My Green Enchilada Casserole

Like everyone—I have to make dinner for my family; and, like everyone I get tired of cooking sometimes; or, I’m too lazy to cook altogether. However, even if I’m not up for cooking I still like to prepare something that tastes’ great. Therefore, I love making one of my favorite dishes, Enchiladas—but I like to make them the lazy way!

Today I’m going to show you how to make my Green Enchilada Casserole. It’s so easy to make, and it tastes amazingly delicious. When I make this dish I also like to serve it up with some refried beans and white Mexican rice (it tastes the same as red Mexican rice, as far as herbs and seasoning, but I omit the tomato sauce).

Ingredients for Green Enchilada Casserole / Servings: 8-10

·         8-10 tomatillos

·         1 onion halved

·         3 garlic cloves

·         5 jalapeños

·         4 Boneless skinless chicken breasts’

·         16oz of Monterey Jack Cheese or Pepper Jack Cheese

·         Cilantro

·         30 tortillas

·         Salt

·         Pepper

Ingredients for Cream Sauce

·         Sour cream

·         1 lemon

·         Salt

·         Pepper

·         Small handful of cilantro

Instructions:

Step 1: Take your boneless skinless chicken breasts’, two garlic cloves, half an onion, a generous pinch of salt, pepper, and then place them into a pot. Bring to a boil, and then lower the flame until the chicken is fully cooked. 

Step 2: Peal your tomatillos, then place them in a colander along with the jalapeños and give them a good rinse. Next, place them in a medium sauce pan, and add the other half of your onion and the remaining garlic clove. Then cover with water and bring to a rolling boil. 

Step 3: While the chicken and green sauce are cooking go ahead and get started on grating the 16oz block of cheese. 

Step 4: Once the chicken is fully cooked, remove it from the pan and set it aside to cool. 

Step 5: Once the tomatillos and jalapeños have lost their vibrant color they’re ready to be blended into a wonderful sauce. So, take the tomatillos, jalapeños, garlic, and onion; and place it in the blender along with a handful of fresh cilantro. This is the most important step: This is where all the magic happens because the green sauce gives the casserole its entire flavor; therefore, add a generous amount of salt to this sauce. I always salt to taste I never really have a set amount of salt that I put in. What I do is give it a few shakes of my salt shaker, blend, taste, and repeat until I get the flavor I want. Just be careful when tasting because it’s really hot. Once it’s ready simply set it aside.

 Step 6: At this point your chicken should be cool to the touch, if it isn't give it some more time. But if it is you can start shredding!

Step 7: Now you’re ready to assemble but before you start assembly, preheat your oven to 375 degrees. 

Step 8: Next put a thin layer of the green sauce on the bottom of the baking dish to prevent sticking—no oil or butter is needed.

Step 9: Dip six tortillas into your mixture and lay them on the bottom of the dish. Add a small handful of the shredded chicken, and a small handful of cheese. 

Step 10: Repeat four more times until you’ve reached the top of the baking dish and pour the remainder of the sauce over the casserole.  Then place it into the oven until the cheese is melted (about 20-30 minutes). 

Step 10: After placing the casserole into the oven, go ahead and make your cream sauce. The cream sauce is basically half a cup of sour cream, juice of a lemon, salt, pepper, and a small handful of cilantro. Once all of those ingredients are in a small dish, give it a good mix and place in the refrigerator. This casserole is delicious on its own but this cream sauce adds so much more flavor—it’s not even funny. Trust me when I say this cream sauce is so amazing. Also, what I like to do at this time is start on my rice, refried beans, and Pico de Gallo. 

Step 11: After the cheese has completely melted remove it from the oven, serve, and enjoy! 

I hope you give this wonderful, easy, and delicious recipe a try! Happy eating! Till next time my friends.

Card of the Week

Happy Tuesday everyone! Lately I’ve had so many orders to work on that I haven’t had any time to just play with all my crafting tools to satisfy my creative needs, or make new items to sell. So I made it a goal of mine to take a break from making orders once a week to make something for fun. Last night after finishing up some orders I decided to stay up an extra hour to make this cute card! 

I’m very thankful that I can make money selling the things I make. Working on custom orders doesn’t feel like work at all; but there are times when I feel like I need to create something new—instead of making the same thing over and over. As a matter of fact, I feel like that often. If I don’t make something new I tend to feel restless or bored and I can’t help but think about making something new until I actually get a chance to make something new. 

Now that I made this card, I should be ok until next week, lol. Also, in case you were wondering what I used to create this card I’ll go ahead and show you the tools I used to create this card: 

·         Lawn Fawn Stamp set: Love ‘n Breakfast

·         Lawn Fawn Stamp Set: Flying by

·         Paper stack sheets

·         Kraft Card stock

·         Circle craft punch

·         Black ink

·         Scissors

·         Washi tape

Hope you’ve enjoyed this mini-post! & Feel free to check out this quick video--just practicing my video skills :-D 

Card of the Week #1 from Nicole Gavaldon on Vimeo.

New Papercrafting Tools

I love shopping for new craft tools and researching different techniques that will make me a better papercrafter; and while video surfing on Youtube I learned of a new technique called embossing. I’ve heard of it before but I didn’t actually know what embossing was; and now I’m super excited to try it. So here is a list of new items I’ve recently added to my craft collection:

A Martha Stewart Heating Tool

Recollections Embossing Power in Snow

Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Fired Brick

Versa Mark Watermark Stamp Pad

Inkadinka Clings Rubber Stamp Set

And, Zots! I wanted to try these clear adhesive 3D glue dots because I hate seeing the white spots from using adhesive foam on cards—so I wanted to give these clear glue dots a try. 

