EnchiLOTTAs

It always amazes me how much you can get done in a day when you get up early. It's never easy for me, but today felt good to get up and exercise: I could get used to getting my feet wet on a beach run at 8:15am.

I hustled back in order to make it to my 10am DMV appointment to register my car in California. One failed smog test and $350 (to fix the smog sensor) later, my car still isn't ready for registration. Apparently, I have to drive it 50 to 100 miles before it can be tested again. Dumb.

From there I came back to the apartment to clean up and then headed to the grocery store to get ingredients for Day 1 of learning how to cook: I started off with my Mom's Enchiladas recipe:

Ingredients:

- 1 large package boneless, skinless chicken breasts

- 1 16 oz. container sour cream

- 2 cans chopped green chilies

- Salt to taste

- 4 cups shredded Monterey Jack cheese

- 2 cans enchilada sauce

- medium size flour tortillas

Directions:

1. Cook chicken in boiling water for about 30 minutes or until done.

2. When chicken is cooled, cut up in bite size or smaller pieces and put in large mixing bowl.

3. Mix with chicken the chilies, salt, 2 cups shredded cheese, and container of sour cream.

4. In bottom of casserole dish, pour one can of enchilada sauce.

5. Put about two spoonfuls of filling on each tortilla and wrap up and put in dish, seam side up

6. After filling dish with enchiladas, pour second can of sauce on top.

7. Cover top with shredded cheese.

8. Bake uncovered at 350 for 30-35 minutes.

I wasn't sure about the servings, so I called my Mom and she told me to buy 6-8 chicken breasts and that would feed about 7 people. My Mom's mom was a caterer and her recipes always leave tons of leftovers, so I should have known from experience that that was going to be WAY too much chicken. By the time I was done preparing the enchiladas, I had way more than necessary to feed a few friends who were coming over for dinner:

Brave guinea pigs: Gene, Keren, and Ann came over for the main course along with my roommate, Brian. Ben and Meredith stopped by while I was cooking, and Patty P took home some leftovers.

We had so much food left. I couldn't pawn any off on Keren because she doesn't eat anything that's more than 12 hours old, unless it's pizza. I saved a few enchiladas for myself and Brian for tomorrow, and then decided it would be a good idea to take the leftovers to the homeless. Patricia and I packaged them up and then headed out.

On most nights in Santa Monica nearly all of the benches are used as makeshift beds for the homeless. Tonight, however, Patricia and I couldn't find a soul. We started off with 8 boxes of food, and after walking about 20 blocks we had only handed out 2 or 3 boxes. After about 30 minutes we made our way to the 3rd Street Promenade. What did we find? A volunteer group serving soup... and all of the homeless (Okay, not all, but many) were in line! I guess I picked a bad night to try to be generous, but we were still able to give out most of the boxes after awhile. It was a good experience, and all of people I met on the street were very gracious and thankful. It's always good to see a smile on their faces. At a minimum I can chalk it up to exercise.