mexican lasagna, complete with sub-par photos

******Insecure blogger's disclaimer:  I read some blogs with gorgeous pictures of food.  This is not one of those blogs.  I don't have a fancy camera.  I don't know how to make lighting work for me.  But I can point and shoot, and I think it was an interesting experience anyway.  And a delightful and delicious result.  And one more thing I learned:  remembering to stop and take a photo between each step is difficult.  I didn't capture it all, but you get the idea.*****

I skipped over photographing the sauce-making, but you'll see the end result later.  These first few steps were mostly inspired by this recipe with my own alterations.  I started by browning a pound of ground beef and sauteing diced onions.  No measurement on the onions.  I added a packet of taco seasoning and followed the directions there (Pastor Ryan makes his own taco seasoning, but McCormick works for me).  I put that aside and started on the sauce . . . only to suddenly realize that I had neglected to buy enchilada sauce.  I made my grocery list from three different recipes, and I wrote down enchilada sauce even though I don't really like it.  When I was at Kroger, I thought I remembered how it was used in the recipes and decided I didn't need it, completely overlooking the fact that it was a key ingredient in the sauce I did plan to make.  So  I sauteed more onions and added some minced garlic and a can of black beans--which I drained but couldn't be bothered to rinse.  To this I added a can of Rotel (the recipe called for a 15 oz can, but I've never seen Rotel in anything but a 10 oz) and since I was without enchilada sauce, I added a can of diced tomatoes and a can of green chiles (I would have just used more Rotel, but I didn't have that either).  I supposed the sauce was both chunkier and runnier than it should have been, so I let it cook down more than I might have otherwise.  When I removed it from heat, I added the sour cream as instructed, and then I was ready to assemble:

I set up at the dining room table because I have a rule about no laptops in the kitchen.  This is the cast of characters:  tortillas, cheese, taco meat mixed with corn (I forgot to mention that I mixed the corn in after the meat was cooked and seasoned), the tomato and black bean sauce and salsa verde (that part came from Pastor Ryan as did the corn--I probably should have just reduced the portions from his huge recipe and made it, but it had rice in it, and I don't like rice in my Mexican food).

A few of the recipes I read said to spray the pan and others suggested starting with a thin layer of whatever sauce was being used.  PR used salsa verde, and told me that if I'd never tried salsa verde, I needed to immediately.  I believed him.

Next came a layer of torn-up tortillas.  The tortillas I used were burrito-sized and required a lot of tearing.  I think soft-taco size would be fine here. 

The taco meat/corn layer came next.  Logically the next step for me was the sauce and then cheese, but my primary inspiration said cheese then sauce, so that's the order in which I did it--and I forgot to photograph the cheese layer either time, but you know what shredded cheese looks like, right?

After the cheese came sauce.  I didn't say this up there, but you only use half of the meat and the sauce for each layer.  Halving them was the hardest part--which is probably why I forgot to photograph the sauce layer the first time around.  I caught it on the second round though.

After the sauce, I did another layer of torn tortillas, and a bit more salsa verde.  Then I started over with the remaining half of meat/corn, another layer of cheese, and the last of the tomato/bean sauce.  Finally I did a third torn tortilla layer, slapped on the remainder of the salsa verde and topped the whole thing with cheese (final count:  3 thin layers of salsa verde [one small can], 3 layers of torn tortillas [probably about five or six of the giant ones I was using], 3 layers of shredded Mexican blend cheese [it was a four cup package, and the cheese layers were pretty substantial], 2 layers of the taco mean/corn mixture, and 2 layers of the tomato/black bean/sour cream sauce.

In all its unbaked glory

A terribly unhelpful look at the layers.

