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Okay, so I’m not the most consistent person in the world when it comes to blogging. Lets just leave it at that, shall we? For now, I offer you a recipe and a quick update of the goings on in the warped world that is Xappaland.
So here we go with the recipe…
This my friends, is one of my favorite dishes to both make and eat. Veggie enchiladas with home made sauce. Delicious with lots of yummy vegetables and the sauce is fantastic! By the way, the sauce tastes nothing like the canned stuff. Don’t get me wrong! I do like the canned stuff, but you can’t beat home made!
Veggie Enchiladas with roasted sauce
Makes enough for 4 servings. Takes about 1 hour with 30 minutes prep time.
For the sauce:
5 good-sized tomatillos (or you can use tomatoes for a red sauce)
1 green bell pepper (You can substitute red for a sweeter sauce)
1 small white onion
2 Hatch chilies
3 cloves of garlic
1 jalapeno (optional)
1 cup of fresh cilantro
For the filling:
8 ounce package of mushrooms
1 yellow squash or zucchini
1 medium white onion
2 large carrots
2 broccoli crowns
1 can of good quality olives
2 c. panela cheese (you can substitute any cheese you want, but I’m telling you this cheese is the best!)
Package of flour tortillas (larger size ones)
Sour Cream, green onions and avocados (for garnish)
P.S. I feel silly telling you this, but if you want to make this vegan just sub the cheese and sour cream or omit it entirely. You won’t even miss it because the sauce is what gives it so much flavor.
Directions:
Fire up the grill (with mesquite for best results), or the oven to broil (which ever suits you). In the meantime, rub a small amount of olive oil on all of your sauce ingredients (with the exception of the cilantro, leave that aside), until they’re coated.
Once your grill has reached proper temperature set each ingredient on the grate and let it blister on each side checking often. If using the oven do the same thing by putting the ingredients on a cookie sheet. You want it to look like this:
I forgot to take a pic of my stuff so here's someone else's from Delallo.com
Once the peppers have blistered on all sides take all ingredients off the heat and set them aside until they’re cool enough to handle.
In the meantime dice the onions and carrots. Give the mushrooms, broccoli crowns, and squash a rough chop into relatively the same size so they cook evenly. Saute the onions and carrots in a little bit of oil until they’re slightly browned. Add the mushrooms, broccoli, and squash with a little bit of salt then turn the heat down to low and cover.
Now it’s time to make your sauce! Peel the skin off of your peppers and tomatillos/tomatoes. Make sure you de-stem and de-seed your peppers! Put your naked peppers, tomatillos/tomatoes, garlic, onion, jalapeno, and cilantro into the food processor and blend until liquefied.
At this point you should be tasting and seasoning your sauce. It’s important you don’t skip this step cause you’re going to be covering your entire meal with it! Add salt and pepper. Taste and adjust.
Once you have your sauce to your liking, add about half of it to your cooking veggies and turn the heat up to medium high. Add the olives and stir often until the veggies are cooked through (about 5 minutes). Remove from heat and set aside.
Now you want to set up your enchilada making station!
Put a layer of sauce on the bottom of your glass baking dish. Fill each tortilla with filling and cheese to your liking. Fold it up like a burrito and place in the dish, repeat until the dish is full.
Pour the remaining sauce onto the top of the enchiladas (you can do that with any remaining filling too). Sprinkle the cheese on top and put it into the oven on broil. Keep a close watch on them bad boys!
Once the cheese on top has browned slightly they’re ready!
Here’s a rough idea of my process. I forgot to take a pic of the sauce and cheese on top of my enchiladas before I baked them, but you get the idea.
I like to garnish mine with some delicious avocado slices, green onions, Mexican sour cream, and a drizzle of hot sauce.
So, this summer has been very eventful. Here are some of the highlights:
We went to see the Black Keys in Mesa. A really good day and night with some great people. Those guys know how to put on a great show!
I took a trip to California to participate in the Getty Crafty event and visit my family.
On the first day, I visited with my sister-in-law and my niece. Isn’t she the cutest baby you’ve ever seen?
My mom’s garden. Apparently, it has been quite fruitful. Still waiting on that zucchini bread ma…
I sent my pop some make-shift plans for display items. Of course he went above and beyond what I asked of him. Check out the cuff display behind the earring rack. Crazy! Thank you again, pa!
Mom and dad helped out with so much for this show.
It was such a beautiful day.
I ran out of battery power for my camera so the other photos I took weren’t so lovely.
Sacramento is so green and lovely. I miss that so much living in the desert.
Aaand a few more. Sorry about the blurriness. I took these from the car.
The next day we went to my favorite ice cream spot in the whole world.
Brock’s Ice Cream Palace. I’ve been going to this place since I was little and it NEVER disappoints.
Still looks the same.
Even though Violet wasn’t eating it she enjoyed the ice cream just the same.
I believe my flavor was caramel cashew. I wish I had some right this moment.
On the last day of my visit my mom and I went to breakfast.
Real cute spot and the food is consistent and reasonably priced.
Isn’t my mama pretty?
Our food.
My mom playing with her food. I kinda wish my trip was longer but, I just don’t got it like that…yet. It’s always nice to have a taste of home even if it’s a really tiny one. I’ll see you again in the fall my lovely family!
Over the summer I fixed up some new display cases made for my local shops. Here’s one I did for Blueberry Deluxe from start to finish.
