When I was a new blogger I’d constantly try to take baked casserole meals like this one out of their dishes and photograph them on a plate, presenting one of the most homely meals possible to my readers.

I have found the light in both respects.  Chili powder is something that really, really can be wonderful or be pretty sub-par depending on your source.  Moreover, when recipes call for two types of chili powders, you’re really missing out by not making the recipes as specified!

And casseroles pretty much always look much more fantastic in their baking dishes than slopped onto your plate.

I’ve made meals such as this countless times.  Generally, I wing it.  This time, however, I followed a recipe from Vegetarian Times.  This meal was really excellent which is why I’m sharing it with you!  I added it to my meal plan because it used up more of the corn tortillas I had purchased for my tacos.

Tortilla Pie – Mexican Lasagna (adapted from Vegetarian Times)

I cooked the first package and after dinner when my husband simply said it best: “Never make those again.”

It didn’t hurt my feelings because he was right.

I had washed my hands at least 3 times.  The kitchen sink was covered in a fatty, slimy, film.  Every bite we took seemed to be laced with the same gelatinous feeling.  The flavor was good but the fat was….bad.  BAD.

And when he said ‘never make those again’ I knew I was in trouble – I had another 2.75 pounds of short ribs sitting in my freezer.

I’m one of those unlucky ladies whose husband travels for work.  Back in the day, I was okay with it.  I was working a low maintenance job that I could leave at the office, had two well behaved dogs, and a maid.  Now I have a high maintenance job, three dogs, one cat, and two horses and I don’t think any maids live in the same county as I do.  So when he’s gone, my needles are pinned.  But I knew I could only rid ourselves of these short ribs if I cooked them while he was gone and recovered from the fatty mess on my own.

I put on my thinking cap to develop a cooking method that significantly decreased the amount of fat left in the final product.  The recipe was so good, in fact, that I saved just a little bit to serve him when he came back from his trip.  He, of course, with his super fast metabolism, ate his over pasta.  As you can see above, I ate mine over shredded yellow squash ‘noodles.’

The truth about this cooking method is that it takes more time than the other.  This isn’t a “a feel like short ribs for dinner!” recipe.  It requires planning.  If you’ve ever wanted to love short ribs like I have, however, but couldn’t get past the fat then this is the method for you.  I’ll include the recipe I used as well but I think this method can be used for a variety of recipes.

Greek Style Short Ribs (inspired by Elly Says Opa)

And I just feel better about foods in general when they are baked rather than fried.  And I truly believe that these egg rolls are just as satisfyingly crunchy and flavorful when baked as they are when they are fried.

I was inspired to whip these up because of the recent purchase by the Omnivore of a deep fryer (ironic, eh?).  He had one before we got married and some how it disappeared during a move of ours (::whistles innocently::).  He asked that I pick up some premade egg rolls for him to whip up in his spiffy new deep fryer and I obliged.  He was not happy with the results and it had nothing to do with the frying.  Like most things, sometimes homemade is better.  These egg rolls weren’t difficult to make, they didn’t have much hands on time, in fact, the most difficult part was me searching the internet to find the right recipe.

Most had meat in the filling.  Do you really taste the meat amongst all that filling?  To me, it seemed like a great opportunity to go vegetarian.  The Omnivore, in his effort to avoid seafood, always seeks out vegetarian egg rolls at Asian restaurants anyway.  Some recipes called for precooking the vegetables, some didn’t.  Some called for mushrooms, which I would have loved, but my husband would not.  Some recipes called for a ton of seasoning added to the filling, others called for none.  My head was spinning after it all so I winged it.

You’ll find when you read the recipe that I roasted the veggies prior to stuffing the egg rolls.  I love the flavor of roasting and thought that this method would remove a lot of moisture from the vegetable filling – a good thing.  I seasoned the filling and used a combination of flour and water to make a paste to seal the egg roll itself.  Unwrapping wasn’t an issue I faced with baking but it may be one if you choose to fry these babies.  I am happy to say that ones my husband fried stayed together in his deep fryer!

The result was a very crispy egg roll.  Once I allowed it to cool enough (I bolt my food down way too quickly sometimes!), I could tell the flavors of the filling were really quite perfect.  I am so glad that I made a ton of these so that we have some in the freezer waiting for a craving (right next to that box of store bought egg rolls that my husband will probably never finish).

I’d like to give an additional shout out to Jessica for her donation of chopsticks straight from China!

Crispy Baked Eggrolls

We had plenty of food and we had two bags of tortilla chips leftover.  Just my luck.  I ended up eating one of the leftovers bags for breakfast on the way to work one day.  Yes.  I have portion control issues.  If my darn commute wasn’t a half hour I wouldn’t have devoured a huge bag of tortilla chips!

I decided that I better use the second in earnest and that’s where this recipe comes into play.

Let me just put this out there: this is one of the best meals I’ve had in a long time.  I don’t know if it was because I was super hungry after a long run or because I was still chilly from that aforementioned long run but this hit the spot and then some.

