There’s been a friendly rivalry of sorts going on at our church between another woman and myself over who gets to do what food events. Neither one of us is actually running a business per se, but we both enjoy(?) putting on big meals. I had done our church Christmas party dinner (60-75 people) for about three years, then I said it was just too much. So my friendly rival (henceforth designated FR) took it over and did a spectacular job. I stayed out of the fray except for making desserts and my famous pink eggnog for several years, but then I sort of missed it. Last year I asked the woman in charge if I could do it. “Oh, I’m so sorry, but FR already asked if she could do it again this year, and I said yes.” So I stuck with my usual role. FR had also done the food for our annual women’s retreat for a couple of years, with the 2018 one being especially good. She made her grandmother’s green chile (chili? I can never remember when to use which spelling), and it was awesome. Plus she made this cold strawberry soup for dessert. Man! Plus, she made some little chocolate tarts that were . . . vegan. And in spite of that drawback they were honestly one of the best things I have ever put in my mouth. So rich!
I figured therefore that she had a lock on the food for this year’s retreat, and that was fine. Then, out of the blue, her husband got a job in another state and they moved. All of a sudden her food events were (ahem) back on the table. The women’s retreat was coming up, she had been scheduled to do it, and now she couldn’t. Would it be possible for me to do so? Well, yes! I was thrilled. It wasn’t going to be huge—probably around 25 people—but I wanted it to be really nice. Since I’d done a Mexican-themed fajita meal for the rehearsal dinner last month I went with that genre again but decided to do enchiladas and not fajitas. I have to say that the whole thing was a roaring success, with multiple people asking for recipes. I’ll link to the main recipes below, but here are a couple of random thoughts about how I could have managed my time a little better:
- Never, ever, ever think, “Oh, I don’t want to do that yet. It’s too early. I have plenty of time.” I did my shopping Friday morning and was home well before noon. At that point I should have plunged into prep, but I didn’t. I fiddled around with menu cards. It was well into mid-afternoon before I got started on the roasted poblano and black bean casserole, and that project took me the whole rest of the day. It was so, so good, but so, so labor-intensive! And I had a second casserole to make, a chicken one, plus salad and salad dressing, rice, and dessert. And sna-a-a-a-a-a-cks. (I put very little effort into those.)
- As I’ve said before, don’t overdo on amounts. After spending an inordinate amount of time as mentioned above, much of it spent roasting and peeling a dozen poblano peppers, I realized that four big pans of my casseroles, two each, was too much. We were expecting about 25 women (we ended up with about 30), and I had enough food for double that. So I froze one panful each and now have a nice backup for potlucks and other occasions. It’s true that often it takes very little extra time to double a recipe, and I don’t necessarily regret making the double batches, but it would have been a big mistake to bake all four panfuls. At least I did a sanity check before I stuck everything in the oven. Freezing something that’s already cold or room temp and can be baked later is very different from having to cool down something that’s hot, then freeze it, then thaw it and reheat it. Flavor, texture, and possibly safety can all be compromised. And I wouldn’t have been so under the gun on time if I hadn’t had to peel all of those dad-blasted peppers!
- Don’t overpromise. I had assured the woman in charge of the retreat that I could come early, around 8:30, and put the coffee on, heat up water for tea, and heat up cider. But it became obvious about 7:30 that there was no way I was going to make it by that time. I texted my friend in charge to tell her, and there were people on hand to do it. (The cider never happened.) On the one hand, since I was pushing myself to get there early, I was in better shape than I would have been had I just been shooting for the 10:30 snack time. Still, though, there was no real reason for me to worry about making coffee when I was doing all of the other food. Ah well.
I’m linking to the main recipes below (excluding the little cheesecakes, which tasted good but were goopy and which I don’t plan to make again, and the salad dressings) and would encourage you to give them a try. Note for the enchilada casseroles that I never, ever make actual enchiladas. I just layer the fillings with the flat corn tortillas. As far as I’m concerned there’s no reason to do something that has absolutely no effect on how the finished product is perceived. Yes, I’ll decorate cookies and cupcakes; yes, I’ll make my famous biscotti trees. Investing the extra effort for those items does make a difference because they look so festive. But I won’t roll up enchiladas! So there.
First, the roasted poblano and black bean enchilada casserole. Note that the link is to an outside website, not to my own. This is a dish I originally got from America’s Test Kitchen (link is to the TV episode; the enchiladas are the final segment), but they make their recipes available only during the current season. However, other websites openly publish the same ones, giving attribution. I’ve never quite understood how/why they get away with this. Note that I didn’t put any heavy cream into the dish and it turned out fine:
Roasted Poblano and Black Bean Enchiladas
Here’s the chicken enchilada casserole, this time from my own website:
“Chiquita’s Creamy Chicken Casserole” in A Great Alternative to Pasta Casserole
There’s no recipe for the rice dish, which was totally thrown together but involved my making a big batch of brown basmati rice and mixing in some Ro-Tel canned tomatoes, regular canned tomatoes, and a couple of small cans of mild green chiles. I wanted something without cheese since both casseroles had that. People seemed to like it fine.
Here’s a previous post that includes the butterscotch brownies (“Mother’s Good Brownies”) along with the Mexican-style brownies I made for the rehearsal dinner. They are both totally, totally great:
A Couple of Unusual Brownie Recipes
And that’s all for now, folks!