Bottom Line It's been a challenge to meal plan in this quarantine lifestyle. Here's a recipe that you can customize and throw in either what's available at the store, or what you have in your fridge.
I am good at meal planning. Very good. I can usually plan the weeks meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner!), generate a grocery list, and organize my weeks worth of cooking in about 30 minutes. Couple caveats - I don't have kids, I have a car and live in a city where I can find almost anything really easily...I assume this would be harder without those things. Still, I'm a pro at the grocery store. I can usually feed Tom and I for about $90. In a good week, we're at $65. During a particularly extravagant (or one where we are out of all the pantry staples at once) week, I come in at $150. After inheriting an awesome google doc with links so we can both cook the recipe meal planning document from a coworker turned friend, and really working at ironing out the wrinkles (hello shared calendar!) we were in this amazing place. And then, we were a month before our wedding, and then it was a pandemic, and we just got out of whack.
Look, it's not all bad. We've been enjoying way more time in the kitchen, experimenting with projects ranging from ricotta vs potato gnocchi to "Why focaccia is the best bread - an essay" (post coming soon) to how much kimchi can Elle eat as a snack? (I've taste tested four, and my top three are linked here, here, and here. See photo below. I think I might just love Kimchi. Anyone else have an awesome brand they like?) And also, as previously stated, I'm sleeping way more. Honestly, we are incredibly lucky. I'm about to, as one of my close friends says, ride in on my horse (his name is Social Justice), but it is important.
We aren't just lucky. We're privileged. I am acutely aware of my tremendous privilege during this time. We both have jobs. We have health insurance. We're citizens - therefore eligible for the help the government is providing and not living in fear that we're going to be ripped from our homes. We have each other and aren't living alone. We have generally good physical and mental health, and the resources to take care of ourselves if things get rough. We have wifi for goodness sake. We're white. If we wear a mask in public, no one will think of us as a threat. Hell, we have a vast and wide safety net. Even if something catastrophic happens to us, we won't be homeless or hungry. I'm certain that I haven't even thought of all the ways my privilege is serving me right now, because that's what privilege is - invisible to the person who benefits from it. Please, call me out on this in the comments. I am really working on this.
So, in comparison to facing housing insecurity my meal planning mojo being thrown off seems trivial. And yet, here I am really wanting to write about the enchiladas we made the other day. Which brings me to the other thing I've been thinking a lot about - the whitewashing of food. Have you seen the drama with Chrissy Teigen, Marie Kondo, and Alison Roman? I haven't read something so mind-bendingly ignorant in a while. Although, I do stay off twitter. But here I am wanting to post my "knowledge" on enchiladas. Considering a margarita rocks for cocktail corner. Thinking about the fact that the celery salad I love so much is one of Alison Roman's recipes with a "secret" ingredient. Fish Sauce. Barf.
I am wondering if I'm just another white woman posting a recipe telling you to eat vegetarian more often and to limit your food waste because of climate change, without thinking about the context in which I'm writing. And the honest answer is, I'm not sure. I might be. I probably am. I am trying not to be. I'm trying to be an anti-racist, anti-colonialist feminist that works hard to listen. To not center myself in the issues. To notice my own bias and privilege when it rears it's head. To not shy away from it with my white friends. To work and live it, not just speak it.
This was going to be a post about throwing veggies in with some chipotles in adobo sauce, wrapping them up in a tortilla, slathering them with tomatillo salsa and cheese, and baking to bubbly perfection. With a side of - use the leftover veggies in your fridge! Finely chop your cilantro and mushroom stems; they provide great texture and flavor to the filling! You don't have to be amazing at meal planning to make awesome meals with what you have! But instead, here's what we made for dinner last week. It was tasty. I hope what I'm leaving you with though, isn't a recipe for veggie enchiladas, but instead a charge to reflect. And I will try to too.