Adventures in Cooking

Today's goals:  Chicken Fajitas and Chicken Salad  (It was a big package of chicken!)

Part 1 - the fajitas

There was this fajita seasoning I used to buy in Tulsa - it was actually in the "real" Mexican spice section (as opposed to the Old El Paso meets Taco Bell section), and it was spectacular.  One of the things I most enjoyed about it was that it was just spices to rub on the meat, so the meat would cook up with a nice sear and come out flavorful but dry.  Some of the Americanized stuff is more like a gravy that coats the meat.

I FOUND IT IN IOWA!  And peppers were on sale this week, so I "splurged" and had red, green, and yellow in my chicken fajitas.  In all honesty, this wasn't particularly adventurous - it just felt exciting in an adventurous way to see that little package of seasoning - but it was delicious!  I made a nice big batch, so I have probably 4 meals of leftovers to look forward to.

Part 2 - chicken salad

Every  once in a while I get a craving for something that I very rarely eat - such is the case with chicken salad.  I like it, but it's one of those things that seems like it's a lot of trouble to put together, and there are things I like better that are less effort.  But then there will be that day when I suddenly want nothing more than a chicken salad sandwich.  Like Sunday, when I didn't have all the stuff, of course.

So I decided to make some today, while I was already chopping vegetables.  All went well - until I opened the refrigerator to find...no dill pickles.  How this happened, I do not know.  I always have dill pickles around.  I love dill pickles.

But, suddenly I remembered a small jar of dillweed I bought recently for a meatballs recipe.  I'm not sure I had ever cooked with dillweed before, and I really liked it in that recipe.  And dill pickles - dillweed - I'm sure you can see how my mind made the connection.... 

Well, it is the BEST CHICKEN SALAD EVER!  It is SO good that I'm actually kind of sad I ate the delicious fajitas tonight, figuring chicken salad would be really good after it had a chance for all the flavors to meld.  I am so looking forward to lunch tomorrow now - spectacular chicken salad rolled in a multigrain tortilla with spinach leaves. I may have to start putting dillweed in everything.  :)

Epilogue:  As I was putting my stupendous chicken salad away,  the first thing I saw upon opening the fridge was a jar of dill relish.  How I missed it in my search for dill pickles, I'll never know.  But I'm kind of glad - this is way better.

Part 3 - today's failure

To get my mind off of yummy food, travel back to lunch with me.  I set out to make a quesadilla.  Shouldn't be difficult, right?  Well, apparently I was just a bit distracted, because I kept burning the stinking tortillas.  But I didn't want to waste the filling, so I would flip it, pull the burned tortilla off the top and replace it, and promptly burn the one now on the bottom.  I went through 5 tortillas before I managed to produce one acceptable 2-tortilla quesadilla.