Dinner Party Fun

I’ve been seriously lacking in the blogging department this past week. I brought my computer home with the intention of blogging my brains out-maybe about new exercises or recipes I experimented with while I was home. Unfortunately, I didn’t do any experimenting. I did manage to go to the gym a couple times, but my workouts aren’t really worth sharing. I really wanted to try some new recipes but never really found the time.

Regardless, I had a great trip. It flew by, like always, but it was a lot of fun.

Since my friends assume I’m a good cook (just because I cook sometimes does not make me a good cook!) they wanted me to cook for them one night before I left. I was trying to think of good foods to cook for a group of 6 people. I thought about lasagna, asian dishes, and finally came to mexican food. Everyone likes mexican food, so mexican food it was!

Mexican food’s so easy because you can make tacos, burritos, salads, or what I made, enchiladas. They’re flexible meals in that people can add tons of condiments like salsa, sour cream, cheese, etc. I went with enchiladas, because I had a great recipe in mind and it’s easy! I love easy!

We had dinner at my friend Whitney’s house, which she set up very nicely since she knows I’m weird and photograph my food :).

I brought over Trader Joe’s Guacamole Hummus, which was great, and served that up as an appetizer with carrots and chips.

Look how pretty this appetizer looks? I think my friend should start a blog..

Along with chicken enchiladas, we made a corn, avocado, and tomato salsa which is so good! I had the ladies work on that while I started shredding chicken! I bought precooked chicken from TJ’s because, well, I’m lazy. All I did was take 2 forks and shred the chicken up! Perfect for enchiladas!

Here’s the recipe we used for the salsa:

Corn, Avocado, and Tomato Salad

• half a container of cherry tomatoes-sliced in half.
• half cup of corn
• half an avocado-diced
• about 1/3 red onion-diced
• chunk of cilantro-diced
• lime juice to taste
• salt and pepper to taste

For the enchiladas, I used a recipe that I’ve used before. I think this recipe is amazing. It sounds a little scary- and by scary, I mean really fattening, but it’s easy to substitute with lower fat ingredients. If you don’t have precooked chicken, you can always broil raw chicken, then shred that. That’s what I did the first time around and it was great!

Chicken and Cheese Enchiladas:

• 1 pound of chicken, shredded.
• 1/4 cup nonfat greek yogurt
• 4 oz. low fat cream cheese- you could use regular or light
• 1/2 cup shredded mexican cheese
• dash of salt and pepper
• cilantro-chopped. You can use as much or as little as you’d like. I love cilantro so I pile it on!
• queso melt cheese- I found this near the shredded cheese. It’s basically used for quesadillas or any other food you need nice, melted cheese.
• 5 tortillas- I used wheat and corn tortillas from Trader Joe’s.
• 1 can of enchilada sauce- I used a whole bottle of TJ’s enchilada sauce.