Chicken Burritos As We Get By With a Little Help From Our Friends



Food Mood: chilled out and back on track, Chicken Burritos 

Reno Ridiculouso: Supporting Things

After the debacle with Bull Talker Contractor, we elect to ignore him, pick ourselves up and move on.  Unfortunately to do so in a legally defendable way (who knows where this train is headed) we’ve had to wait seven weeks and give him the chance to adhere to the original architects drawings or at least bring it up to standard via the engineers amendments.  But it’s clear to us that this relationship is never going to work and Bull Talker is going to have to go if we’re not going to come to blows over this.  So adios.  Sayonara.  Don’t let the door hit your backside on the way out.  Oh wait, that’s right we don’t have a door.  Bye.

The good news story?  Our friends are awesome.  As you yourself have likely figured out by now, friends in your forties are kinda weird.  They’re like this shadowy background idea.  You don’t actually see them except for on facebook and at birthday parties.  It takes a significant amount of effort to maintain friendships with kids and jobs, and houses and community work and the like.  Given this truth, I’m always a little surprised that when the chips are down, our friends are there. 
We start making phone calls (gasp, phone!) and end up with a crew of three to help Hubby.  And that’s good cause it’s a big job.  

There’s a beam that in theory was supporting the back of our house.  In practice, when we opened the house up it became clear that beam had to be replaced.  Bull Talker was giving us some malarkey tale about how he would replace it after the new dining room was done and the new roof beams were all up.  It never made sense to us or the engineer so now that he’s gone we’re going to do this right and replace the beam.  In four glorious hours of manly activity the back of the house gets properly supported and the beam gets replaced and reattached.  And, ok, one minor little half wall (non supporting) gets cut out by mistake. Oh well.  Moving on.

And I sigh a GREAT. BIG. SIGH. OF. RELIEF. 

It’s moments like this when I really, really love the hubby.  He puts his mind to it, figures out how to support the house, takes out the beam and put its back in.  Just like that. 

Chicken/Veg/Whatever You Want Burritos For a Crowd
4 chicken breasts
8 chicken thighs
A big jar of salsa (mild so the kids don’t rebel)
16 corn tortillas
Garnishes- avocado, red onion, lots of shredded cheese, finely chopped peppers, sour cream, hot sauce)
Put the chicken in the crockpot and pour all the salsa over it.  Cook for six or eight hours.
Cut up all the other stuff when you have a moment, maybe even the night before your work party.
Half an hour before, take out the chicken, let it cool slightly and shred it using a couple of forks to pull it apart.  Empty about half of the salsa out of the pot, put the chicken back in.  Cook for another half hour on high to reduce the liquid in the salsa.  If this isn’t working you could add two tbsp. of flour to a mason jar, add about a cup of water, shake it up and pour it in the crockpot too to thicken it. 
Heat the tortillas if you can (I know, right, when did this all become so damned hard!)  A couple of options
1)      Put them on a plate, cover with a damp paper towel and microwave about a minute
2)      Warm them in a frying pan on the hot plate.  Warm up the pan, put a little bit of veg oil in to coat the bottom so they don’t stick, pop about four at a time into warm and put the lid on.  The bottom one will get a little browned but it shouldn’t do any harm. 

Serve up the tortillas and the fixings.  Thankfully for us it’s a gorgeous fall day so we can just eat sitting on the floor of our soon to be dining room.  Oh, the irony.

Hello! Thanks for stopping by to check out my recipes and commiserate with my (our) misery. Misery loves company! I live in Toronto with my husband and little girl. We have spent a year (yep, that's right, renovating our home) About seven months into this crazy renovation I thought to myself, this has got to be funny or it will be pathetic! And so, I have chosen for funny! This is my collection of mostly crockpot (although sometimes not) recipes paired with the days (weeks, months) that inspired them. Please share your best reno stories and crockpot recipes too.

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