Fajita Macaroni & Cheese

Sometimes I just get this cooking idea that I can't seem to escape from. It's like when you get a song stuck in your head and you do anything to try to get rid of it. Think of that but with food. I don't even know where the idea came from, but I must have heard or seen something that set it off: fajita mac and cheese. Once the thought was there, I couldn't not make it. No matter how much I told myself I didn't need to make a pot of mac and cheese for dinner, my stomach wouldn't listen. Eventually I gave in and made this. Let me tell you--my stomach knows what it's talking about. It was right to urge me to throw together this recipe because it was pretty spectacular.

If you're looking for some sort of lighter twist on mac and cheese, you've come to the wrong place. This is a full fat, balls to the wall kind of mac and cheese recipe. The chicken and the veggies almost make it seem lighter than it is, but don't let them fool you. This stuff will make you fat if you let it. You can leave out the chicken or substitute it with beef or shrimp if that's your kind of thing. You can change out the veggies you don't like or add in more that you do. Do whatever you want to the fajita part of the recipe, but do yourself a favor and make the cheese sauce the way you're supposed to. When you get that craving for ooey, gooey, rich, creamy mac and cheese, there is no substitute. Enjoy it in all its fatty gloriousness. Work out hard to make up for it if you must, but don't skimp on the good stuff here. Trust me.

Chopped Challenge #10: Choripollo Flatbread Sandwiches

For our tenth Chopped challenge I gave Justin Pillsbury pizza dough, chorizo, chives, and mashed potato flakes. One of our favorite Mexican restaurants near our last apartment in Indiana had choripollo on their menu, which was a mixture of chicken, chorizo, and cheese sauce. It was really delicious, and you just tossed it onto a tortilla with rice, beans, etc. or inhaled it straight from the plate. Originally Justin was going to attempt to make some sort of choripollo empanadas, but he ended up just turning his idea into more of a sandwich instead, using the pizza dough as the bread and putting the cheese sauce on the side for dipping. The flavor was really good, and I would definitely have him make these for dinner again sometime.

Taco Pizza

I recently discovered balls of pre-made pizza dough at the grocery store. Normally when Justin and I have wanted to make pizza, we've used the Pillsbury pizza dough. It's not perfect, but I like it better than the pre-made, packaged pizza crusts they sell at the grocery store. Since we moved here, however, I'd noticed these balls of fresh pizza dough and wanted to try it out. We made some cheese pizza with it a couple weeks ago and fell in love before it even came out of the oven--it smelled that good.

Salsa

Justin's major weakness is chips and salsa. If he has them, he will eat them. Quickly. He gets sad when we come home with a brand new jar of salsa and he has to wait for it to get cold before he can eat it. I'm not kidding.

I had always wanted to try making homemade salsa. However, chopping up all those tomatoes and what not seemed like a lot of work. I convinced myself to give it a try once, and the flavor was super weak. I don't know if I just had a bad recipe or bad tomatoes or what, but I thought that homemade salsa would just forever be out of my reach. Then came Pioneer Woman to the rescue. Although everything she makes looks fantastic, I try to avoid making a lot of it because of the ridiculous amount of butter and heavy cream that goes into everything she makes. Oh, the calories. How bad could salsa be though? There's no butter or cream anywhere in sight, so it should be okay.

Chopped Challenge #4: CajuMex Burritos

Last night it was Justin's turn to cook for yet another Chopped challenge. This time I gave him orzo (my favorite type of pasta), mozzarella cheese, andouille sausage, and taco seasoning. He turned those ingredients into a delicious, over-stuffed burrito with both Cajun and Mexican influences--andouille and shrimp provided the Cajun aspect, while the taco seasoning and chorizo covered the Mexican side of things. The combination was really quite yummy. I look forward to making this again sometime, though I might try to lighten it up somehow.

Creamy Mexican Gumbo

I'm using the term "gumbo" lightly here. The only thing gumbo-y (that's a word, right?) about this is that it's a soup made with a basic roux served over some rice. Other than that, this really resembles gumbo not at all, but I didn't know what else to call it. Basically it's poblano cheese soup poured over ground sausage and rice, but that doesn't sound nearly as catchy.

Fiesta Chicken Bread

Justin was browsing through the Chive one day last month and found this food post. When we saw number 20, we decided we had to know A) what exactly it was, B) how to make it, and C) how awesome it would taste. Analyzing the photo, I decided that it obviously included bread of some sort, bacon, cheese, and what I thought might be some sort of ranch dressing. I googled bread bacon cheese ranch, and voila, I found myself at the recipe for Cheddar Bacon Ranch Pulls on Plain Chicken.

Carnitas

Justin and I both love burritos. When his boss asked where he wanted to go for lunch for his birthday, he picked a burrito bar a few miles from the university. Qdoba might be my biggest fast food weakness, especially their breakfast burritos. Ask them to grill it a little bit after they've wrapped it up in foil, and it makes it even better. The outside gets a tad crispy like a quesadilla, and the cheese starts to melt. Mmmm... It'll change your life.

The beauty of burritos is that you can pack pretty much whatever you want in to them. Don't like beans? Leave them out. Want more cheese? Add it in. As long as it's in a tortilla, it's still technically a burrito, and the burrito police won't stop you. In my opinion, putting just about anything in a tortilla makes it infinitely better. That being said, pork is probably my favorite burrito filling. (Justin, on the other hand, would argue for chorizo.)

Cilantro-Lime Rice

Cilantro is an herb that divides people. There are people who love it and can't live without it. Then there are people who think it tastes like soap. I fall somewhere between those two camps, I guess; I like cilantro in moderation. I enjoy the fresh flavor that a small bit lends to Mexican food, but too much of it makes me feel like I've swallowed a mouthful of Dawn. This cilantro-lime rice was made with that in mind, so the lime is intentionally a more prominent flavor than the cilantro. If you love cilantro, by all means add more.

Mexican Pizza

For as long as I can remember, my favorite thing to order at Taco Bell has been the Mexican pizza. I used to get it without beans, but lately I've started liking beans a little more--the flavor is fine; it's the texture that I have trouble with. Either way, going to Taco Bell is not the best dinner option calorie-wise. Their Mexican pizza comes in at 540 calories, which isn't too bad, but let's face it, no one orders just one thing at Taco Bell. If I can make it at home though, I can't be tempted to add, let's say, an enchirito and a meximelt, or any of their other tasty tastiness. Plus, making it home alleviates my main problem with the Mexican pizza: nonuniformity. Maybe it's just me, but I always end up with a smear of refried beans on one half, a small blob of meat right in the middle, and nothing on the other third or so of the pizza. When I make it myself, I can assemble it however I want, and Justin doesn't have to hear me complain.