Mexican Pizza Baby

You might not know this about me, but I use to be a huge fan of Taco Bell.  I know.. gross.  But every day off campus, Al & Hatch would take me to McDonalds for Happy Meals 7 toys or Tacos & bouncy balls.  I was young, active, and had the metabolism of an 8 year old.  Life. Was. Good.  Taco Bell is just like any other Mexican food place: same ingredients wrapped up and served in different ways.  So there are three reasons I don't eat TB anymore. 1) Fast Food is kind of nasty. 2)My stomach just couldn't handle it anymore.  3)Well this is a bit more of a story to share.

About 9 years ago, my two softball teammates, Lindz & Smo offered me up a little bet.  They challenged me to get the Grande Combo of ten tacos, and eat it by myself.  I don't remember what I'd get in return, but I do know that I never got out.  So on the day of the challenge, we went to my local TB and ordered ten tacos--5 hard, 5 soft.  I was trying to figure out which would be less filling, but I don't think it mattered in the end.  The first two went down like wine.  By taco 4, I was trying to create double deckers with my hard & soft shells.  By taco 6, I was trading soft shells for hard shells.  And by taco 7, my face was legitimately turning green. I completed the task, finishing all ten tacos, and immediately walked outside and puked for 30 minutes.  You can see why I have avoided TB like the plague. 

I'd be lying if I said that was the last time I ever ate TB.  There was a few times in college that the drunk food craving got the best of me.. but even that was over 6 years ago. 

About a month ago, I was having a flashback to my favorite item on the TB menu:  the Mexican pizza.  I kept thinking how I wanted it, but couldn't bring myself to the shame of actually ordering TB.  As I was cruising around Pinterest, I was inspired by a "healthy" Mexican pizza pin.  After talking about it for a month with Taryn, we finally decided to create, what we called "The Mexican Pizza Baby."  The recipe I found is from the blog Honey, What's Cooking?

Homemade Mexican Pizza  (modified from "Honey, What's Cooking's?" Recipe)


makes 4 pizzas:

• 1 Bag of Mission Tostados (2 pieces for each pizza)
• 1 15oz can Old El Paso Refried Beans
• 1/4 cup Water
• 1 large Onion (diced)
• 1 tsp Paprika
• 1/4 tsp Black Pepper
• 1 tsp Taco Seasoning
• 1 bunch Scallions/ Green Onions (chopped)
• 1/2Jalapeno (deseeded & finely chopped)
• 1 Tomato (chopped)
• Taco Bells chunky salsa, medium
• Mexican Cheese Blend - (1 bag) you can use reduced fat cheese
• Sour Cream Reduced Fat – 1 dollop per pizza (optional)
• Taco Bell Hot Sauce - they sell it in stores, or just steal some from TB

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degree.
2. Line a baking sheet with foil.  Heat up tostados for about 2-5 minutes for extra crispiness
3. In a small pan, heat the beans, water, onions, paprika, pepper, and taco seasoning on low heat for about 10 minutes (or until its thoroughly warmed up).
4. Spread the bean mixture over one of your tostados and a thin layer of salsa. 
5. Add the other tostado on top.  Add a bit more salsa, tomatoes, green onions, jalapenos (as desired).
6. Cover with cheese and pop back into the oven for about 5-10 more minutes (until the cheese is melted).
7. Add a dollop of Daisy (sour cream) and smother with TB hot sauce.

WaaLah! Heaven.  I think Taryn and I moaned after every bite.  Then we had to walk an extra lap after dinner to recover from the Mexican baby we just manhandled.  This dinner was so easy and delicious.. all the Mexican ingredients wrapped up in a different way.  And the best part.. I don't have to show my face in Taco Bell to get the goods. 

The Burbs

Driving to said birthday party the other weekend (mentioned in the previous post), Giorgio and I had this conversation: 

G-"What suburb would you want to live in?" 
me- "I have no idea.  I don't even know what area of the city I want to live in, and I want to be there." 
G-"It's just so depressing out here.  I feel like living in the suburbs is one step closer to death." 

I have to agree with him.  I mean, it's not that I think I'm better than you because I live in the city. I just think I'm having more fun.  There's always so much to do in the city with minimal effort.  You can always find friends or strangers who want to partake in a plethora of activities: listening to live music, flip a few cups, hop on a boat on Lake Michigan, or shop at cute boutiques. While the upsides to Chicago residents are quite obvious, so are some of the downsides. Public transportation can be smelly.  Some areas are not too safe.  And traffic.. well.. that exists in the burbs too.  Despite what suburbanites think, parking in Chicago is not too difficult if you know where you're going.  And smelly public transportation is a better option that choosing a DD for the night.  My only complaint about Chicago are the rip-off tickets that you can get for reasons you don't even know exist.