Using these tools was very easy; and, if you’re a beginner here is how you use them. The Versa Mark pad is like slow drying glue. You take your stamp and tap it on the versa mark glue a few times, than stamp your image onto your paper. Next, you sprinkle some of your embossing powder of the stamped image, tap off the access, and heat it up with the heating tool—and these are the results: 

Next I wanted to try out my stamps and 3D glue dots; and so far I think I like the 3D dots. They still have the same 3D effect as the foam adhesive—but I can’t see a big white foam piece when I examine the card at different angles. 

If you’re a beginner papercrafter I hope this mini-review helped. I plan on getting to know embossing a little bit better so I’m going to play around with it until I make something really cute to share. So stay tuned for new projects from me, using the embossing techniques. 

Thanks for stopping by! :-P

Blog GIVEAWAY sponsored by Bridal Accessories Designer, Lisa Dew

Hi everyone! I hope you’re all having a happy and productive Monday. Today I have a gift for you—a GIVEAWAY! Today’s giveaway is sponsored by an amazing designer, Lisa Dew, and is the proud owner of The Honey Dew shop. Lisa designs wonderful bridal head pieces and even creates pieces using vintage jewelry. She’s is going to be giving away this beautiful headpiece. 

Before I provide you with the details on how you can win this lovely bridal piece, I’ll share a little bit about Lisa with you. She lives in Tampa, Florida and has a background filled with art and love for designing. She attended B.G.S.U., with a degree in interior design; and even taught Art History, drawing, and painting at a classical private school for a number of years. She is the proud mother of two adult children that play a major role in the character of her shop. Lisa’s oldest daughter lives in Harlem, NYC and is an upper Eastside nanny of a young girl named, Hannah, who has profound Autism. Hannah’s teachers gave Hannah a cute nickname, Honey Dew, and that is how Lisa’s shop got its name. Lisa’s daughter Meg was a competitive international level Irish dancer, and soon became the go-to mom when all the girls needed costume repairs. Shortly thereafter Lisa began to style the dancers from head to toe. Once word spread about Lisa’s designs, she was on high demand by some of the top Irish dancers and had to create custom pieces to fit the style and personality of each girl. Lisa is grateful of the 8 years she spent working with these dancers because it provided her with the ability to design a custom look that can fit the individuality of any woman—she can even attach thousands of crystals onto a dress with a snap of a finger!

You can post a separate comment for doing each of the following (Example: If you leave a comment and follow Lisa on twitter, you can leave two comments):

Must be a Unifyhandmade.blogspot.com follower

·        Leave a comment (please also provide your contact information in the comment)

·        Follow Lisa’s Twitter @lisaadew

·        Share this giveaway on your Twitter

·        Share this giveaway on your Facebook

·        Share this giveaway on your blog

·        Add The Honey Dew shop to your circle (Etsy)

·        Add The Honey Dew shop to your favorites (Etsy)

The lucky winner of this giveaway will be announced July, 18^th. Good luck!

Also, I’d like to thank Christina for being my model! You’re fabulous girl! 

How It's Made--Baked With Love Tags Series # 1

Hello again! I'm happy to start a new series of posts' here on my blog. It's my first series and I'm naming it 'How it's Made'. I usually have D.I.Y. posts' and that's all find and dandy-- but sometimes I wonder if anyone ever wants to know how I make the products I offer on my page. The item I'm going to showcase in my first 'How it's made' series is a set of tags I just created this weekend. They're new, and they'll be added to my Etsy page in due time--but enough talk, let's get this show on the road!


The tools I use for this project are as follows:

-Plus One stamp set by Lawn Fawn

-Harold's ABCs stamp set by Lawn Fawn

-Heart shape stamp (small)

-Cut tags

-Markers

-Black Ink

-Red Chalk Ink

-Bakers Twine


Before I upload a flood of images, let me just say that I've recently stumbled upon the Lawn Fawn website through Google; and I'm so happy that I did! They have the cutest stamps I've ever laid eyes on. Their stamps have completely renewed my love for papercrafting. You can find them here.

Now, let's begin!

Here are pictures of the cute stamp sets--you can see for yourself how adorable they are.

What I did first was cut out some tags with my Cricut. Then used the 'bun in the oven' stamp from the Plus One stamp collection, and stamped my image on the 2 inch tag. Next I used the Harold's ABCs set to create the sweet sentiment, 'Baked with' and then used a heart stamp for the "love"; and I stamped the heart in red ink for a bit of contrast.

Next I used my Prismacolor Art markers to color in the image. I've found that most crafters prefer the use of Copic markers but let's face it, they're ultra expensive and I have to use the only tools that are available to me. This is sorta off topic but I've had these markers for 10+ years and I've never even had a purpose for them until I started buying Lawn Fawn stamps. I'm so happy that I finally have a reason to use them now!

Once I've completed coloring in the image I simply attached the bakers twine and then I'm finished!

Here is the finished product:

Thanks again for stopping by, and I look forward to more 'How it's Made' by Unify! Till next time my friends.