Engine 2 - Matt Moore's Enchiladas

Well, my own messed up but still delicious version of the enchiladas, anyway.

The recipe appears on the Engine 2 web site in the Recipes section.

My changes all came out of necessity. With my husband home and unable to be left alone yet, my son and I have been tag-teaming it to the grocery store. Mistakes were made, items on lists weren't purchased or the wrong items were. Menus were changed at the last minute, too, so not all the ingredients needed were on hand so I had to make do.

Originally I was going to make Mary McDougall's enchiladas from the McDougall Made Easy DVD, but I had no chilies and the can of refried beans I was going to use looked awful. I always mixed a can of refried with pintos and used to buy a popular ethnic brand, but lately have been buying a more expensive organic brand that was lower in salt. When half the beans in the can are blackened and the rest light pink, you just toss the whole shebang in the garbage and start over. I've used that brand before and knew this is NOT what it was supposed to look like! Unfortunately, I had no other cans of refried beans or and only 1 can of pinto beans. Back to the cardfile and I found this recipe that required no beans, but since I already opened and rinsed my pintos, I added them in, anyway, especially since my husband needs the protein and other good stuff to help his recuperation.

No store around here has no fat whole wheat tortillas, so I put corn tortillas on the grocery list for my son earlier this week. He's bought them before and knew what to get. Or so I thought. When I reached for the package yesterday I saw that what he bought contained only corn meal and salt and looked very much like fat tortillas, the package actually contained arepas. I had to look on Wikipedia to see exactly what they were, and although they're supposed to be fried up, I just used them as fat tortillas and layered them as directed in the recipe. There were only 6 so I broke them into quarters and spread them around in the casserole dish, but as you see in the photo above, the coverage was acceptable.

Mushrooms - no fresh on hand so used a can of no-salt added mushroom pieces. 

Spinach - I had only 1 one-pound bag in the freezer, and that turned out to be a good thing, because already this made a huge amount of filling! Any more mushrooms or spinach and it would be overflowing the lasagna pan!

Chilies - had none so didn't use any. I don't know where they went. I usually keep about 4 cans on hand at all times, but when I went to grab them last night they were just gone!

Enchilada sauce - I never use it, even in Mary McDougall's recipe. I just open up a jar of low-sodium pasta sauce. Once I used just a box of Pomi crushed and shook some garlic and onion powders into it. Tasted fine.

And the final difference between the two recipes - I microwaved it for 15 minutes instead of heating up the house by lighting the big oven.

The results? As mentioned above, delicious! With hubby's poor appetite lately we now have a tremendous amount left over, but that's fine. That's one (or more!) less meal I have to make next week.

I look forward to the next time I make it, that time using the right ingredients that the recipe calls for.