Growing up in the suburbs, I learned to appreciate a few things since parting ways.  For starters, drive-thrus.  I recently developed a love for Passion Fruit Iced Tea from Starbucks.  I especially like them when I'm feel rather lethargic and don't want to detour from my route or get out of my car.  It's times like these that I long for a drive-thru.  I have yet to see a Starbuck's drive-thru in the city. 

Swimming pools. I have been spoiled with clean, small bodies of water (pretty much) at my doorstep my whole life.  My nearby relatives always had a pool in which I was granted full access to at any time.  I understand why people in the city don't just have pools on their rooftops, but I just don't like it.  How sweet would rooftop pools be in Chicago?  Instead, we have the beach.  I'm not complaining about it, but its kind of a struggle to get to where as in the suburbs, your one-stop bronzing haven is at your fingertips. 

Back to driving and tickets.  Is it just me, or are red-light photo tickets ruining your life?  These money-making machines have made their way out to the suburbs now, too.  Those cameras are everywhere and I think they are more dangerous than helpful.  I wonder how many accidents have been caused by people trying to slam their brakes before the camera flashes their plates.  It's probably the same number of accidents that have been caused by people running lights!  Anyway.. The pro of the suburb here is the length of the yellow light.  The yellow light easily lasts 5 seconds compared the cities 1/2 second yellow.  So if you're getting red light tickets in the suburbs, you are really trying. 

Since I don't want to make the suburbs sound too good, I'll speak my final (and probably most important) pro of the suburbs.  It is a great place for kids & family.  That might be a con actually for some.  But eventually, if you want kids, the suburbs are the most practical place to be.  Better schools, safer neighborhoods, and sidewalks and backyards for all their needs.  You can't really argue that.

While there are some convincing arguments for life in suburbia.. they just aren't that enticing. And just because you have kids, doesn't mean you have to succumb to life with "one foot in the grave."  So I think I'll stay a city girl a while longer.

Blast from the Past

On Sunday, I went to Kaylee, my "niece's", 3rd birthday party.  For starters, I never recalled being this spoiled.  But then again, I was never an only child, niece, grandchild, etc.  The party was all adults and her, so it's obvious that she attracts a lot of attention.  I don't even want to talk about the issues she's going to have when her new baby brother is stealing that from her come August.  Anyway, seeing that her mom is my oldest, nearest and dearest friend, her daughters childhood is pretty much a recreation of ours.  All of the things that we enjoyed as kids, Jess gets to relive through Kaylee. 
 

Obviously now that I'm old, the childhood memories have a great age ranger than 0-3, but these are just a few of the classics:

Squeeze Its

Jess just told me that she started buying these for Kaylee.  Do you remember these?  For some reason, Jess and I used to think it was funny to pretend to be drunk off squeeze its (though we probably were sugar high).  We would walk back and forth to each others houses and bump into each other slurring our words.  So odd, I know.

 Are You Afraid of the Dark?

I was.  I still am. But I was actually scared of this Nickelodeon TV show.  Good thing I only watched it at Jess's house because we didn't have cable at my house.  What a deprived child!

 Ants on a Log

 

Remember snack time in elementary school?  Well it still exists.  But no snack was ever quite as satisfying as 'Ants on a Log.'  You know the celery, filled with peanut butter and topped with raisins.  Of course I always skipped the raisins because they creeped me out.  I don't think the teachers liked them in the classroom because how could you not smear PB everywhere?? Nowadays this snack wouldn't even be allowed in a classroom because there are so many dang PB allergies.  I mean, survival of the fittest, right?  Let's weed those weaklings out.

Lunchables

 

 Speaking of food at school.. lunchables were another treat.  It wasn't often that I got a lunchable for school, but it was awfully exciting when it happened. It started out with the simple turkey, cheese, crackers and candy.  Then Oscar Meyer decided to really give kids what they want: Pizza lunchables followed by the ultimate, Nacho lunchables.  There really couldn't have been any nutritional value in either of these.  When one of these two precious packages were in my lunchbox, I devoured every last finger-licking-drop.  I wonder what they taste like now?  Probably so gross.

