Egg Roll Wrapper Chips & Carnita Nachos

A year ago or so I was told about the wonderful other things you can do with egg roll wrapper sheets.  I can’t and won’t take credit for this idea, but I did want to share it with others.

I love making these because they are pretty quick to make and they have a different taste than regular chips. 

3 egg roll wrapper sheets are 170 calories. 

That is about 57 calories per sheet. 

I first start by cutting an egg roll wrapper in half then in quarters.  

 These quarters get cut in half again, on the diagonal.  This will give you 8 larger chips per sheet. 

For smaller chips I just give each triangle another slice and you will have 16 chips per sheet.  I generally do one and a half sheets which would be 85 calories, but sometimes I splurge and do two sheets, which is what is pictured above.

Next up I pull out the cooking spray and give the cookie sheet a quick spray, then lay the triangles out in a flat layer and give them another light spray.  I’ll then sprinkle them with salt.  The ones in the picture got a little cumin dashed on them, as well as garlic powder.  I’ve also done garlic salt for another tasty chip.  You could probably bake them with out the cooking spray, but to me it helps the salt stick.

I bake them at 350*.  I’m not sure I have ever timed it, but you are going for a slightly golden color, and flip them halfway through.  Watch them closely, because they will burn fast.

This is the yummy chip you get when they come out of the oven.  These were slightly on the darker side.

This time I decided to try out an idea I had seen online about carnita nachos.  Guess it was a good thing I had some carnita meat in the freezer.

For my nachos I sliced the thawed meat up thinly, crumbled it up, and then topped the chips with it and some cheese.  That went into the oven to melt the cheese.  The rest of the toppings were some green onions, avocado, a little salt and a squirt of lime.

These were totally yummy and I will definitely be making them again!

I'm going to link this post up over at...

and at

Elements Interiors: Whassup Wednesday

Buffalo Chip Cookies

They are a crisp cookie with a unique taste to them and are great to dunk in milk.  The original recipe had you make large cookies, but I make them average size now.

Buffalo Chip Cookies

1/2 cup margarine, softened

1/2 cup Crisco/shortening

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup granulated sugar

2 eggs

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 cup oatmeal

1/2 cup coconut

1/2 cup chocolate chips

1 cup crushed cornflakes

Preheat oven to 375*.

Cream the margarine, shortening, and sugars together.  Mix in the eggs and vanilla.  Sift and add the flour, baking soda and baking powder.  Blend in the oatmeal, coconut, chocolate chips and crushed cornflakes.

Drop spoonfuls on to un-greased cookie sheet and bake at 375 for 15-20 minutes.

Meal Plan - March 6

Monday:

B:  PB & banana sandwich (235), homemade apple sauce (85), plus coffee with creamer (35) (=355)

L:  Cabbage & Turkey Soup*

D:  Garlic and Soy Sauce Chicken Thighs** with stir fried veggies (broccoli, carrots and cabbage)

Tuesday:

B:  Bagel Thin with cream cheese (170), yogurt (80), and grapes (55), plus coffee with creamer (35) (=340)

L:  Tuna salad with crackers and orange slices

D:  Mushroom, bell pepper, and onion* Omelet with toast

Wednesday:

B:  Boiled egg (70), toast with honey (150), and orange slices (50ish), plus coffee with creamer (35) (=305)

L:  Taco salad with Turkey meat* and black beans*

D:  Spaghetti* with turkey meat* sauce*, broccoli and carrots

Thursday:

B:  Breakfast Burrito* (180ish), yogurt (80), and a plum (35ish), plus coffee with creamer (35) (=330)

L:  Ham and cheese sandwich (230), Pringles (100) and a plum (35ish) (=365)

D:  Alfredo Mac* (310) with sautéed cabbage (35) and garlic toast (50)

Friday:

B:  Bagel Thin with ham and cheese (250) and orange slices (50ish), plus coffee with creamer (35) (=335)

L:  Leaving Open

D:  Salisbury steak* with mashed potatoes* and carrots

*  In the freezer, cooked

**In the freezer, not cooked

Be sure to check out OrgJunkie.com for other great menu plans!

Alfredo Mac

My regular mac and cheese recipe is an adaptation from the recipe found in a Better Homes and Garden Cookbooks.  For this recipe I took that basic idea and played around with it until I had the following.

Alfredo Mac

4 oz (1 cup) elbow noodles, cooked according to package directions

1/4 cup chopped onions

1/4 cup roughly chopped mushrooms

1 1/2 Tablespoons butter

1 1/2 Tablespoons flour

1 teaspoon minced garlic

1 1/2 cups milk

1 cup Italian cheese blend

2 Tablespoons bacon

2/3 cups sweet or English peas

Sauté the onions and mushrooms in the butter until tender.  Stir in the flour and minced garlic.  Stir in the milk and bring to a boil, cook until thickened, about 5 minutes.  Remove from heat and add the cheese then peas and bacon.  Stir in the elbow noodles.

