mexican food

If I had to pick one type of cuisine to survive on for a whole year, it would definitely be mexican food. Why? Because the possibilities are endless!!! During one of my weekly menu-planning sessions, I typed "corn tortillas" into the search engine at a popular recipe website. Not because I wanted to learn how to make corn tortillas (although homemade corn tortillas are hands-down THE BEST EVER) but because I had an unopened package of corn tortillas in the refrigerator that I wanted to use up before they turned themselves into tortilla chips, and I was looking for some recipe ideas. The results were overwhelming. Recipe after recipe after recipe appeared. After a quick inventory of my pantry and refrigerator, I went back to the ingredients search engine and typed in the following: corn tortillas, pinto beans, rice, salsa, and sour cream, then hit "enter" - hoping to narrow down the results by the items I had on hand. No such luck. Still, pages and pages of recipes loomed before me. I started clicking on the recipes one by one...enchiladas, gorditas, fajitas, tacos, burritos. How can so many wonderful foods be prepared out of the same five ingredients??? Add your choice of meat - be it chicken, ground beef, steak, pork, or even fish (yes, fish!), to any of these recipes, and throw in some variations on the sauces and cheeses, and you could easily eat for a year without ever having the same meal twice! I almost always have rice, beans, cheese, salsa, sour cream and tortillas on hand. And I'm usually fortunate enough to have some sort of meat in the freezer as well. The only ingredients I ever need to pick up from the grocery store in order to prepare one of my mexican favorites are usually just a couple of avocadoes! I've found that this is also one of the most economical ways to stretch my grocery dollars, as there are so few ingredients to be purchased. As far as the family goes, my husband and daughter absolutely LOVE mexican food - so there are never any complaints when my weekly menu heads south of the border!