I made a lot of changes from the original recipe … so many changes that I think the only thing that remained the same between the original Cooks Illustrated recipe and my own was the 5 cups of tortilla chips.  I decreased the amount of meat, increased the vegetables, added beans, swapped tomatoes out for salsa, and decreased the cheese.  So, be sure to click on over to the original recipe if you’re interested in making this meal but don’t have the ingredients I have listed below.

Chicken Tortilla Casserole (inspired by a recipe seen on Pink Parsley)

Ingredients

Somehow our chatter drifted to the conversation of foods we hate.  One of my guests professed to hating celery.  Oh no.  This recipe had fully 3 stalks of celery in it.

I had a decision to make: should I confess that there was celery in that night’s dinner or not?

Dinner was served outdoors while we mingled around a campfire.  The light was dim so I’m not sure if my celery-hating dinner guest noticed the presence of the vegetable in our dinner or not.  What I did notice was the HUGE serving he ate and the many compliments to the chef he gave.  Celery or not, this chili was a hit.

Beef and Bean Chili (adapted from Jamie Deen’s chili seen on Apple a Day)

And then we started living together and working full time and running in parallel circles that only infrequently overlapped and I made the executive decision that I would no longer like a baby.

And when one person doesn’t want a baby, the other can’t exactly force one upon her.  And luckily, my husband heard me out, and we made the decision that WE would not like a baby.  Sure, we like your baby.  We love your baby.  We’ll babysit your baby.  But we don’t want a baby.

I want to sleep and wake on my terms.
I want to go on vacation with ease.
I want to go on vacations of my choosing, not the baby’s.
I’m too selfish.
I want to drop everything and go get ice cream.

We enjoyed our life with our two aging dogs and two horses.  And the cat.  Sometimes his cries sound like a baby but he’s no baby.

Sometimes we’d look at each other, while we doing barn chores like scooping poop and medicating horses, and mention, “Man.  If we had a baby, this would SUCK.”  I mean, either someone would be in the house, alone, with the baby while the other did the dreaded chores, or all three of us (me, him, the baby) would be out in the barn doing the chores.  Now that’s certainly not sanitary.

So we may or may not have elevated the 9 year old pooches to baby status.  I think we can all agree that they didn’t mind.

They became known as the ‘granddogs’ to my parents and the family felt complete.

But sometimes you can’t predict where life takes you.  And you might end up with a baby despite your precautions preventing it.

Meet Vinny: our baby.  Oh, you thought I was talking about a human baby?  No.  I was talking about a puppy.  They are serious business – a business I never wanted to be a part of.  But like I said earlier, sometimes you don’t have a choice.  And we welcome this baby into our family with open arms.

We began teaching our old dogs about the concept of a baby and being gentle to the baby.  The family began getting up in the middle of the night to take care of the baby.  We all began running out of the door when we heard the trademark piddle of the baby indoors.  We began taking the baby to the barn, just like we always said we wouldn’t, and snatching horse poop out of the baby’s mouth.  But somehow, we loved the baby.  Despite all the trouble.  We loved this baby.

And having this baby means that dinner time preparation just got cut even shorter.  This recipe for Asian beef bowls is certainly baby friendly – quick to whip up!

The Omnivore commented that the flavors were subtle and I found that to be true and untrue at the same time.  The thin ribbons of carrots were sweet and flavorful.  The bites of cilantro were bright.  The beef was tangy and tender.  It was healthy and cheap – using only about 3/4 pound of beef for 4 servings and cups and cups of vegetables.

Asian beef bowl (adapted from a recipe seen on Adventures in Home Cooking)

Sometimes I forget to tell people I’m a teacher or sometimes I feel weird telling people I’m a teacher because 1) I didn’t go to school to be a teacher and 2) I’ve only been doing it for like 4 months.  I’m teaching in a rural public school and am certified under sort of an emergency-certification program for high needs subject areas (science).

So that’s that.  One thing that I’ve found is that my kids adore it when I tell them a story that relates to whatever school related things on which I happen to be blabbing.

Today, shortly after I caught a cheater in my class, I told my cheating story.

Yes.  They all gasped just like you did.  It happened in 1st grade.  Ms. Waring, if you are out there, I am so sorry.

In order to prevent cheating, we even had barricades on three sides of our desks to block our vision of other kids’ papers.  This was first grade, people!  (I think those barriers are more important to my high school class than to a class of 5 and 6 year olds).

The test was a spelling test on all the colors.  The word was orange.  And I didn’t know it.  What I did know was a giant cartoony poster of a fruit basket was plastered on the cinderblock wall to the right and along side pictures of the banana, apples, grapes, and yes, orange, were the names of the fruits all spelled out.

And I peeked through a small hole I found in my barrier – a hole that happened to align perfectly with the fruit poster – and cheated.

And I still remember that incident, decades later, and I still feel really guilty about it.

So, what does that have to do with this lasagna?