I didn't bake mine until the next day so it spent the night in the fridge.  It was supposed to bake for 15 or 20 minutes at 350, but since mine was coming from a refrigerated state rather than the mostly warm state in which it was assembled and since I had a staff meeting in the hour leading up to serving time, I heated it (covered with foil) at a low temp for about 40 minutes and then kicked it up to 350 for the last 20 minutes or so.  Frankly if I hadn't had the starving masses waiting on me, I would have let it go another few minutes to get bubblier.  Let me also warn you that I have no idea how accurate or inaccurate the temperature settings are for the oven in our staff lounge, so cooking times could vary quite a bit from that.  If you were assembling, baking, and serving this all in one day, I think the fifteen minutes would be just dandy, as everything but the cheese is already cooked and warm.  Mine was certainly not too runny--in fact, I think I could have let the sauce be saucier with excellent results.  It cut into squares beautifully and kept its shape like lasagna should. 

I forgot the after picture until after we'd started to dig in, but this shows the layers off better anyway.

It's everything I love about Mexican food in a big, jumbled, layery mess.  Yum.

One of the thousands of recipes I read suggested sour cream as a garnish, and I couldn't pass up that opportunity either.  PR suggested freshly chopped cilantro too, which would have been perfect, but there was none to be had at Kroger on Sunday afternoon, though.  I was disappointed in the extreme, though I was also intrigued by the existence of a tube of cilantro paste I discovered--just not intrigued enough to buy it.  But even without cilantro, I still managed to eat two helpings at lunch yesterday (second helping pictured here), and I'm not ashamed to admit that.  I also had it for dinner last night and tonight.  I kinda liked it.

During the creating process I got a little concerned that it might be too spicy, but it definitely isn't.  In fact, I could definitely stand to heat it up more, but not if I were making it for tiny babies or my moma.

If I were a real food blogger, I'd have worked harder at making a useful, easy-to-follow recipe for you, dear imaginary readers, but I'm not.  I really don't think it needs a recipe.  Just gather up your favorite Mexican ingredients and get to layering with the variations that most appeal to you.  You could switch up your beans, go for corn tortillas, use that enchilada sauce that I didn't, add in your favorite salsa, nix the corn, substitute chicken for beef or go vegetarian, try it with rice, chop up fresh jalepenos, garnish with some guacamole.  The possibilities are endless, and as long as you have enough of everything to make a layer or two, you're good to go.  Several of the recipes I read called for actual lasagna noodles instead of tortillas, but that seemed weird to me--and I think tortillas are a thousand times better than noodles anyway.  So you could make that substitution, but I'd judge you for it.

But I'm a judging judger like that.

a first (and last) attempt at food blogging

When folks in our department have birthdays, we tend to use the occasion as an excuse to eat.  We typically have a lunchtime potluck and the birthday honoree gets to choose a theme.  Because of my love for all things baking--and the dozens of delightful dessert recipes I've collected from my moma and her sisters--I'm almost always in charge of cake.  This also works out nicely for me in that I don't necessarily have to conform to the theme. 

(Let me just mention as backstory here that I am great at following a recipe, and I have lots of success with those I've collected from the great cooks in my life--but I follow recipes.  I'm not one of those creative geniuses who experiments and creates new delights.  I'm rarely even the kind of girl who finds herself missing some key ingredient and improvises a delicious solution.  When I have a situation like that, I book to the store for the missing ingredient.  And because of my rather by-the-book cooking style, I also don't venture into new territory very often, recipe-wise.  I like to know what something's going to look or taste like in the end.  It's just the kind of hairpin I am.)

But in my role as resident dessert maker in our department, I haven't often had to branch out.  My strawberry cake (originating with my great-grandmother) is an oft-requested hit with the work folks as well as orange juice cake and Heath bar cake with a Butterfinger variation, depending on the preference of the birthday girl or boy.  Back in March, Ellie requested the most chocolate cake I could make.  It was a culinary adventure, to be sure.  I ended up making a dark chocolate version of Pioneer Woman's chocolate sheet cake in round layers.  I used a chocolate cream cheese buttercream icing (recipe from PW's Tasty Kitchen recipe site) as the filling between the layers.  Then I iced the whole shooting match with chocolate ganache (a million recipes out there, but I used this one I found on Tasty Kitchen) and then piped on some decorations with some whipped ganache.  It was a feat, a thing of beauty, and though I was blogging and sort of living and breathing other people's food blogging, I couldn't be bothered to take any pictures or write about it. 

