Creamy Avocado, Bell Pepper and Hatch Chile Enchiladas

A rich vegetarian dish, these avocado, bell pepper, and caramelized onion enchiladas are spiced with roasted Hatch chiles and covered in plenty of cheese.

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My New Years Resolution to add more avocados to my life continues.  [Ya think, since I've posted 2 avocado appetizers in the past month or so?] Since we like enchiladas I wondered about using avocado as the filling for a vegetarian dish.  Low fat or skinny this is not--it is rich!  Instead of a tomato-based enchilada sauce like I've used most recently in Confetti Turkey Enchiladas, or a tomatillo-based salsa verde, like in my Fish Taco Enchiladas, I made a spicy white sauce with Hatch chiles. 

Simon and I walked down to fetch freshly roasted Hatch chiles last summer.

In this dish I used bell peppers from my Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share plus roasted Hatch chiles from my local grocery store.  Both of these peppers can be frozen when they are harvested and thawed for using in baked dishes like I've shown here.  It's another way I feed my family local foods all year long. The caramelized onions are also freezer-friendly flavor boosters. I use both Dorothy's Slow Cooker Method or Alanna's Flavorful Slow Cooker Onions.

This is an involved dish, with multiple steps, so I'll skip any further chitchat and get to the chopper recipe.

Wait--one note--next week I'll share my recipe for the Cheater Margarita Smoothies shown in several of the photos. I rarely suggest wine pairings with my recipes, but I can say with confidence that a Cheater Margarita Smoothie--or two--goes well with these enchiladas.

Another note--if you want to boost the structure of these enchiladas, feel free to add 1 or 2 cups of cooked grains (rice, faro, quinoa, etc) to the vegetable filling. We ate ours with rice on the side.

For more enchilada ideas, vegetarian or with fish, chicken, or pork--hey, no beef, yet, huh--please enjoy my newest Clickable Collage of Recipe Suggestions below.  As always, Anyonita taught me this party trick via this tutorial.

Click on the top 6 photos to be taken to the recipe, the bottom row are "coming soon"!

Sea Salt, Caramel, and Chocolate Matzoh Toffee

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Got leftover matzoh?  Make a decadent dessert! This buttery toffee is topped with caramel and sea salt for an irresistible treat.

I gave myself an unexpected gift over the weekend.  I single tasked. 

I single tasked the activity of enjoying nature.

After a busy morning of cooking followed by a walk in the woods while my spouse photographed the daffodils [all of these flower photos are his, I was just the dog wrangler--which, lemme tell you, 3 zippy leashes is HARD!] followed by errand running--I found myself sitting in the grass next to Crystal the Composting Guinea Pig.

I'd brought out with me my copy of MELT [so I could see what I needed in addition to the Humboldt Fog cheese I picked up at the store earlier], my phone [since I hadn't even checked email yet that day], and some sun tea.

While Crystal moved methodically through the clover I quickly scanned both the cookbook and the unread emails then started to play a game on the phone.  

It was a gorgeous morning and all of a sudden it hit me.

I needed to put down the phone and just experience the warm sun on my prone body, the tickly grass underneath me, and the sound and feel of the breeze.

I lay in the grass in the warm sunshine like I haven't done in probably 30 years.  And when Crystal's maid my daughter came to let us know the cage was ready, I felt refreshed.

[I'd love to say that the feeling lasted throughout the day, but if you've ever nagged a teen to write an essay for an application that they are not motivated to write, you'll understand what an inner-peace destroying experience that can be.]

As I write this, though, I'm sitting on the porch with a Wee Oliver Picklepants in my lap.  His good eye is scanning the yard for pretty, but he's not budging from his comfy perch so all the birds that are enjoying the Spring are safe.  I've regained a bit of that peace.

Spend sometime outdoors when you can.

Single task while you're doing it.

Give yourself that gift.

Overnight Yeasted Carrot Waffles

A light and fluffy waffle tinged with shredded carrots for a Spring breakfast--start it the night before, then enjoy waffles without having to wake up enough to measure the batter ingredients.

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I promise you I am not that distractible . . . Squirrel! . . . I just have so. many. recipes to share and I want to share them all now.  Easter, Passover, Grilled Cheese month, Spring--ack!  But I don't want to post more than Monday/Wednesday/Friday.  What's a blogger to do?

When I started hashtagcarrotweek last month I fully intended to share 3 recipes, take a brief break from carrots and post some other seasonal recipes, then wrap it up with these waffles.

In the meantime my girl Julie has done WaffleWeek, so I'm awfully excited to point you over to Texan New Yorker if you're intrigued with waffles and want some more options, perhaps without yeast . . .

Me and yeast, we are friends--joining forces on pizza dough and bread.  Me and cutting butter or lard or shortening to make pie crust?  Not so much.

This is not my first rodeo throwing vegetables into a waffle.  I started with Butternut Squash Waffles, continued through Sweet Corn and Blueberry Waffles, and now carrots?  Carrots.  And not just carrots.  Yeasted Carrot Waffles. Overnight Yeasted Carrot Waffles, if like me you're perkier in the evening and can assemble the batter and let it hang out in the fridge, so that all you need to do in the morning is preheat the waffle iron while your tea is steeping.


Each time I incorporate vegetables into waffle batter I find the flavor of the vegetable subtly enhances the finished product.  The result is a waffle that is familiar enough for those who just want a waffle, dammit, without all this vegetable tomfoolery, but different enough to be a unique change of pace as well.  It is a versatile waffle.

The first time I made these was for a traditional weekend breakfast.  Subsequent editions got served with fried chicken [store bought--inches of oil are like me and cutting in butter].  All good, though.  This is a flexible, flavorful, unexpected way to incorporate Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share carrots into your family's meal.

For more recipes using carrots, please see my Carrot Recipes Collection. It's part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share, the farmer's market, the garden, the neighbor's garden, and great deals on ugly produce at the grocery store.

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