Homestyle Cooking: Fresh/Freezer-Friendly Burritos

Burritos are simple, delicious, and are pretty easily accessible in America almost anywhere via a local grocery or gas station convenient store.  I'm sure you can name a couple local restaurants/take out joints that serve some fabulous burritos too.  Who doesn't love a freshly made burrito for take out on those nights where you don't want to cook at all?  I can name at least three places in the local area where I can a damn good sized burrito in less than twenty minutes.  The point I'm trying to make is that burritos are not only super easy and fun to make, but they're really cheap when you buy the ingredients fresh and make a whole bunch for supper (and to stock your freezer). 

My inspiration to create a burrito party for dinner and to stock the freezer came from Martha Stewart and a recipe found here on her website.  I prepared and cooked my ingredients and had them spread out on kitchen table so that Greg and I could pick and choose how we made our supper and our future supper.  I used Martha's recipe as a guideline and chose my own ingredients to use what I already had in my cupboards.  Here are some of the ingredients I chose to use for our burrito party:

Ingredients:
(listed clockwise in the photo above)

shredded taco cheese
guacamole (Wholly)
Greek Yogurt (Chobani)
refried beans
chopped up boneless chicken cutlet
black beans
Greek Yogurt + 1 tsp. Sriracha hot sauce 
shredded Iceburg lettuce
hot salsa
1 cup cooked Basmati rice* (with 1 can of diced tomatos and peppers + half a 
          chopped onion) 
10" soft tortillas (not shown)

*I put in the can of diced tomatoes and peppers + half a chopped onion in the uncooked rice and water before cooking.  I cook my rice in an old pressure cooker for about 9-10 minutes.  When the time the rice is done the vegetables are cooked as well (and make the rice more flavorful).  You could use any kind of rice for this recipe (white, brown, yellow;etc.)

We each had two and made up four for the freezer.  I don't ever recall making this many burritos in one sitting.  Now that I know you can easily freeze them, why wouldn't you make up a couple extra to have on hand?  They were honestly even tastier than take-out or frozen because we made them by hand (and I'm sure the fresh ingredients helped too).  I am so excited to try out my newly made frozen dinners and even more excited to do this again.  Maybe even as a dinner party meal.  

To freeze: wrap individually with a long piece of plastic wrap and mark with the date.  Aluminum foil seems like it would be a good alternate as well.  According to Martha, they should be good for up to three months, but I doubt mine will be in there for that long.  Enjoy!

-Caroline 

November Reading

It's December and I'm still trucking along with my reading.  The end of November felt like it flew by for me.  Black Friday and on has been mainly spent assisting consumers with their Christmas needs at my job.  I have, however, been able to absorb, and love, every minute spent reading and mentally visualizing each word of the two books I have pictured above, even though I've slowed down a bit in pace.  I truly enjoy the anticipation to read more and more as I mentally latch unto to the protagonist and imagine their experience in the text as if it were real.  That feeling when you want to continue and keep reading on to the end; when the book is thinning towards the back cover and really you want the opposite so that you'll stay in mentally in this written world. 

I didn't always read this consistently.  College kind of dampened my personal reading when I struggled to finish assigned reading as well as numerous art projects on top of it.  And I'll admit I've also pushed reading aside at times when I was in relationships.  Movies were just more crowd-pleasing.  I still watch movies with Greg as well as read for personal enjoyment.  Since I found inspiration in an old Jack London novel, Adventure, in the Syracuse Regional Market, among a lot of aged German books, I have been reading and craving more books; especially those written by Americans from the twentieth century.  

Shown top to bottom:
          On The Road by: Jack Kerouac (currently reading)
          Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey into the American Dream 
                  by: Hunter S. Thompson

I loved reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  I enjoy the way Hunter S. Thompson writes in the way that it feels personal-almost like a diary from a witness.  I'm intrigued by his writing and the experiences he's lived through America and Puerto Rico.  Fear and Loathing is absurd and doesn't stray far from the outskirts of Las Vegas and the Nevada desert.  It was above all interesting adventure of a read of a lot of drug and alcohol consumption, interpretations of trends in America from an opinionated sociological perspective, and the quintessential search for "The American Dream."  Kerouac has been spot on fantastic and an equally intriguing read based on America in the late 1940s.

I hope you're reading an equally enthralling book that keeps you anticipating the next pages and prolonging those last pages that edge the back cover.  I'm also very open to suggestions from other twentieth century writers on their own search for an America and how they fit into that place.  

-Caroline