Recipe - Green Chile, Ham & Cheese Quesadilla

Despite the fact that this is my second Quesadilla recipe since starting this blog, I don't usually eat them a lot.  I love them but always figured tortillas and cheese were too many calories (or points!) but I discovered they're actually incredibly versitile, cheap to make and fast and easy.

I really like Quesadillas, but just cheese and tortilla can be a bit gummy and bland.  One of my favorite combinations is ham and cheese.  The ham adds a lot of flavor and extra protein without a lot of extra calories.  Today I wanted to kick up the flavor a bit and added some green chiles since I had an open can in the fridge and wanted to use them up.

I topped half of a low carb, high fiber tortilla (2 points) with 1/2 an ounce of mozzarella, then added 1 ounce of lean ham (1 point) and topped it with the remaining 1/2 ounce of mozzarella (2 points total for cheese).  You want to make sure you have cheese on top and bottom of the ham so that the quesadilla doesn't fall apart.

It gets a bit crispy on the outside, gooey from the cheese and sort of sweet and smokey from the ham.  The green chiles also add a nice kick of flavor but no heat.  This is also great with a little jalapeno with the green chiles or substitiuted for them. 

I rounded my breakfast off with a cup of fresh strawberries and it was delicious!

Sloppy Joe..or Mexican Food...or BOTH!

I’ve been swearing I was going to try more recipes recently, especially since I’ve told my fiancé that fast food and  Restaurants do strange things to their food (the way it is chemically altered is so not healthy on a regular basis).  So on Sunday I wanted to make Sloppy Joes.  

I took the recipe from skinnytaste.com but being me I only used it as a guideline (I have an inability to follow recipes, I like to add whatever sounds good to me and it usually comes out good).  I cut back on the tomato sauce and halved the meat, added extra garlic, jalapeno tomato sauce, and added three more kinds of bell peppers, more dried herbs and spices and some raw sugar and a touch of molasses.  It was like a very spicy sweet Mexican Sloppy Joe style meat filling.  It was delicious!

It was scrumptious on a whole wheat bun.  I added some low fat swiss to my fiance’s which was pretty yummy but I skipped it myself.

Since I cut the recipe down it only made about 4 servings so there was just enough left for me tonight but I wanted to refashion it into a new meal.  So I make some baked potatoes and hollowed them out and stuffed them with the spicy sweet mixture and oh my goodness it was amazing!  Even better than last night.

So if anyone is interested here is my recipe:

Mexican Sloppy Joes:  Serves 4

• 10 oz super lean ground beef
• ½ large red pepper, minced
• ½ large green pepper, minced
• ½ large yellow pepper, minced
• 1 small pasilla pepper, minced
• 1 medium onion, minced
• 3 small carrots, minced
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 2 small cans of tomato sauce (I used one of the spicy jalapeno tomato sauces)
• 1 TBS raw sugar
• 1 TBS dark molasses
• ½ tsp garlic powder
• ½ tsp onion powder
• 1 tsp sweet Hungarian paprika
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:  Sautee onions, peppers, carrots and garlic until translucent, about 10 minutes.  Add in the meat and brown.  Season the meat/onion/pepper mixture with salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika, and onion powder.  Add in both cans of tomato sauce, sugar and molasses and cover.  Let simmer for 15 minutes and serve as desired!