In June we celebrated a couple more birthdays with a joint potluck, the theme of which was "exotic" foods.  And though I rarely feel compelled to make the dessert fit the theme, I did this time.  I chose to make pavlova, a meringue covered in fruit and whipped cream that I first encountered in Australia (though the internet is full of debate about whether pavlova is actually from New Zealand).  But I was also quite afraid that my first attempt ever at making meringue would be an epic fail, so as a back-up, I made Tres Leche cake (thanks again, P-Dub).  Both turned out pretty decent, I'm pleased to report. 

So the point I've been rambling towards is that lately I've been trying more new recipes with positive results, and that, imaginary readers, brings us to our most recent birthday potluck.  The theme this time was all things spicy, but the birthday boy (Cory the page to his many fans) had requested a cake iced with that chocolate cream cheese buttercream I first made back in March, so I thought I'd be doing somewhat of a repeat recipe, which was fine by me--that icing is a snap to throw together.  But Sunday I decided that I wanted to make something spicy in addition to the cake, so I went exploring.  By now you've realized that PW is my go-to for new recipes, so that's where I started, and that's where I found Pastor Ryan's Mexican Lasagna.  I was drawn to a few things about the recipe, but I knew it wasn't exactly what I wanted.  So I headed over to the fine folks at Tasty Kitchen and found ten more varieties of Mexican Lasagna, none of which were exactly what I wanted.  And in that moment, I became that person I am not--the inventive, off-the-cuff, thrower together of new recipes.  And since I was being a brand-new kind of cook, I grabbed the camera and became a food blogger too.  Or at least I will be in a minute.

Stay tuned for the next post where I'll actually get around to the recipe.

a bit of a ramble, because I've missed you

I saw #1 blog fan Mac last night and was reminded that I hadn't given the people what they wanted since Tuesday.  Sorry, imaginary readers.  I lost track of time and neglected you for far too long.  (Although I would argue that I gave you such great material on both Monday and Tuesday, that I deserve for you to cut me a break.  But let's not argue, friends.  I'll just do better next time.)

I've got a few posts/ideas in the hopper, but none of them are quite ready for public consumption yet, so I'm just going to meander through the rest of this post with no clear direction.  I'm sure you won't notice the difference.

I was in kind of a foul mood last week.  If you saw me or had interaction with me from Monday through Thursday, I'm sorry for being a grouchy jerk.  I don't know what was wrong or why I was crabby, but I just had the case of the blahs.  Lucky for us all, my moma and the Popster came for a visit, and spending the day getting stuff hung on my walls and some decorative stuff in place lifted my spirits.  Plus seeing my moma just does that for me.  She's good people.  And because we got so much stuff done, there's going to be at least one more home improvement post in your future, I bet.  But not today.

Google Analytics has been my special friend lately.  I love knowing how many people are visiting me here and how they're finding me and whatnot.  It was through the miracle of Google Analytics that I discovered my brush with HGTV internet-stardom--when my visits spiked last Saturday, I discovered that nearly all of those visitors were coming through the same referring site.  I also discovered this week that some decorating/home improvement Spanish language blog had created a post using most of my process pictures and linked to my blog.  I was severely disappointed in myself that I could comprehend almost none of the text, but thanks to the incredibly literal translating efforts of Microsoft office products, I think I got the gist of it.  It definitely seemed from the translated version that the writer may have been trying to pass the project of as her own, but she did link to my blog, so I don't think it was in a nefarious way.  I will say the poorly translated version that I read definitely didn't convey the charm and wit that I used to originally recount the project, but I'm willing to bet that if I could have understood the Spanish without the help of a translator, it would have been lovely.

