Rainy Days and Wednesdays

I'm quoting an old song title there -- "Rainy Days and Mondays" -- and the song says the two always get her down.  It's a song by the Carpenters (a brother and sister duo) who were huge in the 70's.  Their music was what you would call "easy listening" and Karen had a very gentle kind of voice.  The lyrics of the song

Talking to myself and feeling old
Sometimes I'd like to quit
Nothing ever seems to fit
Hanging around
Nothing to do but frown
Rainy days and Mondays always get me down

seem rather ominous when you know that Karen Carpenter died in 1983 after a long battle with anorexia, but the song goes on to say that she can hang out with her friend who loves her and like most Carpenter songs, it's nice to sing along to and just seems to capture that rather appealing melancholy you sometimes feel on a rainy day.

Anyhow, that's a long intro to me saying I like days like this!  It's raining heavily and so there's nothing better to do than curl up with a good mystery novel (luckily, I have just the thing!) and drink your coffee slowly and maybe make what my husband and I used to call "a big greasy breakfast" (!)

My sister and I were talking the other day about the drudgery of cooking meals every day.  We both like food, but sometimes, the daily grind can get pretty tedious.  I don't mind cooking as much as she does and I was very encouraged because my youngest son said, not long ago, that I've never made anything he didn't want to eat (high praise).  These long easy summer days mean that I can try things that I usually don't have time for.  I made a chicken enchilada casserole yesterday and it was very nice, I thought.  I think the main thing is to cook enough so that you know you don't have to follow the recipe religiously.  I used to get caught up in measuring spices exactly and if it said shredded chicken, thinking it had to be shredded and couldn't just be cut up in small pieces.  Then I got a cookbook by James Barber and he would say "cook enough meat for two" or "pour in half a glass of wine" and then I watched the tv show "Chopped" and I learned that you could use one thing instead of another if you didn't have exactly what the recipe said.  (I know -- many of you are saying "duh" at this point, but my mom wasn't a good cook and didn't show me what she did know anyway -- my fault, not hers, because she did offer.)  Anyway, I'm much better at throwing a meal together than I once was.

Here's the recipe (kind of) for the casserole.  I'm not looking at the recipe I kind of followed, because I want to show that it's all under your own control!

You cut up two onions and a green pepper and cook them in a bit of olive oil until they're soft-ish.  Then you add three cloves of garlic, chopped up, and oregano, cumin, pepper, cinnamon and chili powder and then cook it a bit and then you add canned tomatoes (the recipe said crushed, but I didn't have that so I used spiced stewed tomatoes and it was fine).  You have to cook some chicken -- I used two breasts and cut them up into small pieces but didn't shred them like the recipe said.  You need grated cheese and you need to cut some tortillas into strips (like lasagna noodle shape).

You put some of the tomato mixture into the bottom of a square or rectangular baking dish.  Then you  layer the stuff, tortilla strips, meat, cheese, tomato stuff, strips, meat, cheese and finish with cheese on top.  Then you bake it in a 375 degree oven for about 1/2 hour.  It's like Mexican lasagna.  A nice meal for a rainy Wednesday.