Chicken quesadillas for lunch today
We favor Tex-Mex foods around here and today when trying to figure out how to use some leftovers for lunch, I came up with this, which turned out pretty good, so I'm sharing it.
:-)

-leftover roast chicken, cut up into tidbits
-leftover chili con queso, a tasty concoction Mike came up with trying to imitate the chili con queso sold at Mexico Chicito, a restaurant in Little Rock (it's cream cheese, chili powder, cumin, and I don't know what else, with a little milk added to make it softer)
-whole wheat tortillas

Mix chicken and cheese together. Melt a pat of butter in an iron skillet. Place in one tortilla, spread some of the chicken/cheese mix on it and cover with another tortilla. Cook till it starts browning on the bottom, then flip and cook on the other side. Remove, add more butter and make another one. Keep warm on a preheated plate in the oven if needed. Heat a can of black beans, and serve with sour cream and salsa on the side.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

When I first married I always needed to follow a recipe, make a shopping list, and buy all the ingredients in order to do meals. It's taken me a long time to get to the point of being able to use what I have on hand. I guess the first step was to learn how to make soups using leftovers - after making lots of soups following recipes I began to figure out what foods and seasonings work well together, but it took years, really. There's probably some way to teach young ladies how to cook like this, but I don't really know what it is.

Kelly M. told me once that sometimes her mom (maybe on the day before grocery shopping?) will point out that they have a little bit of this and can of that and dab of something else, and will tell Kelly to make a meal out of it. Sounds like a pretty good practice for full-time homemaking to me.