Dress Up
 

So Kaylee has this obsession with dress up clothes.  She was even sporting a pretty purple gown at the birthday party.  At least 5 out of her 32 gifts were dress up clothes.  Jess and I weren't so lucky to receive dress clothes as gifts in our size (or maybe we never wanted them.)  Instead, we had our own chest of dress up clothes that her mom put together for us.  They consisted of her mom's old bridesmaid dresses, and they served as all of our costumes for the bazillion plays that we wrote (the award-winning Meanadella), and put on for her poor family at parties.  We thought we were so talented we even charged them 10 cents admission.  Hmm.. I think we need to dig up those old videos. 

Making Money

As a kid, you are always trying to scam a dollar from someone who wants to buy your crap because you're a cute kid.  Well, at the time, you probably think people actually want what you are selling, but now, we know better.  So of course Jessie and I created a few lemonade stands in our day.  We really thought we were going to "make a living" selling lemonade that our parents bought for us.  As we got older, we moved onto friendship bracelets and "rats" tails.  We could definitely do some good work with some colored floss, but we always just ended up giving them away.  I think our "rats" tail business went down hill when we offered to put them in the girls' hair at Jaci's birthday party.  We might have gotten it stuck in Jaci's hair and had to cut it out.  Bad for Business.  Is it sad that I still have all my floss and beads?? I still have my skills.

Snow Forts

Without fail, every winter, Jessie and I tried to make a snow fort.  An igloo, if you will.  We used the same brick molds.  We would pack snow into the mold and lay the snow-bricks side by side.  The first layer was obviously the easiest and then the second.  I don't remember ever really getting to a 3rd layer because we questioned how the damn Eskimos got the igloo to become round on top and still balance. I still don't know to this day.  Most times, the snow melted before we could ever finish. I can say that neither of these ever stopped us from starting our igloo every time we had good packing snow.

Bikes--"The Road"

Obviously, this is not the road.  It's scaled down a bit.

Speaking of things getting ruined before you could really enjoy them... Every summer we created "the road."  Essentially it was a "street/ town" we created on the sidewalk with chalk that led from Jessie's house to mine.  We never went all the way to my house because it was too far so somewhere around the "boat-house" (what we referenced the house that always had a boat in the driveway, about 10 houses up) "the road" turned into a highway to my house.  Pretty clever and lazy.  Regardless we work all day on this road.  building in stop signs, the drawing the sidelines and the dotted middle ones, and of course we had to include McDonald's and gas stations.  We put our younger siblings and neighborhood kids to work, of course.  Sometimes we didn't finish the road before it rained and that was it.  Other times we'd ride our bikes for days. 


Boy Meets World

Has anyone noticed that they are now showing reruns for Boy Meets World.. all day, every day? I used to watch this show everyday.  What kind of name is Topanga?  Good thing that never got trendy. 

Play Dough

So, I might have got Kaylee a play dough set for her birthday.  What kid doesn't love play dough?  What parent does?  I have to admit, I really wasn't thinking about the hassle this would be for Jess when I bought it.  But if you can recall your play dough days, when you asked to take out the play dough, your parents thought of any and every other activity that they could entice you with so they wouldn't have to bust out that nasty smelling and all-time messiest play dough.  Even I make excuses now when I'm babysitting.  But you can't deny that kids just love their play dough.

Posters

Remember when your room looked like this?  My walls were always covered with posters of NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, JTT, etc.  Was their any other purpose of buying a Teen Beat magazine than for posters to hang up in your room.  And boys, I know there's a few of you that had WWF or Superhero posters on your walls.  Maybe I have that wrong.. Pamela Anderson as CJ on Baywatch??

Cookies & Milk:

I will end this trip down memory lane, the same way I ended every childhood night: with cookies and milk.  3 cookies, a glass of ice cold milk, and a napkin to knock the crumbs off the cookie before you dipped.  If I was lucky, I'd talk my mom or dad into a 4th cookie (what a pig). I should start this tradition up again  (if I ever have the metabolism of my childhood self again.)

Okay.  Can I just have a day or month and be a kid again?  Life was so simple.  How do kids have so much time for TV, video games, and the computer?  The world is their playground! 

The "Crazy" Woman

I think men and women alike would agree that women can be difficult.  One minute we're happy, the next we're crying.  One minute we want something, the next minute we want nothing to do with it.  I'm not going to go so far to say we're crazy, but we are definitely wired differently than men.  Men are not only simple to read, they are simple.  And any feelings and emotions they do have are suppressed 99% of the time.  (Fine by me)

Men complicate things for women.  They confuse us.  When we don't know what you are thinking, we tend to think the worst.  This makes us act 'crazy'.  (Act being the keyword.)  But men are not the sole cause of our "crazy."  We'd probably be happily walking around in this state of mind if men never pointed it out to us.  But now that they have.. well, we still aren't going to change. 

