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Tonight my hubby and I gave the boy another haircut, since the sides of his head looked sort of like they were trying to take flight. He’s actually not too bad for them (although that may be because Daddy sits with him to hold him (sort of) still and he ADORES Daddy); what kills me is the forehead cowlick. No matter what we do to his hair, it’s just more and more visible the older he gets. This is a boy that will be forever denied a choice in the ‘on which side shall I part my hair today?’ question. On the other hand, with his daddy’s blue, blue eyes and the killer grin (complete with dimples!), I don’t know that anyone needs to go off the deep end where sympathy is concerned!
The really good news in this boy’s life, however, is that he actually devoured dinner tonight. He’s working on at least one of his bottom eyeteeth, which means his appetite has been really sporadic of late, but tonight he just went to town, and I was thrilled. The funny thing is that I just got a little bit creative with an old standby, and I have to say, it tasted better to me than it has for a long, long time. My friend that I used to cook with a lot–I might just have to make that into an acronym!–brought this recipe for Cowboy Quesadillas to my attention, because while her family isn’t wildly into BBQ sauce, I have more than one family member who loves just about anything within that flavor profile. I tried it several years ago and everyone loved it, so it became part of our regular meal rotation, and then–I got tired of it. For two reasons, really (neither of which reflect badly on the recipe). The first is the classic ‘made too much and ate too many leftovers’ that happens to the best of recipes from time to time; the second is that my methods for cooking chicken for recipes like this weren’t too fabulous (flavor-wise) a few years ago. (It doesn’t matter so much if the chicken is going to simmer in a sauce for at least 5-10 minutes, but this recipe needs stand-alone chicken.) Anyway. The girlies hadn’t loved it as much the last couple of times we had it either, but tonight I had the requisite leftovers in my fridge and I decided to see what happened. Here’s what I did:
1)It calls for white rice, but I always just use my white/brown mixture, and it works just as well. Honestly, the last time I made them I used leftover quinoa, and that worked just as well, too.
2)It calls for cooked chicken, and while I had enough of that in the fridge, I had OLDER crockpot BBQ/pineapple pork chops. I used those first, dicing them very small so that it wouldn’t be a toughness issue from the kids; it ended up being half that and half chicken. I thought it was fabulous.
3)I left out the corn, mostly because the kiddos were having minor tummy troubles yesterday, and I thought beans and corn might be a bit much.
4)I upped the cheese by almost a third of what it calls for. It helped with the sticking together.
5)I used whole wheat tortillas. Sometimes I really prefer regular, but you really don’t notice in this recipe.
Anyway, the boy devoured his, and the girlies ate happily as well. Dinner success! And I used several things that have been taking up space in my fridge, which is always a bonus. Give this one a try, folks. Enjoy.