Mark's Mexican Experience

Now I am starting to get concerned about this project.  I have never made any Mexican food from scratch before.  I have made spaghetti tacos (thanks iCarly for the idea) for the kids, but that really is not Mexican food. So the next item on my list of food to make was enchiladas.  They really didn't seem that difficult, so I was somewhat reassured.

I started making my grocery list and checking the pantry to see if I already had some of the ingredients.  One of the items was canola oil.  I figured we had it because we have a bottle of oil in the pantry.  But wait... that is vegetable oil.  Lets look around... I think there is another bottle of oil in here...yes here it is... EVOO (channeling Rachel Ray).  Nope not it either.  Whats the difference?  I don't know... so I got to Google.  Apparently it is the temperature in which it boil is the big difference!  My first new piece of knowledge!!! I was so excited, I now have learned something from this.  (I know those of you that already knew this are probably chuckling, but this is new to me.)

So I headed to the grocery store to get my supplies.  On my list I had black olive and green olives (that's odd, but its what the recipe said).  So as I was looking at the olives, there were two types... thrown and placed.  Not sure what the difference was I just grabbed one.  I would look that up when I got home.  Got all my supplies and headed back home.

Making the filling was not to bad.  I am getting the hang of chopping... I got a nice new knife for chopping.  The book listed out several "requirements" for tools that you need in the kitchen.  I also got a set of tongs.  I was going to need it to make the tortillas.

The tortillas were easy to make... fry them in some canola oil, drain, then dip in the enchilada sauce.  Put filling on the tortilla, roll, and place in baking dish.  Once you are all done... pour the rest of the sauce over, add some more cheese and bake.  And this is what you get...

As far as the olives go... "Thrown" olives are put in jars mechanically, so the arrangement of the olives in the jar tends to be somewhat random.  "Placed" olives on the on the other hand, are put in jars by hand.  Funning thing is my lovely wife pointed out to me that it was green ONIONS... not olives.  Oh well, our enchiladas ended up with white onions instead because I read it wrong.

Next up is "Egg in a hole"... something I am sure Brandon will love!

Looking forward to "eating" with you soon...

Mark