Tasty Tuesday: makeshift empanadas aka taco pockets

My kids LOVE tacos. It’s one of those meals about which I know I will NEVER get an argument. Unless I dare to serve red beans and rice. Or mexicorn. Or anything with peppers in it. Ahem. Anyway… Tacos get scarfed quickly at our house. So when we had tacos the other night, I made a double batch so we’d have lots of leftovers. I also grabbed crescent rolls while we were at the store so I could try a little something different with all of that leftover taco meat.

One night was straight up leftovers with homemade taco shells à la Pinterest since I always forget the leftover soft taco shells in the microwave when I’m cleaning up after dinner and find them the next day when they’ve petrified beyond consumption. (More about those homemade taco shells in a later post.)

After that, I figured I’d make some makeshift empanadas using the left over taco meat, cheese and the crescent rolls. 

As with all of my ‘recipes’ this one’s pretty self explanatory. I mixed the cold taco meat with some shredded cheddar. Then I unrolled the crescents (one at a time) and folded one corner over on itself.  I rolled out the crescents so I had more area to fill. I placed a medium scoop of taco meat mixture in the middle, folded the point up and the edges over. Then I baked my empanadas for about 15 minutes at 375°F.

These were a bit time consuming but the kids devoured them and the littlest has been asking for them ever since. I also found an empanada recipe that included sauce (thank you food network) so I whipped up the sauce to go along with these. It was VERY salty but that didn’t stop us from eating it! I might try it with sour cream next time to use up the tub that I always buy for tacos and then only use 2T of. I’d also like to see how these freeze. They look like they’d be great in the freezer (after they’re cooked) and easy to pull out and  heat back up quickly. 

Here’s the ‘recipe’ for the empanada sauce (or flower sauce as my littlest has named it).

• 1 c mayo
• 1T adobo
• Juice of 1/2 lime. (I used a whole lime to try to cut the saltiness of the sauce.)

Mix and put in little cups for dipping.

There you go! Another Tasty Tuesday!

What’s your ‘go-to, the kids will definitely eat it’ recipe? I can never have too many of those in my repertoire.

Tasty Tuesday: muffin pizza quick bites

So This isn’t really a recipe but the other day my littlest asked me for pizza for lunch and I said, “Uh… um… Sure! Yeah! I can do that.” And I could! It’s always an exciting feeling when you realize you can do something that you didn’t think you could. Even if it’s something small like fulfilling a child’s request.

We were lucky enough to have English muffins left over from our eggs Benedict the other day so I got to work on english muffin pizzas for lunch. These pizzas are something that I hadn’t made in a very long time and I had forgotten how easy and well loved they are. They’re pretty self explanatory but here’s the recipe nonetheless.

English muffin pizzas for 2

Ingredients:

• 2 english muffins split and toasted
• Pizza sauce (I love pizza squeeze!)
• Mozzarella cheese

Directions:

1. Split and toast English muffins to golden brown
2. Top with pizza squeeze and spread. (The back of a spoon works great for this!)
3. Top with shredded mozzarella cheese and broil till bubbly and as golden brown as you like.

I also made myself an English muffin chicken salad melt which is just chicken salad and American cheese in place of the pizza sauce and mozzarella.

Et voila! A quick and easy pizza lunch. Of course you could top this with whatever you like – pepperoni, olives, ham & pineapple – but we were just playing it simple this time.

What’s you favorite thing to make for lunch? I’m looking for some new ideas!!