I like to make food.

Chicken tacos, chilaquiles, pork with cinnamon apples, and a chicken goat cheese pizza.

1.
At Whole Foods one day they were giving out free packets of new Frontera Grill skillet sauces. I ended up taking a packet of Key Lime Cilantro Taco Skillet Sauce, not noticing that the packet said it was seasoning for fish and seafood. Now, I love fish and seafood, but for some reason Mexican seafood has never really jived with me. So I decided instead to use it on some chicken.

I was certain the Rick Bayless gods wouldn’t hunt me down.

I boiled some chicken then cooked some onions, added the shredded chicken, and simmered them both in the sauce for a bit. The chicken soaked up the sauce pretty well so I couldn’t do that for too long. I put the mix in some corn taco shells and topped it with a little crumbled goat cheese. And they were amazing.

 

2.
I had goat cheese left over. And I never close the bag of the tortillas correctly and they get stale. And then I remembered that I had just caught a portion of Mexican Made Easy on Food Network where they made Chilaquiles with Roasted Tomatillo Salsa that called for both stale tortillas AND goat cheese. Sold. It actually was an amazingly delicious dish of fried tortillas cooked with green salsa (I bought fresh salsa instead of making it).

 

3.
I’ve been trying to cook smarter lately and not spend as much money on food. I hate that all the cheap food blogs you see show foods that cost $1.50 per portion but you really are making 10 portions of it and since there is only one of me and I can’t eat the same thing that many times in a row it’s not worth it to make.

But I can do a pretty mean meal for under $5.00.

Cue this pork chop topped with onions with a side of cinnamon raisin apples. Which was amazingly delicious.

 

4.
The other day I was on my way to Trader Joes and I texted Mat to say I was thinking of making a pizza and wanted to know if he wanted to come over and eat some. He said “maybe…” I asked him what he wanted on his pizza. He replied “chevre and chicken.”

I wasn’t entirely sure he was serious or not but I bought some chicken breasts (individually wrapped chicken breasts are the single eater’s best friend) and goat cheese and pizza dough (Trader Joes has the best premade pizza dough ever and its only 99 cents and it makes at least 2 pizzas).

And I went home and made my pizza. And Mat came and liked it even though I went through all that and he only ate one piece. And Heather liked it too. And then Mat and I went to see The Book of Liz, even though I’d already seen it. And it was still funny. And then we went to see the Facebook movie because after we went back to my place Heather said at 10:30 that there was no way we’d make the 10:35 showing. But we made it in time after only missing one preview. And it was good. But it ended around 1am and so I was very tired the next day.