Beef, Bean and Cheese Burritos

Last weekend, when I made Beef Tacos, I made an extra large batch of taco meat.  The next day, when I made Mexican Rice to go with Chicken Breasts with Creamy Lime Sauce, I made more of the rice than I needed.   I ended using these leftovers to make a third dish:  Beef, Bean and Cheese Burritos.

The burritos were really easy to put together.   I mixed together the leftover taco meat with the leftover Mexican rice in a bowl, covered the bowl with plastic wrap and microwaved the mixture for a few minutes, until steamy hot.  

Meanwhile, I warmed up a can of chili beans (I am fond of Mrs. Grimes Tex-Mex Style Chili Beans) on the stovetop and grated some Cabot Extra-Sharp Cheddar Cheese.  Juli meanwhile chopped up lettuce we got from our CSA.  

I could have made fresh tortillas to make the burritos, and no doubt that would have made them better, but I wanted this to be an easy meal, so I bought some Mission brand large tortillas at the grocery store.

Putting together the burritos is easy.   Spoon some of the meat and rice mixture down the middle of the tortilla.  Top the meat and rice mixture with cheese, chili beans and lettuce, and with some sour cream, if you like.

Fold up the bottom of the tortilla, then fold in one side.  Roll the folded side to the other edge of the tortilla, tuck in the top and voila, you've got a burrito. 

If you plan ahead, these burritos are fast, easy and delicious, and a great way to use leftovers.

Typical Morning and Noon-Time Meals

We've had pancakes a couple weekends in a row, but I wouldn't want to give the impression that's a typical breakfast for Juli and me.  Similarly, while I usually cook up something for lunch on Saturdays, that also isn't typical for our lunches.  Most of the time, we get by on leftovers for lunch (and sometimes for dinner), which is why we often prepare big batches when we cook.

Shown here is the stuff I got out for breakfast and lunch one morning this week.   The breakfast is pretty typical for me - some yogurt, a piece of fruit (an apple, that day) and a handfull of unsalted nuts (cashews, on that occasion).  I include the nuts because having some protein with a meal helps prevent carb high/lows.  Some days I have toast or an English muffin in place of the yogurt and fruit (sometimes with peanut butter, in which case I skip the nuts), and some days I'm not hungry enough at breakfast to eat the fruit, in which case I  usually have it for a snack at work.

The core of my lunch six days a week - every day but Saturday - is some sort of leftover from the things I've been cooking.  Today's lunch is a bit larger than usual.  Usually I take only one container of leftovers, but today I have two:  a slice of Chicago-Style Deep Dish pizza I made on Sunday night, and some of the Ham and Bean Soup I made on Saturday.  I've also got a couple cookies in a baggie.  Sometimes I take some more fruit instead.

Also in the picture is a bag of yogurt-covered raisins.  I keep a bag or two of some sort of relatively healthy snack (these, or trail mix, or dried fruit of some sort) at work, and since my stock at work is getting depleted, I brought the yogurt raisins today.

Finally, there's the storage bottle.  This is one of the stainless steel bottles Juli ordered from the Flylady site, which she wrote about last night.  It contains iced tea.  Up until a couple months ago, we were both drinking a lot of soda, but with the convenience and reliability of these bottles - they keep cold beverages very, very cold - we've since switched over to plain, unsweetened iced tea for our daily caffiene fix.

The stuff Juli packs to take with her is pretty similar to mine:  the bottle of iced tea, some sort of leftover (except for the days she is scheduled to go out to lunch with some of her coworkers), a cookie or two for a snack.   Sometimes she takes a yogurt and/or fruit breakfast, and if I make toast or an English muffin for my breakfast, I make some for her as well, but she also keeps some breakfast bars at work and often waits to eat when she arrives at work.

A couple nights a week, I also pack extra leftovers as my dinner.  Juli sometimes does the same, though sometimes she opts to eat out for dinner instead.  Sometimes it's another frozen meal to warm up in the microvave, or sometimes - as is the case for tonight's dinner - it's sandwiches featuring something we've cooked.  Tonight, I'm having a sandwich made from sliced chicken breast.  I cooked up a chicken for chicken stock over the weekend and removed the breast meat from the stock pot before all the flavor had been cooked out of it.  Toss on some BBQ sauce and a slice of pepper jack cheese and I've got something that easily beats a Taco Bell or Hardees drive-through. 

Some people might think eating warmed-over leftovers for one or two meals a day most days doesn't sound that great, but we definitely prefer it over fast food and commercial microwave meals.  The flavor is better, our stuff isn't as high in sodium, and we can choose from a much wider array of meals than one can pick up in the frozen food section of a supermarket.  Plus, we cook enough that we have different meals to choose from, rather than warming up more of the same thing day after day.  Occasionally one of my coworkers drops by my office during lunch just to find out what I've warmed up to create that tantalizing scent that wafts out into the hallway, and Juli has mentioned the looks of envy she sometimes gets while she eats a lunch of tom kha gai or aromatic curry and naan as her coworkers are microvaving a Lean Cuisine. 

So now you know why we don't generally bother with "cooking for two" sorts of recipes.