It is ready to eat at this point.  Or you can pour it into a casserole dish and bake it for about 20-25 mins until it is bubbly.  If you are baking it you can top it with a little more cheese or even panko bread crumbs.

Additional Notes:

This made about four 3/4^th cups servings.  If you want bigger servings then you can always double it.

This recipe isn’t overly cheesy.  It does remind me more of an alfredo sauce than a cheesy sauce.  If you want a bigger cheese taste add 1 1/2 cups or 2 cups of cheese.  I kept it less because I was trying to cut down on calories.

I used the 1 1/2 tablespoon butter because that is what I had left of a stick.  You can up it to 2 tablespoons butter and flour with out any problem.

I used peas because that is what I had in the freezer that I wanted to use up.  You can change that to another veggie or add in an additional veggie.

Single Girl Cooking Tips - The Freezer

I love cooking!  Always have, and when I first learned to cook it was for 5-6 people.  Not a big deal, until you move out and cook for one.  This also isn’t that huge of a deal except it usually costs more to buy smaller packages of foods and even when you suck it up and buy the 1lb thing of meat, you still have four or more servings of food to deal with.  Over the last few years I’ve figured out a few things that help me with that, and I decided to share some of those things.

Single girl cooking tip #1:  The freezer is your friend!   

There are many things that freezer well which means you don’t have to eat the same food for 4-5 days.  The key is how you package them.  Instead of throwing a whole big bowl of soup in the freezer break it up in to actual portion sizes.

Single girl cooking tip #2:  Plastic bags are your friends as well.

You can also use plastic containers.  I prefer plastic bags because they seem to take up less room in the freezer.  Plus I have had several plastic bowls fall out of the freezer and break really easy.

Single girl cooking tip #3:  Things can be used different ways to give you different-ish meals.

When we finished making the Homemade Raviolis I had left over mushroom and cheese filling.  Instead of making more ravioli dough I decided to cook some jumbo shell pastas I have had.  I added some spinach to the mushroom/cheese then filled the shells.  I bagged them in ‘single girl’ portions, then put all of those in a freezer plastic bag that was labeled.

I had some of the Spinach Cheese Cream Sauce left over so I froze it.  I’m not sure yet how it will reheat, but sometime you have to do trial and error.  I also have spaghetti sauce bagged up in the freezer that I can use on top of the shells as well.

When I am ready to cook the shells I will put them in a small oven proof bowl, top with sauce and bake until hot and bubbly.

Homemade Raviolis

Weekend Cooking Adventures

Let me first say thank you to K&R+X’s for the warm welcome and comment on my first Menu Plan link up at orgjunkie.com.  I had visited Kate’s blog and she was kind enough to share with me a recipe for making homemade noodles.  I thought they sounded good, and had decided to give them a try. 

The homemade pasta/ravioli tutorial she shared with me was great.

My nephew was planning on spending the night with me this weekend and he had already requested some raviolis with ‘red and white’ sauce, so when I saw the tutorial, I thought why not.  I knew it could be a challenge trying something totally new while having a helper, but I figured we would work it out.  I printed out the tutorials and made him sit down and read it before we even got started.  That helped, since he had a heads up on what we were doing.

The only issue we had was the actual mixing of the dough, it just wasn’t coming together, but I went ahead and added the water and oil and after some kneading it looked better. 

What I learned:

The kiddo is really good at putting the dough through the pasta roller.

I started filling and making the raviolis as he was thinning out the dough, which saved us time.  I think if I was to do this in the future alone, I would thin one ball, then just go ahead and fill that strip of them.  We tried stacking the strips, but then they were sticking to each other.

I used a heart cookie cutter this time, since it was almost Valentine’s Day (also an idea from the above site).  Next time I will do rounds or squares because I think I could get more out of them.  Of course I could have probably gotten the hearts closer, but with the odd shape I had issues.  We tried to reuse dough, but since it had extra flour on it (to keep it from sticking) it didn’t work as well.

Put the water on to boil when you finish the raviolis at the beginning of the 30-60 min wait time, not after it.  Why does water seems to take forever to boil when you are the most hungry?



Don’t forget that because there is a 20ish min wait after making the dough and the 30-60 min wait after making the raviolis that you want to start way earlier than you think you need too.  I wasn’t worried about time because it was just me and him eating, but it ended up taking us about 2.5 hours from when we first pulled out the flour to when we got to sit down and eat dinner.

We will definitely make these again, playing with fillings and sauces, though both recipes were very good!