Monday, March 8, 2010

Burritos!

So, I've been wanting to do this meal for a while and it turned out to be fun, tasty and healthy. I made bean and roasted veggie burritos, homemade salsa and guacamole. I served additional beans and rice on the side and sent along fresh strawberries.



Not the best picture, but I had to snap one quickly while the kids were briefly settled at the start of dinner.

I can't post to specific recipes since I used a hodgepodge of sites to get me started and mostly made this up as I went along.

My mom's been cooking pintos since I was a little girl and beans with cornbread or tortillas was one of my favorite and most satisfying simple meals growing up. She made a pot of beans or peas most every week. Ala mom, I slow-cooked these with onions and spices (thankfully remembering to soak them overnight Sat night even though I had to get out of bed at 11pm when I remembered I had forgotten to do so). I roasted the veggies (a variety of bell peppers with onions and yellow squash) with olive oil, Mexican oregano, sea salt and freshly ground pepper. For the rice I used jasmine but cooked it in the rice cooker with veggie broth for half of the water, layered in some of the homemade salsa and added limas to the rice served on the side (borrowing from Curra's - I had hoped to mimic the rice served with their meals but didn't quite replicate it even though it was fine).

I thought I was disappointed with the guacamole I made last night (it seemed too oniony) but it tasted great today and made a perfect garnish to the burrito along with the salsa.

Last, even though my salsa wasn't very spicy, I was really pleased with it b/c it was my first attempt at homemade salsa and I loved how fresh it tasted compared to what we purchase even in the fancy jarred varieties. I will be continuing to make my own salsa, adjusting the spiciness especially with my David in mind who loves it the hotter the better. The VitaMix is a salsa-making dream!

The biggest win was that Erin tried everything. She helped herself to salsa and guacamole, rice and burrito. She loved serving herself these familiar foods. And even baby Rory chowed down on the rice.

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