Cheese Enchiladas

I’m sorry I haven’t been posting very regularly.  I’ll make it up to you guys by posting two this week.  One today, one on Thursday.  How’s that?

Okay, this is Percy Jackson post part 2 of 2.  Cheese enchiladas!  Grover (a satyr) regards them as his favorite food.  While on their first quest in The Lightning Thief, Percy, Grover and Annabeth come across a suspicious looking garden emporium, and a discussion of enchiladas comes up.

“Don’t knock,” Grover pleaded.  “I smell monsters.”

“Your nose is clogged up from the Furies,” Annabeth told him.  “All I smell is burgers.  Aren’t you hungry?”

“Meat!” he said scornfully.  “I’m a vegetarian.”

“You eat cheese enchiladas and aluminum cans,” I reminded him.

“Those are vegetables,” [said Grover.] (Riordan 172)

Parental Advisory: Aluminum cans are not considered vegetables by the FDA and are not fit for human consumption.  Please keep aluminum cans out of the mouths of children.  However, if you are a satyr, eat away!

I didn’t partake of any aluminum cans, don’t worry.  But I did make cheese enchiladas!  They are entirely vegetarian, perfect for a hungry goat, so if you’re not a fan of meat, this is the dish for you! 

Uh-oh.  I think I just insinuated that vegetarians are goats. Lo siento!

Well goat, vegetarian, or omnivore, these enchiladas are delicious, easy, and quick.  I got this recipe from BigOven and adjusted it to make 3 enchiladas (that’s how many tortillas I had).

Cheese Enchiladas

2 cups Cheddar and Mozzarella (or Jack) cheese, grated and combined

3 Flour tortillas

3 tbsp Butter

3 tbsp Flour

¾ cup Water

¾ cup Milk

½ teaspoon Salt

¼ teaspoon Pepper

¼ tsp Garlic Powder

1 tbsp Cumin

3 tbsp Chili Powder

1 cup Sour Cream

Optional: Chopped black olives

1.      Roll up half of the grated cheese in tortillas, and place in baking pan.

2.      Brown Margarine and flour in a frying pan (it looks like a weird paste), the gradually add water and milk. Let mixture come to a boil then reduce heat and cook until thick (about 5 minutes) stirring occasionally. (Mine was a little lumpy, so I used an immersion mixer to smooth it out).

3.      Add salt, pepper, garlic, cumin and chili powder (adjust spices to taste).

4.      Remove from heat and stir in remaining cheese, as well as the sour cream.

5.      Pour mixture over the enchiladas, making sure the sauce covers all sides and top, and bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes, or until cheese in the center is completely melted.  Sprinkle olives on top, if desired.

Adding milk and water to the butter/flour mixture

After adding the chili powder

Finished, with olives

The original recipe was a little weird, because it didn’t give definite measurements for things.  This was nice, because you could adjust it to however much you wanted to make, but it also meant a lot of guess work.  I ended up with more than enough sauce, so I could have done quite a bit less water and milk.  However, the sauce is really tasty, so I was okay with the extra.

That’s it for now.  Tune in on Thursday for another post!

Ambrosia Squares

I think I am doomed to become like Peter Pan.  I have an aversion to growing up, and I prefer to spend my time in an imaginary land filled with monsters, magic, and middle school kids.

Okay, so I just really like children’s books.  So sue me.

I would probably post more blog posts about legit literature if I ever read it, but I don’t.  So today you get a sampling of one of my favorite children’s series: Percy Jackson and the Olympians, by Rick Riordan.

I discovered Percy Jackson about a year ago, and I was rolling with laughter as I read each book.  Rick Riordan is hilarious!  For instance, here are some chapter titles from The Lightning Thief (book 1 of the series).

Chapter 1: I accidentally vaporize my pre-algebra teacher

Chapter 2: Three old ladies knit the socks of death

Chapter 6: I become supreme lord of the bathroom

Chapter 10: I ruin a perfectly good bus

Chapter 12: We get advice from a poodle

Just reading these chapter titles made it one of my new favorite books.  Reading the hilarious, action-packed stories with all sorts of history lessons about ancient Greece hidden in awkward encounters with modern Olympian gods just solidified my love for them.  This series is second only to Harry Potter in my mind.  And that is saying something.

Okay, so you get the point that Percy Jackson is awesome.  So here’s the how it relates to food.

Percy is a demigod: his dad’s a Greek god and his mom’s a mortal.  Because he’s a demigod he gets a lot more interaction with the gods than mortals.  One of the perks of being a demigod is that he can eat the food of the gods – ambrosia – which has healing properties.  That is, unless he were to eat too much – then it would burn him from the inside out.  Anyway, Percy describes ambrosia not as fruit salad, but as little squares.  In The Last Olympian (book 5), Percy narrates, “I took out a square of ambrosia – part of the emergency god-food I always kept with me.  It was a little bashed up, but Nico chewed it” (Riordan 254). 

The books don’t give us much more description of ambrosia than this, so I got to get creative in my interpretation.  I had always pictured ambrosia squares as kind of like lemon squares, only less cakey, sweeter, and more creamy.  They had to be able to travel well on hero quests, without getting much worse than “a little bashed up.”  So I searched high and low for a recipe to fit those criteria.  That’s when I discovered a recipe for Cream Cheese Bars on AllRecipes.com.  I altered it only slightly, adding a little flour and lemon to the mix.  Here’s my adaption, to make it into ambrosia.

Ambrosia Squares 
Prep time: 15 min.  Cook time: 45 min.  Total time: 1 hour.

1 (18.25 ounce) package yellow cake mix

1/2 cup butter, melted

1 egg, beaten

1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened

2 eggs, beaten

1 ½ tbps lemon juice

1 tbsp flour

3 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 15 x 10 inch sheet pan.
2. Mix together cake mix, butter or margarine, and 1 egg. Press mixture into pan. (It should look like play-doh.)
3. In a small bowl, mix together cream cheese, 2 eggs, lemon juice, flour, and confectioners' sugar. Pour mixture on top of cake mixture.
4. Bake for 15 minutes. Reduce temperature to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C), and bake for 25 to 35 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Sift about ½ cup powdered sugar on top.  Cool completely and cut into squares.

These things are AMAZING! And very simple to make.  The cake mix layer has the consistency of a soft sugar cookie with a yellow cake flavor.  The cream cheese layer is like creamy lemon cheesecake.  What could be better?

You can adapt it to however you might imagine the ambrosia squares by adding different ingredients to the cream cheese.  Maybe add marshmallow cream, or chocolate, or raspberries, or vanilla extract.  Whatever you feel would qualify as “god-food,” you can add.   I highly recommend these addictive little treats.  But be careful not to eat too much!  You may not burn to a crisp, but you will definitely have to burn off a lot of calories!