Zucchini Enchiladas!

We tried a new dinner a few nights ago and it was worth keeping! We used THIS idea as the inspiration, but our own mix for the filling- mostly because we were using what we had on hand. 

For our family of five, I got three skinny zucchinis, about 8 inches long. I know the inspiration recipe says wide, but I figured once it was full of stuff that would be plenty of food... I cut them lengthwise and scooped out the middle, just like doing a stuffed baked potato.
Then we made our filling. I diced up the scooped out zucchini, minus any seeds. We had left over lemon pepper chicken, which we cut into bite size, or smaller cubes. We had about half a can of black beans in the fridge. We threw in possibly 1/4 cup of a diced red onion, and about half a bag of frozen corn. Then we made our own enchilada sauce with THIS recipe, and my husband added an ice cube worth of frozen roasted hatch chiles. 

I drizzled olive oil in the baking pan and rolled the zucchini in the oil to kind of coat them. We roasted the zucchini "boats" I believe 10 minutes, then filled them, and put them back in the oven for 20 minutes I think, to heat everything thru and fully cook the zucchini. Then added cheddar cheese on top and broiled it a couple of minutes. And that was our dinner! 

The whole family liked it, except the youngest wouldn't eat the "boat" part, haha. She didn't know there was zucchini in the filling she happily ate, which is just fine. 

Ingredients:

- three whole zucchini, hollowed out, seeds discarded and the meat diced.

- 1 cup cubed chicken

- 8 oz black beans

- 1/4 cup red onion

- 8 oz frozen corn

- 2/3 cup enchilada sauce 

Bake hollowed zucchini in 9x13" baking pan, at 400* for 10 minutes. Fill with your enchilada filling of choice. Bake for another 20 minutes. Add cheese and broil for 2 minutes, watching closely. Serve a yummy and nutritious dinner! 

Oatmeal Pancakes

Original Variation Base Batch	Buttermilk Variation Base Batch
1 cup rolled oats 3 tbsp brown sugar 1/2 cup dry milk powder 2 1/2 tsp baking powder 1 tsp baking soda 1/2 tsp salt 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour 2 large eggs 1/4 cup olive oil 1 1/2 cups water 2 tsp vanilla	1 cup rolled oats 3 tbsp brown sugar 2 1/2 tsp baking powder 1 tsp baking soda 1/2 tsp salt 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour 2 large eggs 1/4 cup olive oil 2 cups buttermilk 2 tsp vanilla
Makes about 12 five inch pancakes

Original Variation 1 1/2 Batch	Buttermilk Variation 1 1/2 Batch
1 1/2 cup rolled oats 4 1/2 tbsp brown sugar 3/4 cup dry milk powder 3 3/4 tsp baking powder 1 1/2 tsp baking soda 3/4 tsp salt 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour 3 large eggs 1/3 cup olive oil 2 1/4 cups water 3 tsp vanilla	1 1/2 cup rolled oats 4 1/2 tbsp brown sugar 3 3/4 tsp baking powder 1 1/2 tsp baking soda 3/4 tsp salt 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour 3 large eggs 1/3 cup olive oil 3 cups buttermilk 2 tsp vanilla
Makes about 17 five inch pancakes

Put the rolled oats into food processor or blender with the brown sugar and process everything into a relatively fine powder. Should look mostly like flour when you are done. If there is room, add the rest of the dry ingredients in and blend everything together. If not, combine the ground oats/brown sugar in a bowl with the rest of the dry ingredients and whisk everything together to fully combine.

Combine the eggs and olive oil together and whisk to combine. Put in the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and whisk together. The ground up oats will prevent the flour from forming gluten, so you can whisk the batter together pretty well, but don't overdo it. When everything looks good and combined, stop mixing. Let the batter sit for 15 minutes before beginning to cook.

Heat up your preferred pancake pan to your desired temp and use a 1/3 cup measuring cup to produce pancakes that are roughly 5 inches round. Add bananas or blueberries while they are cooking in pan, not into the batter directly. Cook them as you like them.

If the batter seems a little thin still, add more all purpose flour a tbsp at a time until it is the right consistency.

Good tip: spray your oil into your pan, then use a paper towel to rub it all over the pan. That will create a smooth oil surface for your pancake to cook evenly on.

Avocado Toast

I know, I know, suuuper late jumping on this particular bandwagon. The thing is, even tho I like avocado, it also makes me gag, haha. My mom often slices up an avocado and puts the slices on bread for lunch. But I can't just take a bite of avocado... So in recent weeks I looked up what's so great about the super trendy "avocado toast".

I liked THIS LINK best, and I read somewhere that pomegranate goes great on avocado toast, and I do love pomegranate! So here's what I've been doing:

I use a stick blender to puree a whole avocado, plus a pinch of salt, some lime juice (maybe a tablespoon?) and some dried cilantro (roughly a tablespoon of that too). Then I store that in a container in the fridge. I like it better on toasted wheat bread for sure, but whatever is in the house works. I butter the toast, then sprinkle a tiny pinch of salt over both slices. I hold the black pepper grinder several inches above the toast and use two turns. Then I spread the avocado all over the bread. I sprinkle a bit of red pepper flakes over that (the photo has too much red pepper, haha!) and then some pomegranate seeds all over that! YUM! The mix makes at least 6 slices of toast. It's healthy, quick and yummy! Yeay for that!!

2 slices toast
butter
1 avocado
lime juice
cilantro
salt
black pepper
red pepper flakes
pomegranate seeds