Not at all related to St. Patty's Day

I love my pressure cooker. I think EVERYONE should have one; well not just have one, but use one. I created this recipe by tweaking a couple I found on-line. It's for Mexican Shredded Beef. And not the typical kind. I'd like to think it is a "New Mexico" style shredded beef. It was really good! And, there were lots of leftovers to make additional meals. The first night we had tacos/burritos. (Just depends in how you fold 'em!) Then I made enchiladas for another meal. And I wanted to make a soup with the rest. Just didn't get to it yet. My plan was to make something like Chicken Tortilla soup...but with this shredded beef instead. I'll work on that. If you have any recipe ideas, I'd love to hear them! Here's the recipe I used....

Mexican Shredded Beef

4-5 lbs chuck roast (or any other roast)
2 med onions, chopped
2 4 oz cans chopped green chiles (more or less to your liking)
1/2 cup green taco sauce
1 cup salsa
3 Tbsp hot chili sauce (omit or add more to your liking...my husband likes insanely hot things so I add some for him!)
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
1 Tbsp salt
1 tsp chili powder
1-2 cups water

Brown meat in pressure cooker or stovetop. Meanwhile mix ingredients together. Add meet to cooker, cover with mixture and additional water to cover meet. (Careful not to overfill your cooker!) Cook on high pressure for 50-60 minutes.

I cut the roast in half and did it in 2 batches because my pressure cooker is small (but electric and I love it!) You can do a smaller batch, but I wouldn't decrease the ingredients, probably just the water. Hope you like it!

Shredded Beef Enchiladas

I went VERY easy on this...but you can certainly make your own enchilada sauce.

Tortillas, cheese, meat, olives, canned red enchilada sauce.

I think you know the drill. Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 30-40 minutes. Sorry, I didn't take pictures of this, but they were good!

I served both of these meals with refried beans made from scratch (with the pressure cooker!) I used Miss Vickie's Pressure Cooker Recipes to come up with dried bean cooking times. I printed all the cooking time charts and put them in my recipe binder. It's been very helpful. The pressure cooker is such a great time saver!

Warm Baby

Last weekend was beautiful! In the 50's and sunny...so it was a bit of a yard clean-up day. Thanks to Aunt Amy we had a nice warm fleece suit to keep #3 toasty in while we did some spring cleaning outside! Isn't he cute?

Monday Mornin' Blues

Sounds like a song title...heck, maybe it is a song title! I wasn't looking forward to doing the Monday morning task of starting one of at least four loads of laundry waiting for me. And I need #3 asleep to get to doing my taxes, so I was trying to sneak a few minutes to blog a couple of pics I'd been wanting to post. I put #3 in his activity seat thingy. It didn't go as well as it usually does. I can generally get 10-15 minutes out of it; but not this morning. I became enthralled watching him try to put the attached toys into his mouth. This is a frustrating phase. He can't hold anything long enough to really "check it out" with his mouth...and the thing he can hold onto won't reach his mouth! What kind of mother am I that I can watch him and take pictures instead of rescuing him? The same kind of mother that types away while he fusses...but hey, I've tried to feed him and the kid won't take a pacifier to go to sleep, so what's a mom to do? I guess neither of us are thrilled with this Monday morning!