We’ve officially moved into the new house! I’ve even begun to cook and bake again. These red velvet cupcakes are among the handful of items I’ve made in the last few days.

These cupcakes are bland and don’t really taste like anything. Oh well…I’ll try them again sometime. More importantly, they were baked in an oven that works properly. That makes me immensely happy. Almost as happy as not having to go to the laundromat anymore.

I’ll get back to posting pictures and blogging soon. We didn’t get internet until two days ago and I’m still catching up on the all the things I’d missed.

The house is nearly unpacked…I only have a couple of boxes left. The last big thing to do is to hang all of our art on the walls. That might have to wait a week or so. Other than that, the house looks pretty good already…and we only moved on Saturday!

That’s all for now…just wanted to check in and let everyone know that I’m alive and doing very well!

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Pictured in this post is a blackberry and peach tart I made in July. My mom gave me a bunch of fresh fruit she’d picked locally…probably more than we could eat before they went bad. Since blackberries don’t seem to keep particularly well, I turned them into these tarts.

They’re made with a walnut shortbread crust that I adapted from an almond shortbread crust recipe I previously used to make cherry tarts. I liked that crust a lot so it was an easy choice for this tart. I believe that this recipe is the one I used to make the original almond crust. Go figure, it’s a Dorie Greenspan recipe from Bon Appetit. I should have known.

To assemble the tart, I lightly pressed the shortbread into the tart pans, sliced the peaches, tossed them gently with a little bit of flour, sugar and cinnamon and layered them in the shortbread crust. The blackberries were then scattered over the peaches. I wanted the fruit in this tart to remain separate…unlike some previous berry and peach things I’ve made where the fruit melded together.

The fruit was then topped with an oatmeal walnut crumb topping and baked until the crust was golden brown.

Other stuff: Sadly, the week at the beach is coming to a close…it kind of went by too fast. We went on a day trip to Charleston, SC yesterday. We didn’t set out to see anything in particular…we simply parked the car and walked around all afternoon taking photographs. I’ll probably write a post about that trip as we took a lot of pretty decent pictures.

Other than the trip to Charleston, I’ve just lazed about all week. I spent a little more time on the internet than I should have and I did a fair amount of reading but I didn’t touch any of the knitting I brought with me. I really should start knitting again…if for no reason other than I have an awful lot of yarn in my stash. Maybe the mood will strike once we’ve moved and are completely settled into the new house. Or maybe the knitting bug will strike again once fall arrives.

We’ll be heading back to Williamsburg in the morning…as much as I don’t want the vacation to end, I will be glad to be at home to bake. I’ve been craving sweets all week and I really don’t like grocery store desserts anymore. Ice cream kind of did the trick yesterday…but baked from scratch goodies would have been better. Oh well…I’ll be home to make them soon enough.

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These are chicken enchiladas with corn, black beans, onions, and cheese baked in a green chile enchilada sauce. The enchiladas are enjoying their view of the Atlantic Ocean from the eighth story balcony of a rental condo in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Just because I’m on vacation, doesn’t mean I’m totally off the hook from cooking. My reputation preceeded me and the boyfriend’s family wondered if I was interested in cooking at all while we’re here with them at the beach. Since I do happen to like cooking, it didn’t take much arm twisting for me to relent. Too bad I wasn’t really expecting to cook and didn’t plan some easy and delicious meals to cook in a kitchen not so well stocked as my own. Next time I’ll be better prepared and armed with ingredients.

After a too lengthy shopping expedition for a bathing suit, we stopped at Target for some random things and tried to figure out what we wanted for dinner. I suggested that I could make enchiladas as Target carries the green enchilada sauce I prefer to use. Of course, this particular Target didn’t carry it. Off to the grocery store we went…and they didn’t carry it. I gave up on the green sauce and we bought the red sauce as well as all of the other ingredients needed for dinner.

I don’t like the red sauce. It’s too much. It overpowers the rest of the dish…but I got it anyway as I didn’t feel like thinking about an entirely different dinner after the mind-numbing experience of finding a new bathing suit.

