Nacho Nacho Man... I want to be a Nacho Man

Now picture a large bearded man shimmying and spinning around.

With that, I give you :

Nachos. 

I'm not going to hold your hand. They are freaking nachos. You lay down chips, throw some cheese, and make it hot and melty. I think there are chimpanzees in the wild who make nachos from leaves and cheese. Don't ask where a monkey gets cheese, you don't want this answer.

What am I going to do? Instead I'm going to walk you through how to not make your nachos suck. I mean, you would think this wasn't possible, right? But cheap cheap cheese and boring chips sucks. Unless you're drunk, and then a cardboard box with what might be cheese is freaking incred-e-balls.

So there are some tricks to nachos.

• Season that chip
• Pick a good cheese
• Add a few veggies and/or fruit
• Don't bake your meat 
• Citrus is your friend.
• Lay-yers.
• Don't cook it too long!

This is simple come to life. So lets break it down:

Seasoning is going to save your face. A little granulated garlic sprinkled around? Awesome. Some pepper, cayenne, chili powder? Totally. Just, don't go over board. 

Cheese should be simple. Grab something that melts. But I honestly love to either shred my own cheddar, colby, asadero, anything that melts good. Blend it! The generic pre-shredded Mexican Blend? Not a bad option! Really. In most cases it's got a good base to it that'll take seasoning well and melt without burning the chips in the process. 

Fruits and Veggies are great things to sneak in. Green onion, slides and spread about, you can run the gambit on the colors of peppers. Those sweet peppers they sell that are all colorful. Avocados, pineapples, shallots, normal onion, garlic cloves. They key here is don't over power the cheese. You want everything to be friends. 

I cook my meat separate. This seems odd. You can brown it, toss it over the top, and let it bake. But I prefer to cook my meat in a skillet while everything else bakes. I then toss it over when everything is hot. It gets it's own seasoning, I normally make the meat more savory than spicy, because I often use things like chili or cayenne already on the chips. This gives a layer of flavor, and saves your chips from baking the grease from the meat in, where while skillet cooking you can repeatedly drain that off. 

Citrus. Seriously I love lemons and limes. The juice from these is magic when lightly squirted over the chips. It soaks in just a bit, bakes, gives the chips flavor, brings out flavors from other things. Then you can get fancy. Ever had nachos with a bit of orange or blood orange flavoring? Mangos? Yes please. 

Layer it. Don't just hope your cheese and spices will soak in - They don't. A layer of chips, season and cheese, a layer of chips, season and cheese. It's like Nacho Lasagna and it's worth the few extra moments of effort. Gives more bites of cheese and flavor and far fewer naked chipy-whips.

 Cooking it.This is, to some, a science. To me? I cook it until the cheese melts, the top layer gets a slightly grilled cheese look. I cook at about 350/375 and it normally takes me just long enough to bake it as it does for me to cook my meat.  

Nachos are easy. The problem is they are easy to mess up and make boring, or suck.

Enjoy them, think a bit about what tastes good, and melt some yum.

Spaghetti C-asserole - Fun with noodles. Plus dessert!

That's what she said!

Casserole is a bad word to a lot of people I know. And not in the fun four letter words you try to freak out grandma using kind of way. Instead it's a word often associated with dissonant mixings of Hamburger Helper or hot dogs and ice cream. But, you know what? I'm pretty sure casserole just means "Shoved together and baked." **Editor's note: (AKA: Rabbit is typing now) A casserole is, by definition, either the dish or serving vessel that the food that it is cooked in - being that casserole is from the French word "case," ie: casserole pan or casserole dish - or the food inside the dish; usually comprised of meat, vegetables and a starchy binder (flour, potatoes, rice, pasta, etc...) as well as a crunchy or cheesy topping. Don't let him fool you, he knows this.**

So, Miss Rabbit in her wondrous research capacities found us something from The Food Network gave us what they called Chicken Spaghetti. Me? I called it casserole and did what I could do to make it feed far less than an army of starved Tolkien Dwarves.

The last part only kind of worked. We also mainly swapped normal onions for Shallots because we are freaking fancy, dammit.

Know what goes well with it? What we politely called Very Confused Irish Cannoli Pie.

Chicken Spaghetti Casserole 

Doesn't that look awesome? I think I ate 3 times that much, and Miss Rabbit about that much too. And then we ate dessert .

Ingredients

• 1/2 a chicken
• 8 ounces Cheddar cheese
• 1/2 a Red Pepper
• 1/2 a Green Pepper
• 1 can of Cream of Mushroom soup
• 2 Shallots
• 1/2 lb of Spaghetti noodles
• 1/4 Tbls. Black Pepper
• 1/8 Tbls. Salt
• 1/4 Tbls. Cayenne
• 1/4 Tbls. Mrs. Dash because I'm lazy

Cookin' It

Boil a chicken for about 35-40 minutes. I'll be honest, I threw in some cheater Italian Seasoning in right on top while it boiled.

Slice n Dice your peppers and shallots

Break your sketti into 1/3s

When your chicken is done, pull it from the broth.
Take 1 cup of your broth and set it to the side.

Cook your noodles in the broth left in the pot. You cool then until they are Al Dente, pretty much half cook them, give or take. You want them soft, but chewy.

Skin and bone your chicken.
Add the veggies, 3/4 of your cheese, the noodles, and soup together.
Remember all those spices? Toss them in there too.
From there mix that bad boy of a mess. It will be messy. I love it.

Sprinkle the rest of your cheese right on top.
From there you bake it 350 for about 40 minutes. 

It's freaking fabulous, right? I mean, go Food Network for their idea!

Very Confused Irish Cannoli!

This came as a whim. We wanted cookies, then we wanted frosting, but nothing in the frosting isle looked good, but then I saw the pie pans, and well, I had an idea.

**Editor's note: It is frequently a good thing when Kobold has an idea, so I usually just let him run with it. This one scared me a little, to be frank. That is, until he laid out what he was going to do with it. Then I grabbed my chocolate chips and let him have at it. My only real contribution, I might add, was the chips. To be fair, I'm usually the one that does dessert/baking but I was feeling lazy and it WAS his idea, after all. We can't always be winners at everything. I promise I'll quit being lazy and put up some more delicious/enticing desserty type things later. **

Ingredients

• A package of cookies - We did sugar cookies
• 2 packages of instant vanilla Jello pudding
• 2 cups of milk
• 3/4 cup of Irish Cream
• Chocolate Chips for yumminess

Not Quite Cooking

Smash your cookies up and moosh them into the pie pan

Mix your Jello mix, milk, and choice of Irish Cream

Pour that in the Pie Crust, sprinkle your chocolate chips.
Let this whole thing set up for a while.

We made this while the chicken boiled, so it sat up for a while. In the future I'll probably make the cookie crust from scratch so I can make a whole crust. This does not serve like a pie. You scoop out as much as you can with a serving spoon, mix it together, and nom it until your eyes cross.