The Chicken Rut

Do you ever get in an absolute rut with meal planning?  My most nutritious creations are rejected by my Mexican-born children, and we end up with the same ol’  same ol’.  I could use some inspiration.  Give me non-chicken, non-Mexican recipes, please.

My one daughter-in-law figured it out right away.  Her definition of Mexican food:  the exact same ingredients rearranged and called something different.  Give me these staples and we can eat for a month:  black beans, tortillas, chicken, cheese, tomatoes, avocado, onions, cilantro, salsa, and sometimes corn, lettuce, or sour cream. 

Wrap it all in a flour tortilla and call it a burrito. 

Wrap some of it in a corn tortilla, cover with a sauce made of the other ingredients, cook it, and call it an enchilada. 

Spread beans on a tostada, add lettuce and rest of ingredients and call it a tostada.

Mix it all with rice and add olive oil and lime juice, and call it Fiesta Rice.

Put the chicken and cheese in a flour tortilla, fold it in half, cook it on a griddle, add avocado and pico de gallo (diced tomatoes, onion, cilantro, lime juice, and sea salt), and call it a quesadilla.

Beans, cheese, and chicken on tortilla chips with chilies and ya – we have nachos.

Add a tomato based broth, add chicken, cheese, sour cream, avocados, and fried corn tortilla strips, and call it Tortilla Soup.  Use a chicken broth with lots of seasoning and pureed beans, and you've got bean soup.

My latest craze is Southwest Chopped Chicken Salad, a recipe I found on Pinterest, with mostly the same ingredients (diced chicken, tomatoes, corn, rinsed black beans, green onions, bell pepper, cilantro, avocado, and lettuce, mixed with a dressing of ½ cup mayonnaise, 2/3 cup plain (Greek) yogurt, 1 tablespoon ranch seasoning, and 1 tablespoon taco seasoning.  Top with crushed tortilla chips, and yum!

Have I made my point?  We seriously eat the same thing ALL THE TIME.  The only thing missing from the list is tacos, which may involve some of the same ingredients, but we generally go out for tacos when we have a hankering for them, so we can get out of the chicken rut and have pork or beef.

I’m probably making some of you salivate thinking of Mexican food.  Hopefully (surely?) you can get these ingredients, except maybe the corn tortillas.  Feel free to incorporate my boring menu plans into your own – on one condition:  please give me some new ideas!  I am desperate to get out of this rut.

What are your stand-by menus?  Have you incorporated local spices and recipes into your daily fare?  Can you share some ideas for those of us craving something new and different?  Variety that doesn’t involve spinach would be greatly appreciated by my family.

IRL* Yes, ladies, it really is possible to have too much of a good thing.

Note:  I'll be out in a village without internet access when this is published, but I will respond to your comments later on.  Thanks in advance for your inspiring recipes!  Jamie Jo

On the Streets Where I Lived

Is it really almost mid-January already? I know that time speeds up as we get older, but this year in particular seems to be racing in ridiculously fast motion.

Since New Year’s we have put 1300 miles on our old Suburban, driving to Guatemala and back with our three teens plus one college daughter. This epic road trip brought back many memories of insane border trips we used to make back before we had more permanent visas. This particular trip included an excursion or two down memory lane, as we took our youngest four children to the places where we used to live with the oldest three boys many years ago.

So much has changed over the years. Our old village is now incredibly modern. The roads are paved, people still dress in native garb but can be seen talking and texting on cell phones, and our old little house has been transformed into a 2-story modern house. Now the kids will never believe our wacky tales of life without indoor plumbing and having to hand-wash cloth diapers out in the yard.

Visiting our old language tutors, coworkers, and native missionaries, we were further astonished at how much things have improved for them over the years. The whole trip was a blessing.

Now it is time for back-to-school, back to healthier eating, back to exercise, and back to writing again. After visiting some friends in Chiapas on our way back to Oaxaca, I am adopting some new health gimmicks habits. In case you haven’t figured this out, I am forever on a quest for better nutrition.

Some of the things I have bought into in the past that I still dabble in (look them up on the web for your amusement/education):

• Neti pot - check out some hilarious videos on YouTube making fun of this natural remedy for sinus congestion.

• Kombucha tea -which my kids call “Happy Tea” due to its teensy (less than 1%) alcohol content . One of my longest lasting fads, almost daily fermenting behind the coffee pot; according to the Internet it will cure whatever ails you.

• Sea Salt instead of iodized table salt (okay, so what if it’s pink?).

• Alpiste - canary seed “milk” – supposedly good for high blood pressure.

• Nopal cactus – balances blood sugar levels, etc. Again the kids tease me about this which I am known to throw in my green smoothies along with spinach and fresh fruits.

• Coconut oil which you read about in 2010 when I used it in place of commercial skin care products, resulting in a sun tan.

• Oil pulling - another cheap way to detox the old body and supposedly whiten and clean teeth) – my latest craze.

Last week I brought back a 5-gallon drum of pure coconut oil, thanks to my health guru friends in Chiapas. I can’t wait to see what all I can do now that I don’t have to carefully ration my supply! I also bought a large supply of Himalayan salt.

How about you? Anything new you are dabbling in this New Year? Any new habits you want to develop? How about exercise? Found anything that works for you? What about daily devotions? I now have several free books on my Kindle, but I need to commit to one for 2012.

IRL* It may go fast, but I have a feeling this is going to be another wonderful year.