Easy Mexican Salad

This is a spin off of the seven layer bean dip. My friend Misty Hales introduced me to warming up 7-layer bean dip and serving it with chips for dinner. To make it a little more healthy and get some fresh stuff in there, we did this last night.

Layer a 9X13 pan in this order:
1 bottle pinto beans (or two cans of your favorite beans)
drizzle chipolte ranch (or regular ranch or just sour cream)
next layer Salsa (or chopped tomatoes)
Then cheese
Warm in oven at 350 degrees until warm and cheese is melted
While it is cooking cut up lettuce, avocado, tomatillo, cilantro

Serve with tortilla chips or make your own:
cut corn tortillas into strips with a pizza cutter.
Fry them in a little sesame oil
sprinkled them with salt and squeeze a lime onto them.

When ready to eat, put down lettuce, then bean dip then other toppings as desired.
We had leftover quinoa, so we added that too.
Definately a keeper!

Lettuce Wraps

Got living boston lettuce in our Bountiful Baskets last week and was so excited for lettuce wraps! I love them!
Here's what I did.

Meat filling:
4 chicken legs
(they were our own chickens, and they were huge legs, so probably 6-8 small legs or whatever part of the chicken you have. I am just always looking to use the legs, thighs and wings since they aren't my family's favorite and we seldom eat fried chicken) I baked them in our bottled chicken stock covered on 300 for 4 hours. pulled all the meat off and added the following:

1/4 cup chopped fresh basil or 1T dried basil
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 large garlic cloves, finely minced
1 large jalapeno chili, chopped fine
1 teaspoon garlic chili sauce or
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tsp sesame seed oil
2 Tbsp. Vegetable Oil

Veggie filling:

Finely chopped Cucumber
Grated carrots
chopped celery
chopped zuccini
chopped green onion
chopped roasted peanuts

Boston Leaf Lettuce or Butter crunch lettuce

Take leaf place small amount of meat filling, and then a lot of the veggie filling rollup and enjoy!

{Squash Stir-Fry}

While I have posted many recipes with squash, my family doesn't really LOVE squash. I have been on a quest to find a way to feed squash to my family without them complaining about it. I think I finally found a good one, I have to put it down before I forget.

Saute
2 cloves garlic
1 onion finely chopped
1 squash peeled, seeded and diced
1tsp sesame seed oil
1-2Tbsp sesame oil
1/2 tsp garlic chili paste
1/2 tsp dulse
1/2 tsp oregano
Saute until squash is tender then add
broccoli cut into bite sized pieces (about 1 1/2 cups)
2 grated carrots
2 stalks celery finely chopped
saute until broccoli is tender

Serve over quinoa. with popped pumpkin seeds on top.