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Happy 100th birthday Julia Child! In your honor, I will compose my first cooking post. It’s not one for the cookbooks but it’s simple, yummy, and great for sharing with others.

My mother and I share the cooking duties in our house and this week, I am down in the books to cook two dishes – enchiladas and (my version of) Grandma’s spaghetti and meatballs. I would be disowned from my mother’s side of the family if I shared our “secret” family recipe for meatballs and sauce. When I was a small child, homemade spaghetti and meatballs became the traditional Christmas Eve dinner due to the innate ease of expansion as more family members arrived to celebrate the holidays. Thus it has a special place in all of our hearts and NO SHARING.

I started watching cooking shows after graduating college so I could learn how to feel more comfortable in the kitchen. I had a fair grasp of the basics but my mother was, and still is, not an experimental or adverturous cook so I still felt like a rookie in the kitchen. I watched so many shows on the Food Network – Good Eats with Alton Brown (great for understanding the why of cooking and baking); Everyday Italian with Giada de Laurentiis; and even on occasion, Rachael Ray. I have memories of crashing at a friend’s house on occasion when I may have had a glass of wine or two too many to drive home and we would have Barefoot Contessa marathons the following morning, much to her husband’s chagrin. One show I could not get into though was Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee. Semi-homemade? That’s cheating I thought! I don’t care about table scapes. I want to learn how to make good food! FROM SCRATCH! Because that’s what real cooks do!

I have never had grand visions of being the next Top Chef but with this recipe, I have learned to embrace my inner-Sandra Lee. I always thought of enchiladas as being advanced level Tex-Mex. I read some people describe how they would spend all afternoon in the kitchen to make authentic enchiladas and having never ordered it in a restaurant, I pushed enchilada recipes off to the side thinking it was too time-consuming for something I probably wouldn’t like. Finally a couple of months ago, I broke down and made Homesick Texan’s recipe FROM SCRATCH. It wasn’t that hard! Sure I ended up messing up the salt ratio so it was a couple of levels shy of inedible. But worthy of the “advanced” category? Please – intermediate all the way.

I then saw Rick Bayless’s Frontera red enchilada sauce and decided to give enchiladas another go but use the store-bought sauce so prevent the errors of before. Using tricks I picked up from the Homesick Texan with a couple of tips from Rick Bayless, I made enchiladas my family loved and ones that would make Sandra Lee proud. So without further ado, here we go!

Tess’s Easy Enchiladas

1.5 – 2 c shredded sharp cheddar cheese

1/2 c finely diced onion

8 corn tortillas

.5 of 1.5 lb bag frozen chicken strips

2 packages/cans enchilada sauce

1. Cook the frozen chicken strips following the instructions on the package but reduce the cooking time by about 5 minutes. The chicken will be cooked again in the enchiladas and this saves you some time.

2. Preheat oven to 375.

3. Wrap the tortillas in plastic wrap and microwave for less than 1 minute. Leave in plastic wrap until ready to assemble to keep them warm and soft.

4. Pour a thin layer of sauce across the bottom of a casserole dish. Finely dice the onion.

5. When the chicken, onion, and tortillas are ready to go, begin assembling the enchiladas by placing about 1 T of onion, 1/4 c of cheese, and 1-3 pieces of chicken in each tortilla. Wrap the tortilla up and place seam down in the casserole dish. Continue this process until the dish is full (my casserole dish holds 8 perfectly).

6. Pour the remaining sauce over the enchiladas. Sprinkle with any unused onion and cheese.

7. Bake in the oven at 375 for 15-20 min.

Ta-da! I am sure Sandra and Julia would be so proud!

Fresh from the oven!

Tess, the Lioness