In other Google Analytic news, it seems as though the increased traffic from the HGTV plug is dying down.  I was back down to less than a hundred visitors yesterday for the first time in a week.  Before this thing happened, I averaged between 20 and 30 a day.  I know the quality of the product really shouldn't be affected by the stats, but I did feel a certain amount of pressure to perform well for all the increased traffic.  The truth that I learned from my stats is that almost none of the new visitors explored beyond the dresser post on which they landed.  My bounce rate increased by about 50% this week (though the fact that my visits were up over 500% sort of made up for that a bit).  I guess it comes down to preferring  a smaller number of readers who I feel like are at least moderately invested in this blogging adventure or a huge number of people who just happen by.  The point of all that convoluted wandering is that I've reminded myself today that stats don't drive what I do here, so it's cool if none of those people ever return--though if they do, I'll be here to greet them with my usual standard of excellence . . . or something. 

And here's one more thing I learned from Google Analytics--and then I promise I'm moving on.  I realized this week that it can tell me what service providers my visitors are using, and I discovered that in the days following my open letter to Penske, I had several visitors originating from their network.  I guess those open letters were more powerful than I realized.  I'll have to use them wisely from now on--though I still have no statistical proof that the Michael Jackson mime found my blog after my open letter to him.

Last Sunday I set a lofty goal and shared it with Shane about catching up on my Daily Bible reading.  I didn't come close on the goal, but I did make some progress this week.  Faithful project 4:4 fans (or just faithful fans of the Bible) will be receiving a new prodigal 4:4 post soon.  But I'll still be five weeks behind.  Sigh.  Speaking of other things I'm behind on . . . I requested all seven books that FHDM recommends to improve one's writing.  Because not reading books I already owned or already had checked out from the library wasn't enough.  I had to bring more books into my immediate vicinity that I wouldn't make time to read.  But I warn you, imaginary readers, if I ever get those seven books read, you won't be able to stay away. 

I want to start food blogging, but I never think about it until after I've already made and eaten something that would make an interesting post.  I'm going to think more about this--my kitchen does have great natural light, so if I were ever home to do any cooking during the day, I think it would make some great photos.  Maybe someday.  Today at the library, I was going to make those dirt cup things with the gummy worms and I would have shown you a picture of that, but no one showed up for the program.

Things are about to get so intense at work that I may not be able to resist blogging about my job.  I'll truly know then that I've run out of decent ideas--or that work has so consumed me that I don't have time for other thoughts.  If it happens, please don't give up on me.

I have discovered what I believe to be the perfect hypothetical question.  It reveals so much about those that answer.  So let me ask you here, imaginary reader, and maybe someday I'll analyze your responses and tell you what they say about you as a person.  Ready?  Here goes:

If you were ordering a pizza for yourself and didn't have to share with anyone, what three toppings would you choose?  You must choose exactly three toppings.  You may explain why if, like me, you can't answer a direct question without justifications and explanations and personal history.

a bit of a ramble--blame the weather

 

Photo courtesy of bored roommate and reporter in the field Jess.

I never want to work for a place that can't declare a snow day.  Snow days are the most indulgent type of day-off ever.  A snow day is an excuse to wear favorite pajamas all day, cook every single thing that's in the kitchen without doing the dishes, and spend the remainder of one's time in the most frivolous ways possible.  So far today, I slept until nearly noon, drank chocolate milk (pre-snow day grocery store runs are all about self-indulgence too), watched last night's episode of Bones, made and consumed some lunch, and read a bit.  My afternoon if full of more of the same.  Bliss.  If I had some chocolate, I might die from contentment.

I went to the grocery on Tuesday because I was making dinner for my sweet Uncle Don who drove down to Little Rock to take a shot at fixing my broken dryer.  I didn't plan on going back, no matter what the weather might or might not do later in the week, but yesterday afternoon, I had to make another Kroger run to buy orange juice to take to Our House (a local homeless shelter) to go along with the brinner that we were serving last night.  So since I found myself at Kroger with all my weather-concerned neighbors and standing in line for one thing was going to be just as annoying as standing in line for multiple things, I bought the indulgent chocolate milk and the ingredients to try my first Pioneer Woman recipe.

