Some southwest inspired meals
March 6, 2021 9:59 PM
For some reason, I keep buying milk at the grocery store, then realizing it's about to expire so I scramble to find something to make with it, and then once it's gone I end up buying another quart of milk because I need it for something else.
Anyway, this time when I looked up recipes that use milk, I came across this Chili Cornbread Skillet. So I read the recipe and it looked pretty simple. Make some chili, mix up some cornbread mix, put it on top of the chili and then bake it.
The only thing I wasn't sure about was What pot or pan do I use? The recipe said to use a 4qt skillet. I don't know if most pans are labeled with their volume, but mine aren't. I had a deep skillet that I wanted to use, but I wasn't sure if it was big enough. So I actually went and measured 4 quarts of water and started dumping it in this skillet. Turns out it only holds 3.5qt. Alright, I'll use my pot instead.
Look at all that extra room in the pot! I totally could have used my skillet! That would have been so much better and so much more aesthetic. Plus I had preheated my oven not realizing how close the two racks were and then I needed to awkwardly remove one to make the pot actually fit.
Overall, this recipe was alright. A good number of commenters said that this was bland and I have to agree with them. I doubled the amount of salt, but I think I should have doubled all the spices. The cornbread was also kind of bland. It needed more sugar at least. And maybe the whole thing needs more cheese because I barely noticed it in between the chili and the cornbread.
I really enjoyed the leftovers though. I reheated the cornbread part in the toaster oven and the chili part in the microwave, which worked out well.
Today I made another southwest-y dish: Creamy Chicken Fajita Pasta. The reason I decided to make this was because I happened to have half a block of cream cheese and 2 bell peppers that I needed to use up.
Now this was delicious. I really like the pasta recipes on Budget Bytes. And cream cheese in pasta is great. Problem is, I still don't like leftover pasta, and I have a feeling this will go from a 5/5 meal to a 3/5 meal in leftover form.