Tortilla Pizza

Ingredients:

1. Tortilla shells
2. Spaghetti sauce
3. Shredded cheese (I actually like the cheddar cheese just as much. A mix of cheddar and mozzarella is pretty tasty, too)
4. Pepperonis

Directions:

Put the tortilla shells on a cookie sheet. Spread the desired amount of sauce on the shells, put on the toppings and the cheese. Broil until the shells are crispy and the cheese is slightly browned and very, very greasy. Eat! You could also use bread instead of tortillas, and add some additional toppings (Me likey the green peppers and onions) if that’s your bag.

I was wised up to the microwave tortilla shell pizza while I had an internship in Alexandria. While living there it seemed a lot less like something a child molester might eat. When I started living here, and the promise of home-cooked meals was no longer on the horizon, I decided to make them something more like actual pizzas by cooking them in the oven, not the microwave.

Pizza Quesadillas

Ingredients:

1. Shredded Mozzarella Cheese
2. Pizza toppings of choice (Pepperoni works very well)
3. Tortilla shells
4. Oil (of the non-motor variety)
5. Your jarred tomato sauce of choice

Directions:

Pour some of the oil into a frying pan. If you’d rather not clog your areries, I’d try something like olive oil. Or, better yet, if you are a journalist and would eat dirt for extra money, you can use the cheapest oil you have. Or, best yet, you could buy a griddle and keep the oiling to a minimum.

Pour some shredded cheese on one half of a totilla shell. Then add a layer of whatever topping you’ve chosen. I like the peperoni’s and I usually cover all the cheese in a sheet of spicy meat. Then you add another layer of shredded cheesse. The size of these layers of cheese depends, once again, on your fondness for a working cardiovascular system. Fold the tortilla over, like a single-slice sandwich.

Put the folded tortilla with toppings in the frying pan. Flip when one side is golden brown. Dip in tomato sauce while eating.

Now you can feel like a loser AND eat cheep pizza at the same time. As if you need more ways to do that. This is a modification of the first recipe, and it’s slightly less depressing while still seeming original. I like the chicken quesadillas, but defrosting the chicken takes so much time and I want greasy food now.

Heartattack Helper

Ingredients:

1. Whipped Cream
2. Jell-O Instant Pudding (choose your flavor!)

Directions:

Take one container of whipped cream and one container of Jell-O instant pudding and mix until there are no clumps of powder. If you choose pistachio pudding, try adding some chunked pineapple for some extra excitement.

I started doing this one because I love to eat whipped cream and I needed an excuse to buy some. And it was so tasty. I like the lemon flavor, but I really want to try some raspberry. Actually, a really good one is the Oreo flavor. It’s like eating dirt pie, only without the gummi worms. Or like eating the Oreo Pie boxed mix, but without paying a lot more money and the crust. I wish I could take credit for this, but I stole it from my mom.

Chicken ala Product Placement

Ingredients:

1. Chicken breasts (I’m a breast man. You could go for the thighs, or just about any other part of the bird)
2. Doritos (choose your flavor!)
3. One egg (or more, depending on the amount of chicken you want to make)
4. Cooking spray and butter

Directions:

Crush the Doritos of choice in one bowl. Beat the egg(s) in another. Take the chicken breasts (thighs or legs or gizzards, etc.) and dip them in the beat egg, then bread to the desired breadedness in the Doritos. Put the chicken in an oven-safe pan and bake it until the chicken is done (I’m not sure on what heat or for how long you need to bake the chicken, but I’m pretty sure those two things are connected). You should probably put that butter and cooking spray in the oven-safe pan before you cook it. And then cover it with tin foil (uncover it for a few of the final minutes to make sure it gets a little crispier).

I really like Doritos, but I feel like something of a slob if I just sit down and eat an entire bag of them (a feeling of slobishness I don’t feel when eating an entire box of Oatmeal Creame Pies). So I had to think of a way to eat those Doritos AND flavor the overabundant chicken taking up space in my freezer. And that’s how the “Chicken ala Product Placement” was born.

Salsa Chicken

Ingredients

1. Chicken
2. Salsa

Directions:

Put the chicken in an oven-safe dish. Cover the chicken with salsa (your choice. I prefer the medium and chunky). Bake until the chicken is done. Sprinkle with shredded cheese if you so desire, and if you aren’t lactose intolerant.

This came about more as a way to make food without actually needing any pots or pans, which I have a tendency not to wash. Baking chicken takes less preparation, and I also had just bought a big jug of salsa. Unfortunately, this isn’t the best recipe for the Dutch small intestine, but thems the breaks.

Hot Brandon’s hot sandwiches

Ingredients:

1. Sliced chicken or turkey lunchmeat
2. Bread
3. Butter
4. Sliced cheese
5. Spicy brown mustard
6. Sliced peppers and onions

Directions:

Butter one side of two slices of bread per one sandwich and then pile a whole crap-ton of sliced turkey or chicken on that bread. Then you add some spicy brown mustard and spread it a little. Then maybe some more meat, then the sliced peppers and onions. Top it all with a slice of cheese and the a second slice of bread (butter side out). Put it on a griddle and cook until each slice of bread is golden-brown delicious.

I’ll admit that this recipe sounds strikingly like grilled cheese with some other crap on it. But It’s more than that. Hot horseradish/spicy brown mustard is surprisingly good. As are hot sliced peppers and onions. And they taste really good. You can put any vegetables you want in there, but make sure you gots the mustard. It’s the glue that holds it all together(which is something of an irony because the cheese is clearly the glue that holds the sandwich together).