Have I talked about my girl-crush on the Pioneer Woman here yet?  You know the part about my winning a $75 amazon gift card in one of her contests.  And I feel like, without doing the archival research, that I've talked about here other times too.  But maybe you don't know the depth of my admiration/stalking.  P-Dub cracks me up, and I want my blog to be just like hers when it grows up--without the livestock and the fancy camera and the homeschooling.  Her recipe posts are awesome, full of step-by-step pictures of what things should be looking like at each stage.  It's a delight.  So this week when she proclaimed that she had perfected a non-chunky salsa recipe, I was definitely intrigued.

I have salsa issues.  I love Mexican restaurant salsa, but I don't have even a smidge of love for thick or chunky jars of salsa.  The only kind I will ever buy is Tostitos Restaurant Style, which they stopped making for a few years but is now back, I'm happy to report.  But if sensible, frugal Ellen is leading the grocery shopping expedition, impulsive, salsa-loving Ellen doesn't get to pay $2.79, plus another couple of bucks for chips to enjoy a salsa experience.  I don't know why frugal Ellen gets so hung up about this.  I hate frugal Ellen.  She never lets me have any fun.  Luckily PW-loving, cooking enthusiast Ellen can sometimes show frugal Ellen who's boss.

Lucky for all my various personalities because PW's description of her new salsa recipe sounded like everything I wanted in a salsa--and there was very little chopping.  I hate chopping.  It uses canned tomatoes and Rotel and a food processor among other things.  I don't own a food processor, but I decided that all the ingredients were liquidy enough that I could try it in a blender.  So I went for it.  And it is awesome, possibly perfect.  Mine did turn out a bit runnier than hers, due to the blender, I'm sure, but I liked it that way.
  This morning frugal Ellen got curious about the cost of buying all those separate ingredients, so she got got out her receipt and did some math.  I already had the onion, garlic, salt, sugar, and cumin here at home, so the cost of those are not figured in, but the truth is, I always have those things at home, and I used such small amounts of each that the cost seems negligible for those ingredients.  Anyway I made 48 ounces of salsa for $3.78.  The jars of Tostitos are 16 ounces, I'm fairly certain, so technically I saved $4.59 by making my own.  Take that, frugal Ellen.  The only bad spot is that I'm almost out of chips and I'm committed to these pajamas.

In other news, I didn't actually make it to the homeless shelter last night to serve dinner after making that special trip to Kroger for o.j.  Yesterday morning I woke up with a ridiculous amount of pain in my neck from sleeping on it funny.  I tried to let the shower pound on it some, which is usually all my aches and pains need, but this was serious.  When I made the reflexive move of throwing my head back after removing my wet-hair towel, I thought I would hit the floor in agony.  It was bad.  I went to work and whined all day, and after the Kroger run, I decided that I couldn't take it any more.  So I sent the juice to Our House with Jess and made a date with my bed, some ibuprofen, and a heating pad.  I could make myself comfortable in various positions, but when I got up later to eat dinner and make the salsa, it still hurt, and this morning when I finally dragged out of bed, it still hurt.  It still hurts now.  I should probably take more ibuprofen.  Instead, I'm going to complain.  I don't like being old.

Frugal Ellen won another victory yesterday, besides the salsa incident.  Jess and I are moving to a new place.  Last week, our friend Dee told us that the other half of her duplex was about to be empty, so I put in a call to her landlord immediately.  We hadn't seen Dee's place at that point, but we knew she had two bedrooms and we knew she payed $225 less in rent than us.  That was definitely worth pursuing.  We were able to see Dee's house, which is a mirror image of her neighbors on Saturday, and we liked it enough to stay interested.  We were able to see the one that would actually be ours yesterday afternoon, and we're sold.  We're not moving until mid-March, which works out great for the remainder of our lease here.  It's in North Little Rock, which is closer to Shane and closer to work for me, but further for Jess.  She says she's fine with that.  She also says she's fine with the smaller closets, but we'll see about that.  The kitchen is small and has some storage and space issues, but I have too much stuff, so here's an opportunity to work on that.  Anyway, we're excited.  It's going to be fun to live next door to Dee--and not feel too worried that we're being too loud for the neighbors.  And it's going to be a delight to pay $112.50 less in rent every month.  Frugal Ellen's heart sings.