When lasagna recipes say let stand 15 minutes before slicing, DO IT!

I happened to make this lasagna vegan because I had no cheese around but did have a box of tofu handy.  You can make it either way.

I adore the garlicky-spicy flavor here and the kale is such a wonderful winter vegetable.  I ate this meal for 4 consecutive meals since my husband was out of town for work and it was totally satisfying each time.

Spicy Kale Lasagna (vegan or not) (adapted from A Couple Cooks, seen on Annie’s Eats)

Well this meal is sort of like my husband’s cat.  Let me explain.

This is my husband’s ultimate comfort food.  It is a family tradition.  For decades it was a secret recipe of my mother-in-law’s that she refused to give up so that she could keep her 7 kids coming back for more.  Finally, because the Omnivore was the favorite of the 7 (kidding?  Maybe?) he finagled the recipe out of her.

Early in our relationship he cooked this for me.  He warned me that I wouldn’t like it – none of his previous girlfriends had.  He also warned me that he used this meal as an indicator of the future of our relationship.

The recipe is the result of some sort of evolution from a pork mincemeat pie to a loosemeat sandwich.  It looks a bit like canned cat food, which traditionally is the turn off to most people.  It is scented like your favorite Christmas cookie – with cloves and allspice and the combination is not frequently come by.  It is a relic of my husband’s French-Canadian heritage and it is a meal we both adore.

This was the one meal I missed desperately when I was a vegetarian.  Yes, I attempted to approximate it using brown lentils but it wasn’t the same.  Even now that I eat meat, however, it is definitely a splurge meal.

I ran a half marathon this past Saturday and since I made a personal record I decided to splurge on this meal.  I told my husband this over the phone as I picked up groceries and he was a bit confused as to why I considered this a splurge.  When he was loading the groceries into the fridge he exclaimed that I had purchased ‘bad pork’ because it was speckled with chunks of ‘white stuff.’

“That’s fat, honey.  This meat is 80/20.  That means 20% fat.  That’s why it is a splurge.”
“Oh.”

I only made a pound’s worth this time around and I regret it so much.  Please, despite its appearances and fat content (lol), give it a try.

PS. The family refers to this meal as “goteaus” which caused a lot of trouble for me when I began researching what I was eating on the internet.  This word is awfully similar to “gateau” which is the french word for a chocolate cake.  I attribute the transformation of the original “cretons” to “goteaus” (which my husband’s family pronounces guck-dongs) to the use of French (orally only) in my mother-in-law’s household.

Cretons
a spicy pork pate

I also make sure to have a nice meal waiting for him when he gets home after the long car trip as well.  Even though you’re just sitting in the car, traveling is an exhausting chore and I know he looks forward to whatever dinner I’ve concocted for his return.

When I first started doing this, it was usually something meaty, like meatloaf or pot roast.  At the time I was a vegetarian and had plenty of time to prepare a meal I wasn’t going to eat anyway in the days that he was absent.

These days I’m sinfully more busy than I used to be so those days of cooking two meals for two people are gone.  Still, I want to make sure that the dinner that’s waiting for him when he arrives home after a business trip is exactly what he’s craving.

Now I wouldn’t call this meal comfort food.  But those were the first words out of the Omnivore’s mouth when he took a bite.  Pasta and red sauce I guess screams ‘home’ to him.  I served my dish vegan but added some Parmesan cheese to his, which he really appreciated it.  He claimed the leftovers for his lunch the next day before he’d even finished this dinner – proof that it is a awesome dinner.

Chickpeas in Romesco Sauce (a Veganomicon recipe seen on Cate’s World Kitchen)

Wait.  You’re trying to tell me that you always find what you’re looking for at your grocery store?  Or that you always tell the cashier that you did NOT in fact find what you were looking for.

Deny, deny, deny.  You don’t have to admit the truth.  But I will.

One day, a few years ago, I decided to stop telling the cashier that I had found what I was looking for and start telling the cashier the true answer.

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

“No.  I was looking for fennel.  You didn’t have it, though.”

“Oh.  You know who has great flannel?  Tractor Supply Company.

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

“No.  I was looking for nutritional yeast.  You didn’t have it.”

“You were looking for something to treat your yeast?”

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

“No.  I was looking for chorizo.  You didn’t have it, though.”

“Godblessyou.  Now what was it you were looking for?“

Well the chorizo problem is now solved.  I’ve got a recipe for a perfect (healthier) substitute for that spicy sausage that made this soup just wonderful.  The soup originally called for kale, but my grocery store didn’t have it (and I told Princess, yes Princess, all about it) and bought collard greens instead.  The Omnivore made a request that cabbage be used next time.  We’ll see.

I whipped this dinner up amidst a slight crisis and it quickly took our worries away.  The smell of the turkey chorizo cooking made our stomachs growl.  The broth was so delicious it could be eaten by itself.  The collards were not offensive at all and sort of melted away.
Portugese Potato Chorizo Soup with Kale (adapted from a recipe from a family friend)