When we got back to the rental condo, I decided to venture out on my own to try to find the green enchilada sauce. I found it…but it did require selling my soul to the worst place on earth…Walmart. I really try to avoid Walmart whenever possible. This time I didn’t. I’m in a foreign town and wasn’t quite sure where else to look. I knew that Walmart carried the green sauce so I gave in and bought it from my least favorite place in the world. Okay, maybe I’m slightly exaggerating…but I do dislike Walmart. A lot.

Back to dinner…I cooked it, it was wonderful and now I’m posting the recipe here for posterity.

Sadly, this recipe uses a little more prepared food than I regularly use when cooking dinner at home. I could make the enchilada sauce from scratch but it would probably take some time to get the recipe right. I could also make the corn tortillas…how much do tortilla presses cost?

Despite the prepared sauce and store-bought tortillas, these are delicious. They taste just as good (if not better) the next day. I like mine topped with sour cream and sometimes salsa. We served them last night with rice and refried beans. I usually eat them as a stand-alone dish.

The idea for these enchilada comes from my aunt and uncle in Michigan. They made very similar enchiladas for us a few years ago and I immediately decided I would add these to the list of things I make semi-regularly. They’re that good.

The filling recipe will make way more filling than needed for 12 enchiladas…freeze the rest for future use or make a second batch the next day.

Chicken Enchiladas with Corn, Black Beans & Sweet Onions

Yields 12 enchiladas

Ingredients

• 1 package small corn tortillas
• 3 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cooked and chopped/shredded
• 1 can corn (or approximately same amount fresh or frozen corn), drained
• 1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 sweet onion, diced and cooked until soft
• 2-3 cups shredded Colby Jack cheese (use more or less cheese depending on personal taste)
• 3 cans green chile enchilada sauce (I use Old El Paso or Target’s Market Pantry brand)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. To make approximately 12 enchiladas, lightly oil a 9 x 13 baking pan. If you’d like to bake more than 12 enchiladas, lightly oil a second slightly smaller pan.
3. Pour 1 can of enchilada sauce into bottom of pan and spread evenly.
4. Mix another can of enchilada sauce with chicken, corn, black beans, and onions. Stir until well combined.
5. Using a skillet, lightly heat a corn tortilla. They’re not very flexible cold or at room temperature. If not heat, they will break during enchilada assembly.
6. Spoon approximately 2 tablespoons chicken mixture down middle of tortilla shell. Sprinkle with small amount of shredded cheese. Roll one side of tortilla towards the middle. Roll the other side and then carefully transfer the enchilada to baking pan with the seam side down.
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 until pan is full.
8. Evenly pour the third can of enchilada sauce over the enchiladas in the pan. Top with remaining shredded cheese.
9. Bake for approximately 30 minutes until sauce is bubbly. Let cool for a few minutes before serving.

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Continuing on with the old pictures I need to post…

Here we have what I consider to be my best yet potato salad.

I wasn’t really a fan of potato salad as a kid. I think this is because I don’t care for the type of potato salad with lots of mustard and hard boiled eggs. I don’t love mustard but I can deal with it in small quantities. I love hard boiled eggs…but I don’t want them in my potato salad. I also don’t like raw regular onions in my potato salad (or tuna salad or any other salad). Anyway, I never ate much potato salad as a kid because of the mustard, onions and eggs but I’m a pretty big fan of it now.

This potato salad was made with red and white new potatoes from my local farmer’s market. After cooking and draining the potatoes and letting them cool for a little while, I tossed them with a few heavy splashes of rice wine vinegar. I lightly mashed a few of the potato chunks as I think it improves the texture of my potato salads. From there, I added chopped celery and green onions, a heavy splash of lemon juice, a little bit of dijon mustard, mayonnaise and sour cream. I added some salt and pepper to taste and the salad was complete.

Sorry that I don’t have a more concise recipe for this potato salad. Everytime I make salads of this sort, I kind of make it up as I go. A little of this, a dash of that…until it tastes right. This salad definitely tasted right. So right that I ate it all nearly by myself in just a couple of days.