Now I've got to stop this ramble.  More frivolous entertainments await.  Wherever you are, imaginary readers, I hope you're warm and snug and safe.

i feel like a better person already

My friend Philip has about a million hobbies.  He canoes, knits, name-drops, reads, sews, over-analyzes,  juggles, plays the banjo, cooks, charmingly stalks girls he likes, and volunteers with his church's youth group.  In his spare time, he works in the inter-library loan department and supports the library in every way imaginable.  Every time I discover another of his talents or hobbies, I'm amazed and struck by my own lack of desire to do anything besides watch tv and feed my internet addiction.  Sometimes Philip and his hobbies make me tired, but they always make me feel inferior.

It's not that I'm without skill.  I'm decent at drawing.  I enjoy music and over the course of my life have competently played the piano, the trumpet, and the tuba.  I have a passion for the written word, which manifests in a love of reading and writing (something I'm finally indulging in this charming little blog of mine).  I'm decently crafty, with the ability to cross-stitch, crochet, and knit all locked away in some part of my brain.  I love to cook and bake, and I'm told that I'm good at it.  So I have the foundation for quite a few hobbies, but what I lack is the structure or discipline to make time for any of these things.  Don't get me wrong:  I like watching tv and being addicted to the internet, and I rarely feel like the time devoted to those things is wasted.  But I guess I'd like to feel a bit more well-rounded and to cultivate a few more conversational topics besides facebook, Pioneer Woman, and episodes of Glee.  (But if you want to talk about any of those things, I'm so your girl.)

So some of my activities of late have been about diversifying.  I started writing this blog.  I committed to an online book club where I'll be reading and discussing Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship for the next several weeks (expect a blog on that soon).  And today when faced with the choice to go to double-punch Tuesday lunch at The Flying Burrito with Philip and our friend Bob (which is usually about as good as a Tuesday gets for me) or going to "It's Always Something," a new series of lunchtime library programs, I chose the program, where local artist Sylvia Wilkes taught us a bit about watercolors and turned us loose to make something.  I took some really terrible pictures of my finished project (well, almost finished--I still need to actually mount them on that white background).

We started by doing crayon rubbings of various textures.

I used mostly toothpicks.

And a coil of wire.

Then once we had our textures, we painted over them with watercolors . . .

 . . .  however we wanted to.

Sometimes blank paper terrifies me.

It was intimidating, but I just gritted my teeth and played through it.

Then using a cardboard viewfinder, I selected the pieces of my whole page that I wanted to cut out and highlight, which is why there are five small pieces instead of one larger one.

Did I mention that these photographs are terrible?  Because they are heinous.
 
While I was at the program today, I also committed to attending the next meeting of the library book club, which is next Tuesday.  We're reading Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian, which sounds intriguing.  Expect a review once I finish it.

Apparently the experience got my creativity flowing because after work, when I was doing my pre-snow Krogering, along with three quarters of the population of Little Rock, I couldn't walk down an aisle without getting a brilliant idea for some recipe I wanted to try out.  The sensible, frugal side of me didn't allow that creative genius to go completely out-of-control, but I did come home with some interesting prospective ingredients.  Tonight, I made taco soup (soups are my specialty) and, for the first time ever, homemade applesauce.  I realize those two things don't go together.  The applesauce was more for later, than the soup, but I'm pleased to report that I did a fairly impressive job of both.

And the good times don't stop there.  If I can convince my moma to give me a refresher course in casting on when  I see her week after next, I'll be able to go to the third Tuesday library program (Sit and Stitch) and gossip over knitting needles with Philip and my awesome boss Lisa. 

But I've definitely had enough of my hobbies, old and new, tonight.  Genesis chapters 12-14 are calling my name.  I'm still on track with project 4:4, if you count reading after midnight but before I've officially called it a day as being on track.  I personally do.