not at all domestic 21 year old gal, I made one of the greatest friendships of my entire adult life. The friend that I made was Joey Jackson. Joey, unlike any friend I have ever had before was a grown up. We're talking full time job AND health insurance. He did grown up things like laundry, bought toilet paper not in a four pack, drank wine that didn't come from a box and knew all of the words to every great pop song. Needless to say, I thought and still think to this day that he is one of the greatest people ever. Some months into our friendship, he invited me over for Sunday dinner. Quickly, I gathered that dinner was not just to be eaten, but to be learned. This was my first ever cooking lesson so for good reason it is my first cooking blog. I give you the Joey Jackson "When You Find a Nice Man Make Him This Meatloaf" Meatloaf. I've this recipe paleo and not paleo depending on where I'm at with my life but today I'm posting the tried and true "Nice Man" recipe.

See that? That's meat. come on guys, its meatloaf! I'm pretty positive we are knew what we were getting into a few paragraphs back.

You'll need these things:
1 package of grass fed ground beef
16 oz.package of HOT sausage
1 Package of uncured bacon
1/4 cup of low fat milk
1 egg
1/4 of italian bread crumbs
some grated onion- like 1/8 cup or so
1/8 grated Parmesan
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp dried thyme
salt and pepper to taste
chili sauce

Do it This Way:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. place bacon on baking sheet and cook for 10 minutes or until they look about half way to crispy town. Meanwhile,  mix  beef, sausage, milk, bread crumbs, egg, cheese and spices together in mixer. I used to just use my hands but they get really cold and my mixer does a better job because she isn't a baby.  mix until only slightly sticky and not runny at all, if you need to, add more bread crumbs if too runny or more milk if too dry.  Form Mixture into something that resembles a loaf and place on a foil lined baking sheet.  Pull bacon out of the oven and let cool slightly. Wrap bacon around the meat loaf and cook for 30 minutes. Remove meatloaf from oven and spread chili sauce using a brush, all over the whole thing. cook for 15 minutes. Remove and spread more chili sauce. Cook 8 minutes. Remove, crank the oven up to 425, spread chili sauce again and let that brown for about 7 minutes. It should be in the oven for about an hour total. Let Meatloaf rest for about 10 minutes. Serve with mashed potatoes because you can make appropriate choices.

So there you go. This is the first meal I ever cooked Gavin because I knew he was just about the nicest man from the moment I met him. After telling Joey about Gavin his first question was if I had made him meatloaf yet. Yes, yes I had. Thank you Joey for setting me up for success.

listen guys!

So I started a blog. You should know that because you are currently reading it. I recently stopped working to focus more at home on my family. It's super fun and I love it. I realized through my many hours spent at home alone, that I am doing some like really productive stuff. I cook awesome dinners, I clean like a champ, I make really great crafts and I'm smart enough to help with kindergarten homework. Everyone should see just how great I am at these things. So this blog will do just that: recipes, craft ideas, really cute outfits that I find at the local Old Navy, shows to binge watch on Netflix, my personal testimony of how great Taylor Swift is, and probably a lot of pictures of my dog. I bet you're all thrilled. You are so welcome, Internet World.
xo.