Like men, women are simple too.  

So what do we women really want?  Prince Charming (or William). Adrian Grenier (in the form of Vince from Entourage.) Christian Grey. Probably.. but they are fictional fantasies. =)

More realistically..

We don't want to be corrected or made to feel stupid, but we like to learn from your areas of expertise. It's hot when a guy knows a lot about something and can teach you. If you obsess over it, and its the only thing you want to do or talk about-- not so hot.


Tell us we look beautiful, for no reason at all, but especially when we put effort into it.  This will spare you from a lot of fights and "What's wrongs?" on many occasions.  My friend, Leanne, has been married for almost 20 years.  When she goes upstairs to get ready she tells her husband, "I'm going upstairs to get ready, and when I come down, you're going to tell me 'You look ... and insert an adjective of your choice."  Women shouldn't have to prompt the man, but we do.  If you can remember Leanne's advice.. or get your girl to give you that reminder before going upstairs, you're doing it right. 

Flowers. Flowers because it's our birthday or anniversary. Flowers to say I'm sorry. Flowers to say I love you. And most importantly flowers just because. Flowers keep us women sane and happy.

Then there's understanding the women code words.  I know you guys are familiar with them, and you probably know what we mean when we say them, but you definitely have not figured out to handle them. And this drives us CRAZY! When you ask us what's wrong and we say nothing, obviously we mean "everything." So instead of taking our answer literally or getting more mad at us for not telling you, take a minute to think. A little effort is all we want. What did you say or do in the last five minutes to upset us.  Though we could easily tell you, we just want you to recognize your mistake all on your own.  And even if you don't think you said or did something wrong, I'm sure you can guess our accusation. When we say we don't care with a hint of sarcasm-- especially 'whatever'-- we care. We are just trying to end the conversation because it's not going our way.  You either have to rationalize with us (good luck) or just succumb to our request. If there's no sarcasm in our voice, we probably just don't care.

We also get crazy when you can't read our mind. This-- I cannot help you with. Unless its in reference to one of the code words above. That's not mind reading.. You guys can handle that.

On the flip side, there's something to be said when you get to a point in a relationship to experience the crazy, irrationalness of a woman.  It means they are comfortable in their relationship with you.  If the crazy comes out premature, then you are free to run the other way because there's no way you can tolerate it if you aren't into the girl. 

So, in a nutshell.. if you can figure out those things above.. you'll be able to tame the crazy inside your woman.. a bit. Let's face it, there's not a cure for the common crazy, just some pointers to slow it down. 

Beat the Heat

After a week straight of upper 90's and 100 degree weather, it is safe to say I'm looking forward to a cool 94 degrees tomorrow.  Talk about relief.   But seriously.. people complain about the heat, people complain about the cold.. people just like to complain.  I know the weather is a popular conversation piece, but its when the weather gets really extreme (like now) that people can't stop.  It's hot. Every one is melting.  It's not just you people!!

Well being a native sun goddess, I will give you a few of my own pointers for beating the heat. 

1.  Most importantly, get yourself to the pool.  100% of the population agrees that its the only way to enjoy a 95+ degree day. Even though you may want to try working on your even tan, you will fail.  Your top half will be tanner than the bottom half that will be submerged in water. 

The Hahn's 4th of July

 2.  Stay hydrated.  Your choice of beverage is up to you.  Water, Pomegranate Martinis, Champagne Punch, Coronas, Coronitas.. or

share a fishbowl with your lover

3.  Girls.. get that hair off your neck.  Its just going to get sweaty and nasty.  Good news! Braids are back and better than ever.  If you're really lucky, you live with a great stylist ;)  So don't let that hair hold back your festing!!

Old St. Pat's Fest!

4.  Leave the oven & stove off.  It's summer!  Everything tastes better charred on the grill.  And to spare yourself the heat from the grill, find some professionals to handle the job for you.

5.  And finally..  acquire an injury. You kill two birds with one stone.  You don't have to feel guilty about not working out in this extreme heat & you can park in handicap spots to minimize breaking a sweat from the parking lot to the front door. 

I'm not saying I know everything, but this seems pretty fool proof to me. So stop complaining and enjoy the heat.  It won't be long til we're buried in 6 feet of snow.