With the wife and I on the Weight Watchers plan, I’ve been avoiding some of my favorite Mexican dishes. Now that I think about it, this really isn’t necessary if I’m carefully what I choose and how I prepare the dishes. Take fajitas for example. A protein, seasoning and some veggies. Made with boneless, skinless chicken breasts and not much oil the fajitas themselves are only 1 point per serving. I can live with a diet that includes chicken fajitas, can’t you? Well, that leads me to the sides. Made carefully many of the sides are 0 to only 2 points per serving. Follow along with me and I’ll show you how I prepared everything.
 
The night before I mixed up some blue corn masa to make up some tortillas. (This is the one item I couldn’t cheat on to lower the point value. 3 tortillas = 5 points)

 
I also got out the onion and bell peppers to cut up

 
and mixed up the fajitas seasoning.
 
 
Ingredients:
1/2 Tbsp. Chili Powder
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. smoked paprika
1 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. onion powder
1/2 tsp. granulated sugar
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1/2 tsp. kosher salt to taste
1/4 tsp. Chipotle pepper                                                                                                                  1/4 tsp. Oregano         
 
The next day started out by making a batch of my Mexican rice. (1 Point per serving) Started out by sautéing the veggies.

I measured out 2 cups of Brown rice, 1/2 tsp. of salt and 1 tbsp. of OO and put this in the rice maker. I now added 1 cup of Clamato Picante juice and 3 cups of chicken stock.

Next, I added the veggies to the pot.

I closed the lid and pressed start. Here are the results.

Next up was the Guacamole. (2 points per serving) Cut up 1 medium Hass avocado.

Now I added 1 tbsp. of light mayo, some granulated garlic, 5 heaping tbsp. of my Pico de Gallo, some fresh squeezed lime juice and mixed this up and covered.

Next up were some frijoles. I sautéed some diced onion, 1/2 a jalapeno, some bell pepper and corn and then added two kinds of black beans. (0 points per serving)

I now got out 3 boneless skinless breasts and coated them with the fajitas seasoning.

I took them and the cut-up veggies out to my gas grill side burner.

Now I needed to make the tortillas, so I rolled up 6 balls of masa about the size of a golf ball. I flatted them a little to make them easier to press out.

I was some issues with the masa sticking to the press so had to experiment with dusting the bottom with some of the blue core masa.

I heated them up on a C.I. griddle, very lightly sprayed with some OO.

Next I sprayed my 12” Camp Chef C.I. skillet with some OO. After it was heated it up I put the 3 breast in and cooked them for 8 minutes per side.

 

 

Once they were cooked I removed them to a cutting board and was left with the fond.

I dumped in the onions and bell peppers and let them start to cook.

While them were cooking I sliced up the chicken.

Now I dumped in the chicken

and stirred it in and continued to cook until the veggies had soften.

Now I brought it all in and plated it up with a Modelo Negra.

 

 

 

Here is a shot once I took it inside to eat.

Gratuitous side shot close ups.

 

OMG!!! This was so delicious!
 
Thanks for looking.

Hi Kamado Peeps,
Over the weekend I cooked up some pizza – cheese and veg cheese. I love the wood fire taste and the pizza is cooked just right in under 10min.
I have not tried any backing yet but have done loads of baking on the webber. 
Keep smoking 

The wife and I are doing the Weight Watchers program so I’m eating quite a bit differently that I did in the past. This was cooked inside on the stove top, but thought I’d share it anyway. (As it was delicious!)

 
Ingredients:

cooking spray (I used some Red Pepper infused OO spray)

1 medium Golden Potato, Diced into approximately ½” pieces

½ cup onion, chopped

1 medium poblano chile, seeded and diced. (Mine was small so I added some Bell Pepper I had left over)

1 cup corn

1 cup black beans, drained

1 cup zucchini, Diced into approximately ½” pieces (I used a Mexican Squash)

1 tsp cumin (I used ½ tsp of Fajita seasoning and ½ tsp of cummin)

1 pinch salt, or to taste

½ cup, green variety (I used 2 Tbsp of the Hatch Chile and 4 tbsp of Herdez salsa verde - plus extra for garnish)

4 large eggs

2 Tbsp fresh chopped cilantro (for garnish)

 
Here a pic of most of the ingredients I used.



I started out by dicing up the potato and putting it in a slightly sprayed Non-Stick skillet to start cooking.



Once it started to brown, I put the onion, poblano and bell peppers.



Once it started to sweat, I added the black beans, corn, squash and seasoning. I let this cook for approximately 6 to 7 minutes.



After that I stirred in the Hatch chilies and Salsa Verde and let that cook another minute.



I then made 4 depressions in the mixture and crack the eggs in them.



I covered the skillet to help the tops of the eggs cook.



And afterwards I plated it up with some wheat toast.


 
As I said, this was delicious and except for the toast, it was zero points for the Purple Program we’re on!

 
Thanks for looking.

Wanted to start Super Bowl Sunday out right. I decided on Huevos Rancheros.
Started out making the sauce by sautéing some onions and bell pepper.

Once they had started to wilt, I added a can of diced tomato.

After that had cooked for a few minutes, I added a small can of rojas enchilada sauce and let this simmer for 15 minutes.

After the sauce was done, I cooked up some potatoes. (While these were cooking, I cooked up some black beans inside)

Grilled up some tortillas.

And finally cooked up some eggs. (these were for the wife’s dish)

With everything ready, I plated it up. Here are these pics served up with some orange juice and coffee.

 

Thanks for looking.

I been wanting to do this for a long time but didn’t have a proper equipment or the correct weather conditions. I recently bought an A-MAZE-N smoking tube.

It was expected to get down to 41 degrees (fairly cool nights for Southern California) and it was only 67 during the day so I decided to give this a try. Around 4:00 PM I started by cooling the kamado down by placing 5 pieces of Blue Ice in it.

Around 8:30 it reached 50 degrees outside, so I started up the A-MAZE-N smoking tube in my gasser so as not to heat up the kamado.

Once it ignited, I let it burn for a few minutes

before blowing out the flame.

I let it smoke while I went in and prepared the cheese. I had purchased 2 lbs. of Gouda, Colby Jack and Sharp Cheddar at Costco.

I took them out of their wrappers.

I cut them up into smaller sizes so they could absorb more smoke and placed them on a wire rack.

I then placed the A-MAZE-N smoking tube in the bottom of my kamado. I next put in both of my ceramic heat deflectors, then the grill grates and then the rack of cheese. (You can see some of the smoke coming up around the deflectors)

I closed the lid and observed a small amount of smoke coming out the top vent.

An hour later it looked like this.

After two hours in the smoke I opened the lid. WOW!

I brought the rack in the house where I could see a subtle change in the cheese color.

I vacuum packed them all and placed them in the fridge to age and mellow for 3 weeks.

This morning I when out to see how much of the pellets were left in the A-MAZE-N smoking tube. It looks like approximately 1/3 was left unburnt. I’m thinking it could’ve gone at least another hour.

I can’t wait to try them but will wait to let time do its thing on them first.
 
Thanks for looking.