The American Mexican

Sometimes I wonder, myself, if New Mexico is a state :) Started off this week with REAL cooking.

 

See? Look at that, actual chicken meat there. I had to cut and cook it myself. Alone. Plus the veggies there had to be chopped. This was a big step, and I chose to do it with some good old americanized mexican food. The mexican food section at the local grocery store here is a lot smaller than in Finland which I think is kinda odd. Indian cuisine is much more popular here while I didn't see much of that in Finland (of course I wasn't looking for it either).

I found these two boxed sets of Old El Paso fajitas and enchiladas so I grabbed those right off the shelves along with hot sauce and guacamole. With my staples collected (I grabbed a bag of chips first thing walking into the grocery store) I felt ready to face the week.

I get home and read the box. I need chicken, an onion, and two bell peppers as well as the box. Okay...

I went back to the store (only 2-3 minutes walk) and picked up these items. I sorta balked at the chicken. Raw meat...eww. But I remembered the beautiful picture on the box and bought the chicken. The box was helpful and told me that I'd need vegetable oil to cook the chicken in so I grabbed some of that too. It even specified what color of peppers I should get, but I just grabbed a pack of three. It was colorful and pretty.

Home again and hungry. I tackle the chicken first. It said to cut the chicken into strips. Yeah...I cut it into chicken chunks. If they looked bite sized that was good enough. After having to handle the raw meat to chop it, the rest was easy. The box said to heat up the tortillas in the microwave but I heated up in a skillet with butter. Much better.

 

I used a stove and everything.

 

Doesn't that look good? I know you wish you could try some of my amazing box-direction fajitas.

 

Oh look at that, leftovers! They didn't last long either and were still good reheated. I cooked the other box with one of my roomates who is vegetarian. We just winged the ingredients, threw in some stuff to substitute the chicken the enchiladas wanted. They turned out pretty good. I still have tortillas left over for quesadillas now :)

I've been thinking about the fact that over here I appear to be half Mexican because A) I'm from "New Mexico" which is often confused as Mexico, and B) I eat a lot of mexican food. For now I look pretty white but if I get a tan this summer people will no longer believe I'm American. I visited a small baptist church that is five minutes from my house. I was complimented on my excellent english and asked if I was raised bilingual. I was really confused at first then realized it was the "I'm from New Mexico" thing going on. I'll seriously have to skip those 7 years of my life and just tell people I'm from Texas. For the last 7 years I've lived in the desert in the middle of nowhere, no state. Then I can be the "weird girl from Texas" rather than "that sweet little Mexican" >.< Good times.

Just to be clear, I'm not raging about the confusion. I think it's pretty funny to be mistaken for being Hispanic with excellent english. It is a little sad though when southern US is mistaken for a whole other country.

Now that I have amazed and inspired you with my multi-cultural cooking, I'll tell you what I had for dinner tonight. I went to a pub with a roommate and we had traditional Sunday roast. I ordered the chicken roast with a brownie for desert. The brownie was AMAZING. The roast was pretty good, the bread and veggies the best part. Would still opt for Tex-mex any day :D