Garbage Day

Tuesday night, heading home... It's been snowing off and on all day and the temperature never got above 33 degrees F. I went Christmas shopping at lunch. I stopped at the Newburgh Grille and had a bowl of ham and bean soup with a "mini" Greek salad (sadly, the mini doesn't come with pita bread) for $5.51 US. Both were, as always, excellent!

Home after work, I changed clothes. Now, as you can guess, my goal tonight was to start the tile project. But, I answered a few emails, changed my Christmas card list (I got a thank you card from my friend Tracey and her new husband), chatted with my friend a bit and washed the crock of the slow cooker. Before I knew it, it was 7:30 PM!

Now, here I was going off in a different direction. On Saturday, I had thawed out a roll of mild pork sausage, with the idea of making white sausage gravy and biscuits for breakfast. If you were paying attention, this never happened. But, it did leave me with a pound of pork sausage I needed to use up. So, I got to thinking...

Since I know that most "real" Mexican dishes are either pork or chicken, I decided to use the pork sausage with my boxed "Old El Paso" enchilada mix, instead of the usual pound of hamburger.

So, I browned it up (noticing that there was much less fat to drain off than with ground chuck). I added the seasoning mix and half a cup of water and let it simmer. Then I spooned it onto the tortillas, rolling them tight and putting them into a 9 x 9 inch square pan, seam side down. I drenched them with the two packets of sauce, topped them with sharp cheddar, covered the pan with tin foil and put them into the toaster over at 425 degrees F., to bake for 25 minutes.

Meanwhile, I fine diced a small yellow onion (not having any green onions around). When the timer went off, I plated three of them, topped them with a dollop of sour cream and sprinkled on some fine-diced onion.

So, instead of doing tile, I was eating a Mexican dinner...

Hmmm, they don't taste bad, but they don't taste "right" either. I doubt I will make them again, but it was a clever way to use up the pork sausage, or so I thought.

I started watching the newest Celtic Woman Christmas special on public television. I also was taping it as I was pretty sure I'd fall asleep before it finished. And, I did...