On to the non-food stuff: I’m on vacation. Woohoo! I’m looking forward to lots of reading at the beach. I might even knit a little since I probably won’t be cooking much this week. I’ve got a few projects that I need to work on…like Christmas stockings for us for the new house. I started one months and months ago and haven’t touched it since. I also promised a coworker a pair of fingerless mitts. I have the yarn for them and they’re a pretty quick knit so I’m going to attempt to start and finish them next week.

I’m currently reading the Julia Child biography My Life in France. I absolutely love the book so far. If you like food or France at all, read it.

The house is still in progress but a walk-through has officially been scheduled for a week from now. Finally. But we’re still not sure when we’ll move.

That’s it for now…I think it might be time for a sunset walk on the ocean. Try not to be too jealous of me.

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It’s been brought to my attention that I should continue to write blog posts despite not having internet access at home. This is a good point. A point that I am going to attempt to put into practice. Starting with this very post.

I really should be writing posts while I’m without the internet as I have a lot of old food pictures to blog. If I don’t post them soon, I may very well never post them. That would be a waste.

The pictures in this post are the results of my copying dinner directly from another food blogger’s post. Over at A Good Appetite, they posted the pulled barbecued chicken sandwiches with rice and fennel salad recipes. I found a picture of the rice and fennel salad on Food Gawker and immediately wanted to make it in the near future. Upon visiting the blog, the pulled chicken sounded pretty tasty as well. I had to make dinner that night and prior to visiting A Good Appetite, I didn’t have a clue what to make…so all credit for this lovely meal goes to them!

The pulled chicken was pretty easy. I used 4 or 5 chicken breasts. I brined them for an hour or two in a mixture of salt, brown sugar, red pepper flakes, garlic powder and chili powder. After the brining, I cooked the breasts on my charcoal grill with some hickory chips to add some smokiness. I then shredded/pulled the chicken with my hands and tossed it in a light mixture of sugar and cider vinegar with a hint of chili powder.

The boyfriend absolutely loved the chicken. He thought it was better than my pulled pork…which is fine by me as the chicken is far quicker and easier to make…not to mention, chicken breasts are a lot healthier than fatty pork butt. We put some store bought barbecue sauce on the sandwiches but the chicken would have been fine on its own without the sauce.

Just in case you were wondering, I also made the wheat buns for the chicken sandwiches. It was a very productive day in the kitchen.

I made the rice and fennel salad pretty close to the original recipe. I used a mixture of brown and jasmine rice. I didn’t have any fennel seeds so I skipped them entirely. I also added some toasted and chopped walnuts for crunch.

I loved this rice salad but the boyfriend preferred the wild rice salad I made twice earlier in the summer.

Thanks again to A Good Appetite for a great blog post and a delicious dinner!

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This brown sugar and walnut shortbread is adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours book. The original recipe called for pecans…I used walnuts. Other than that, I don’t think I changed a single thing. They were pretty delicious and kept well for days.

Because we’re getting ready to move and take a vacation, I might not be on the web much for a week or two. I’ll still be checking my email at least daily but I might not post quite as much to Flickr or to this site. Don’t be alarmed. I will return as soon as I can. In the meantime, I do have a number of food and dessert items that I’ll blog about when I have the opportunity.

The new house isn’t ready yet and we’re not particularly sure when it will be…but the boyfriend had to move out of his apartment anyway. We’ve squished some of his stuff into my apartment and put far more stuff in a storage unit and now all we can do is wait…for an unknown period of time.

But why won’t I be on the web much? Because my internet connection has always been in his apartment and it’s totally not worth it to get it connected here since it could be just a couple of weeks until the house is ready.

The good news is that I’ll still be cooking and baking and taking pictures. When I return, I should have loads of pictures to post and lots of things to write about.

Not too much else to report from here. All I’ve done lately is pack boxes and move stuff….in the stifling July and August heat and humidity. I’m kind of tired and glad that we don’t have to do it again for at least two weeks.

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