I got me a stinky train-case (it seriously reeked of Jean Naté), and took the top handle off.
Gutted it of the unsightly vinyl glued inside.
Here it is gutted.
I traced the pieces I took out onto some vintage fabric. Cut it out leaving about 1/4 seam allowance and sewed each piece with finished edges. Once that was done, I just hot glued the fabric onto the inside. As you can see here, it is slightly too long. I just snipped a little off folded it over and glued it in place.
Another view.
After I finished glueing everything in place I added some wire to hang various items off of. I just drilled holes into the existing plastic for the wire to hook onto.
I re-attached the handle and sewed the wire onto the fabric for the top of the display.
And here is the case finished with the items waiting for new homes. What do you think? I think you’re pretty much up to speed on the goings on in Xappaland except for a few things here and there. Hope your summer was an eventful one and I’ll have some more updates for you soon. Good night for now, and enjoy your weekend!
xoxo
-Xappa
Hey there!
Like I’ve said before, this time of year is really busy for me. My little hands have been working hard on some new things! My mind is swimming with ideas and it’s hard to keep up with it all. I love it and hate it all at the same time. So to catch you up…here’s what I’ve been doing the past few weeks…
First off, I just wanted to show you the cover I did for a 7 inch my friend’s company released under their new label Jamille. It was a nice clean simple project.
Very happy with the way it turned out. I don’t get to do this kind of thing much and I have a good time doing it. I had to do most of the work with the logo. He only had it on a piece of paper, so I had to go in and trace it in Illustrator. I wanted him to have a digital logo for print work. Anyhow, he had the records pressed up recently, and I was happy to be a part of the design process. Let me know what you think!
Turkey day was fantastic! Dom and I stayed at a friend’s house for a few days while they were out of town. Coincidentally, they live across the street from his cousin. So, we had a small dinner with her and later that night when her husband came home we ate sandwiches with him too.
We started off in the afternoon preparing everything while the turkey was in the oven. We snacked on fresh veggies and had some mimosas…
I made some really awesome chipotle-cranberry sauce with a recipe I got here. It was delicious! I’ve experimented with other recipes and this is my absolute fave! Definitely going into the files.
I didn’t take any pics of the other dishes or our made up plates ’cause I was too lazy/hungry to get up from the table and get my camera. However, I did get a pic of the beautiful turkey. It was our first time doing it on our own. High fives all around, ’cause it was AWESOME!
Sorry it’s a little blurry, but you can see how good it looks regardless!
The next night, I went to visit with a friend and her family. Her baby boy is growing so fast!
Some of Jen’s handy dandy decorating…
and a really silly dancing santa.
After recovering from Turkey day and a cold, it was back to work I went. It was a short week for me because I had signed myself up for 2 shows this week. One thursday and one Friday. The one I did on Thursday was kind of a bust. Not my market. Oh well. The one I did on Friday made up for it. Although we were freezing our butts off! The event was outside and a chilly 38 degrees. I was a friggin’ icicle! Friends came out that I hadn’t seen in ages. And of course it was lots of fun with the PHX DIY crew. We always keep each other entertained. LOVE those girls!
Here is what the table in my studio STILL looks like.
A fellow artist friend once asked me about my process. She asked if I clean up after each project, or if I continue to work on top of the mess. We found that we both work on top of the mess. Once it gets out of control we clean. You mean this isn’t out of control? You ask. Nope. It’s out of control when I have no more space to put anything down.
Here’s what comes out of it though…
and this
and this
And this.
There is a method to the madness!
I took these little treasures down to the Crafeteria on Friday at Frances. I got alot of good feedback and my $5 basket was a hit! Thank you universe! I took some pics of our setups. Here are some of the lovely ladies freezing their asses off.
I don’t think you need to see mine for the umpteenth time so I’ll spare you. Here’s one of our newest members Jennifer Bates of Sea Lemon. She makes journals by hand and does a damn good job! She was my neighbor for the Crafeteria that night.
Amanda and Melissa of Perfect Dressipe had their setup looking fantastic as usual.
Another new member is Morgan Kunse. She had her photography set up. I took 2 pics ’cause I was shivering too much to get the first one right.
Ashley had a really sweet and simple setup for her stuff. Again, I took 2 pics. Hopefully this makes up for the crappy pics I took last time.
And Jamie of Kenzie Noelle Designs. Her setup always looks great!
And I took a pic of a friend’s setup who isn’t a member of PHX DIY but makes fantastic stuff! Her setups are always beautiful! Her name is Angie and you can purchase her stuff here. She was another friend I hadn’t seen in awhile. It was nice running into her plus she gave me some chocolate. What a lucky girl I am!
We’re already planning some bike riding business.
So, after the crafty festivities were over and done with I went home to unload and eat something quick. I met up with my boyfriend and our friends at Sidebar. I unfortunately forgot my camera, ugh! There were soooo many camera moments I was kicking myself. Afterwards we did something we NEVER do. We had people over for an after-the-bar-drinking-more-beer kind of thing. I don’t want to say “afterparty” because that sounds ridiculous coming from me. But there was drinking, dancing, and lots of laughing.
Our friends are the shit is all I can say. No drama, no egos, no games. Just good peeps. Again, thank you universe for blessing us with them!
It was finally time to go to sleep. We tried to convince Tige to sleep on a bed or couch of some sort but he was happy with his piece of the floor next to the records.
Good times.
