Healthy Loaded Nacho Skillet,Pork Carnita Bowl,Tex

Healthy Loaded Nacho Skillet
It is officially Football season and the first day of Fall!
Yay* for pumpkin everything and tailgating. A bigger *yay* for
pumpkin spiced lattes from my good ol’ Nespresso and cold
brewed coffee with my very own Pumpkin Spiced Coffee Syrup.
Ok, ok we are getting all coffee snob up in herrr so let’s
move on to nachos because who doesn’t love some gooey melted
cheese, spicy black beans, corn chips, sweet corn off the cob,
rice, veggies, and even more gooey melted cheese. And not the
fake stuff folks because we don’t get down with Velveeta like
that!
That’s right.. nachos do not have to contain Velveeta because
cheese is WAY TOO GOOD on it’s own to add a bunch of crap that
makes it look like plastic when in cools. You pickin’ up what
I’m puttin’ down? Thank You, Thank You, I knew you would
understand!
Now let’s forget about that crap and get back to the good
stuff because these nachos are the perfect balance of all the
cheesy goodness you would expect from nachos, and a bunch of
other goodies that are whole and nutritious. Sweet bell
peppers, a big bed of lettuce, brown rice, black beans, oh
yeah! Loaded nachos say whhhhhaaatttt?
Ok, ok I’m calming myself down but this is something to get
excited about. One of my all time favorite snack foods, in a
skillet, with nutrition on top?
Now that my rambling nacho madness is over the voice of reason
is here to tell you what exactly this Loaded Nacho Skillet
is PLUS the fact that it only takes 30 short minutes to put
this bad boy together. Cook the rice, add the beans, the
cheese, the frozen corn, the chips, more cheese, the peppers,
more cheese, and finally broil it for a few minutes until
everyone is happy. Got it? Since that way A LOT of steps here
is a pretty picture for you to see exactly how to achieve this
nacho goodness:
Now if you really want to take these nachos totally over the
top try adding a dollop of my Homemade Ranch right in the
middle of a big pile of nacho goodness. These two things are
basically a match made in food heaven and I would not tell you
to do another step if I didn’t think this ranch was basically
the best thing that ever happened to these nachos. Nachos meet
ranch. Ranch meet nachos. And they lived happily ever after
all up in my tummy!
*I used my Taco Night Freezer Corn in this recipe as well!
Pork Carnita Bowl
Let’s just get real here…. these Pork Carnita Bowls are
ridiculous. Ridiculously good that is! So ridiculously good
that my husband took one bite and said “This is way better
than Chipotle.” EXACTLY what I was thinking all day when I was
eating it. Yes, I was chowing down on the meat all day because
I decided it would be a good idea to make it ahead of time.
That turned out to be a horrible idea!
Why is it a horrible idea you ask? Because you will want to
eat half of it before the rest of your family even knows it is
in existence. You might even think up some evil plot to hide
it from everyone and pretend it never happened just so you can
have it all to yourself. I’m not saying any evil plots went on
inside my kitchen today, but I definitely ate a good third of
the meat before anyone else even had the chance to taste it.
When my toddler caught wind of what was going on he was trying
to smuggle handfuls of meat into the living room without being
noticed. Not gonna happen on my watch, bebe, because I know
all about them smuggling tricks. I’m the master smuggler with
my expensive organic chocolate bars that I’m so NOT sharing
with any kiddos. I know all about hiding in a corner or closet
and quickly enjoying every delicious bite before someone
notices. At which point I pretend like I have no idea what
chocolate they are speaking of. Chocolate? Where?
Just incase anyone was wondering what exactly a carnita bowl
is, here is my super awesome step-by-step picture thingy for
your viewing pleasure. It is basically just like a bowl that
you would get a chipotle, minus the random ingredients they
use. Speaking of random ingredients I now present you with my
Chipotle public service announcement. If you don’t care please
pretend like I’m saying this really quickly just like the
person at the end of the pill commercial who tells you
your probably going to just drop dead as soon as you take it.
Here goes:
Chipotle is not healthy fast food.
Their wraps contain
partially hydrogenated oils (aka trans fats) and a bunch of
other crap. They use genetically engineered soybean oil in all
of their products. Just because they have cool bags and make
claims like “grass fed” and “better” doesn’t mean they aren’t
sneaking crap into your food. The End. Now please, look at my
cool picture thingy! And while your at it Pin the picture
thingy so other people can see how awesome it is.
Wow, that was awesome sauce, wasn’t it?
Now, let’s talk more
about making the meat because I have a serious
confession.
You may have noticed, I don’t really do slow
cooker meals. I know, I know, the new moms need slow cooker
meals! But I’m over that phase right now (phew!) and slow
cookers are just too boring for me. I need to be able to see
the food and play with it while it is cooking because I’m just
ADHD like that. I can’t bear the thought of putting my
beautiful pork roast in a lonely, not to mention ugly (my mom
got it for a wedding gift like 100 years ago and it is that
baby poop green color. Anyone from that time want to explain
that color to me?) slow cooker and leaving it all by it’s
lonesome for a few hours. I mean, come on people, pork roasts
need some lovin’ too and my ugly slow cooker isn’t doing the
job. I just can’t. This is my officially official apology to
all the slow cooker lovers. I’m sorry!
*This recipe would work wonderfully in a slow cooker though,
so if your not as ADHD about food as me, give it a try!
So what did I do if I didn’t use a slow cooker? I simply used
my stovetop on low heat for about 90 minutes. Yes, 90 minutes
to all of this awesomeness. That potentially means you could
throw this on the stove when you get home from work along with
the rice, go do a bunch of crap that you didn’t really want to
do, and come back to some wonderful carnitas. If you are more
of a nacho, taco, or burrito person this meat would be amazing
served in any of those ways as well.
Carnita Bowl Seasoned Rice
Ingredients:
2 cups rice
1/4 tsp kosher salt
generous sprinkle adobo seasoning
1 sweet bell pepper (red, orange, or yellow preferred)
1/4 cup fresh cilantro
Directions: Put rice, seasoning, pepper, and water needed to
cook rice into a pot and cook according to package directions.
When rice is cooked, fluff with a fork and add chopped
cilantro.
Tex-Mex Potato Wedges
I’m just going to throw this out there…. these Tex-Mex Potato
Wedges are epic. So epic I’ve included a ridiculous amount of
food porn! They are over the top delicious and possibly one of
my all time favorite food creations. These potatoes do take a
little bit more time to put together then your average baked
potato wedge recipe but they are soooooo worth it in the end!
Here are the steps to making these amazingly cheesy and
delicious wedges:
I’ve said this before and I will say it again… the key to the
perfect oven baked potato wedges is boiling your potatoes
before you bake them. This ensures you are going to get a
really nice fluffy inside with a super crispy outside.
Essentially that is what the perfect wedge is to me! The other
important part of this recipe is seasoning the potatoes
correctly. I’ve included the spices that I used, which are
pretty standard tex-mex spices.
My secret weapon when it comes to the perfect looking potato
wedges is paprika. You want color on your potatoes and paprika
is going to do that for you. Although this recipe already has
chili powder in it, I still sprinkled extra paprika on the
potatoes just to bump up the food porn appeal! One last thing
to note about the spices… measure your cumin people! Too much
cumin will ruin these potatoes so I wouldn’t recommend going
over 1/4 tsp.
As for the toppings, the sky is the limit! I topped mine with
sour cream (which I consider essential), avocado, and fresh
tomatoes. Of course we needed to throw in some fresh produce
to combat all of the cheese!
Hand modeling jobs… here’s my audition! Come on… you know you
want these beautiful un-manicured hands for your next job!