February arrives and an enchilada casserole

 February arrived today at 40 degrees F! Everything was melting... once again making everything a very slippery mess. I enjoyed the break from the slipping and sliding that we've had the past few days, although the warmer air did feel nice today. It would be nice if it would just keep melting, but that's not supposed to happen. 

Yesterday we split wood all afternoon, filling up our wood supply at home for another 10 days or so. We are heading away for Valentines Day to Syracuse New York, and from there heading to Vermont to pick up some maple syrup supplies at Leader evaporator Co. so we'll need to restock the wood supply for our farm caretaker, or really lets call him what he is... babysitter, before we go.

 Bulrush checking to see if I've got treats

the life of Izzie moo, as you can see, is a rough one...

 Sammy wonders if maybe there is some grain left in this scoop... hmmm...

 Nope it's empty... never mind...

Tonight it's a little cooler and most everything has returned to skating rink status. We'll see how it all is in the morning.  Hopefully we'll be able to get out our lane one day this week, if not we'll need to ask our feed store to drop some sacks of feed off at the end of our road to replenish our supply. 

For dinner tonight, I made this enchilada casserole recipe I found in Cooking light magazine. When I read the recipe I knew it was something we'd like, but it seemed a little blah... so I made some changes and we loved it. I think the best thing I changed was the cheese - I used Mexican Queso fresco instead of Monterrey Jack cheese, which you can use if you can't find Queso fresco, but if you can find it, it's worth it. Even including making tortillas from scratch this recipe still took me only about an hour, it will take you less if you have prepared tortillas to use. So it's an easy recipe if you are tired or just really hungry... I was both, so it worked well!

Enchilada casserole

  1 pound extra lean ground beef

1 cup chopped onion

1 Tbs minced garlic

1 tomato, diced

1 cup chopped spinach

1 small can red enchilada sauce, I used the hot stuff

3 large tortillas

1/2 cup Queso Fresco cheese

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

In a large nonstick skillet, cook your ground beef and onion/garlic until the meat is browned, and then drain. 

Clean you pan, and return the meat/onion mixture to the heat. Add in your diced tomato, your chopped spinach, and 1/2 can of enchilada sauce. Season with salt and pepper to taste. 

Place 1 tortilla in the bottom of a 9inch pie pan, coated with non stick cooking spray. Put half your meat mixture on top of the tortilla, and then add another tortilla on top of the meat mixture, and top it with the remainder of your meat/onion mixture.

Place your last tortilla on top, top it with the last of your enchilada sauce and crumble the cheese over top. Place in your preheated oven for about 10 minutes or until the cheese melts. 

I served this with some smashed black beans I cooked with diced Poblano peppers. 

I'm going to try to head to bed a little earlier tonight... my nightly reading has turned into over two hours passing without my notice which results in me getting to sleep a lot later than I'd like to. So... cut back on the reading? Can't do it... my current book has got me hooked so I'll just need to make an effort to get to bed earlier. 

Welcome February... and bring on the maple sap... we have a feeling it's coming early this year.