Cooking for Grandma

Sometimes when my aunt goes away on a trip my uncle and grandma are left alone. Most of the time he gets fast food or just heats up a microwave dinner. When he ask me to feed her because he had something to do I was more than happy. He said to just go get her something and I suggested that I cook something. I love to cook for people because it gives me a great joy seeing their faces and the "Mmmm" that comes out of their mouths so I try and do it as often as I can. I decided that I was craving beef enchiladas. So that's what I made.


The ingredients are a lb. of beef, canned enchilada sauce ( I don't have time to make the real thing so give me a break would ya)corn tortillas, Mexican cheese and minute rice or any kind of rice if you have the time to make it. ( Don't mention the time to clean an extra pot). I usually don't add rice to it but I decided to try it and see how it goes.

Cook the ground beef in a skillet until it is nice and brown

The cooked ground beef should all be brown and after you should strain it to get all of the grease out of the pan. I like to wipe the pan with a paper towel after I drain the meat to make sure all the extra fat is out.

Heat some oil in a pan. ( I used olive oil because it is better for you but you could use anything)

Fry the tortilla for about 20 seconds on each side. I made 6 but you can guess how many will fit into your casserole dish.

Casserole dish

(One step that I forgot to show) Take a paper plate and put some of the enchilada sauce on the plate. Next coat each side of the cooked tortilla with the sauce.

Don't forget to cook the rice.

Mix the rice and ground beef together

Put the mixture on the tortilla.

Cover it with lots of cheese.

Fold both sides in and place the folded side down.

You can do an assembly line: Coat tortilla, add beef mixture,cheese,fold! It should come out like the picture above.

Pour the rest of the enchilada sauce over the enchiladas.

Should look like this.

Add tons of cheese.I love my cheese. So the more the tastier!

It should look like this when it is done. It was so yummy! That it for today's show, until next time you can always make food yummy! ( I like to say yummy)

Baby Shower #2

Time for baby shower #2.Remember there will be a third and I just got an invitation for a 4th shower but it is called a sprinkle since it is the second child. This shower was for my boyfriend's cousin. It is their first child and it is going to be a boy. It was a couple's shower and quite fun but we will talk more about that later. When we arrived the mother to be was cooking away in the kitchen. Sorry that i didn't get a picture of it. There was salad, fresh fruit, very yummy pasta, chips and dip, garlic bread and little cheesecake squares. After everyone ate the games started.

The first game: The mama to be had all the men blow up balloons as big as they wanted it. Then she told them that they had to put the balloon under their shirt, try to tie their shoe and not pop the balloon. The idea was to let the guys know how hard it is for a pregnant woman to do simple tasks with her belly in the way all the time. It was so funny.

Oh wait, no shoe lace. Well mama can fix that. No excuse not to play.

The winner!!

Next game was to see who could drink the fastest out of this!! My boyfriend grabbed a bottle before I could say no thank you. Just as the game was about to start (I was shaking in my boots) one of the little girls didn't have a bottle for the contest, so I gave her mine. Secretly saved by the kid lol.

And their off!! Pink was the winner!

Another game was "I'll never say that". You have to write phrases that your mother would say to you and you could only use the word once.

Next game was what I would like to call dirty diaper. You get a diaper and put a mini candy bar in it. Nuke it in the microwave to have it melt a little bit and squish it around so it's not noticeable. I have heard of this game before because the TV show "The Girls Next Door" played it. This is the one that I won. I was so excited because so many others were winning.

The last game, which I didn't get a picture of, was hilarious. First they gave us each a plastic rain coat and a cloth to blind fold ourselves. When we were ready they told us that we were going to have an eating contest (moans and groans). They said "we have broccoli, carrots or peas". (Shouts of CARROTS...BROCCOLI...and one tiny voice was mine "I'll take the peas") I was figuring that I could eat them faster that the other foods. After it was distributed they screams GO!! And the first bite was NOT PEAS!!!!!!! It was sweet but nothing I had tasted before. After someone screamed done we took off the blind folds and it was baby food. I think the fruit kind but baby food all the same. Everyone was laughing! It was a good shower and a lot of fun. The next shower is a family shower. Until then...

Go Stros!!!

So here I am at another baseball game. It really is a lot of fun if your in the mood for a nice long game and I was. The Houston Astros played the New York Mets! Now a secret...I secretly love New York teams so when they whooped the tar out of us in this game I cheered on the inside but don't tell anyone that I know ( Especially my grandma). My grandma told me a story once that, when I wasn't even thought of, she and my grandpa used to watch the games at home and when ever it was a close game my grandpa would sit at the edge of the couch and my grandma would pace the living room with a rosary saying hail Mary's. Isn't that waco?!! At least they were go old hard core fans. So anyway I went to the Astros game and it was a lot of fun.

Score board.It ended with 3 to 10 I think. It was a bad game but still fun for me.

Your probably wondering why there is a picture of a train. Well every time one of the astro players hits a home run the train whistles and it makes it's way across one side of the stadium. It's not much of anything but all the fans get very excited when it happens.

The fowl post

The Astros stadium

One of the Astro players

One of the Mets!

Strike him out!!!

Hey everyone up in the box!!

During the game sometimes they have interaction games with the fans. One of them was kissing on camera. They shine the camera on a couple and they kiss or don't in some cases. So they're going through the couples and the final couple the screen came on and the score board said.."Will you marry me?" She said....She said... She said....I tried to get a picture of the answer but every time I snapped the picture I got this. Well folks she said YES!!!!!And the crowd goes wild and they kiss and it makes you want to get married. Not really but the love is in the air. After that I gave my boyfriend a kiss.

Ok random picture. I was looking around and saw this kid with a Houston rocket's jersey on. Um Hello!!! This is an astros game kid. And then I slap him up side the head and say "Didn't yo mama ever tell you..."

After the game there were some Cholos outside with fancy cars. Cholos are a kind of gang but were displaying their cars for the astros so it was ok. No harm done.

Aren't they beautiful!!

I like the white one.

Hot and Sweet Chicken...It's Dinner time!

Here I go again with another episode of Nancy's Kitchen!!! Sometimes when I want to take a break from work or at home I like to look on one of my favorite sites thepioneerwoman.com
She has different entries and one was about hot and sweet chicken and it looked so good and simple that I finally decided to make one of her recipe's. It turned out great and just looking at the picture makes me want to eat it right now! So I am going to tell you how to make it. Doesn't it look good?!

The ingredients that you need is any kind of chicken. I used chicken thighs but pioneer woman used chicken drums. Some soy sauce,hot sauce, minced garlic, apricot preserves and ketchup.

One cup of apricot preserves.

1/2 cup of ketchup

1/4 cup of soy sauce, any kind you like but don't use the reduced anything. It will taste weird.

2 teaspoons of minced garlic. Ok here is a confession. I didn't chop the garlic myself. I bought the jar minced at the grocery store and I keep it in the fridge. It's all about convenience you know?!

Hot sauce. And again you can use any kind. This stuff is great but when I took a taste of the sauce when I put it all together in the pan it was not very spicy. So maybe next time I might do as Emeril does..."LET KICK IT UP A NOTCH"!!

Put it all together in a pot and cook it until all of the preserves are cooked down. It's going to look like this. Dark and soupy with a little bit of small apricot pieces that simply can't be cooked down. Don't think you are doing something wrong if it is not all gone. What I did while it was cooking was stick you finger in and taste it. I loved it without the chicken but you simply can't just spoon it into your mouth. (Or can you?)

Next get a pan. I used an aluminum container to cook my chicken but you could use anything. Just remember that you are pouring liquid in, so make sure the sides are tall enough to hold everything.

Put in the oven for 40-45 minutes @ 350 degrees. You can use way more chicken than I did. I was only cooking for 2 but it can easily be used for a family of 8. I even had to throw out some of the liquid. AAHH! Shhh! don't tell anyone I did that.

And it turns out to look like this. (Excuse the shadow. I learned from pioneer woman to use natural light. Darn kitchen lights got in the way)I made mashed potatoes with it and it was the best ever. It tasted a little bit like Chinese food but chicken style. Very delish!!! Don't be afraid to try it.