Enchurritos

I like to cook, but sometimes I like to take the easy route, but still make it feel like I cooked a nice meal for the family. This is one of those meals. Of course, you could make your own burritos, might cost a little bit more, but made to your liking.  

Frozen burritos

1 can enchilada sauce

cheddar cheese

Preheat oven according to burrito package directions.  Place burritos in baking dish. Pour sauce over top and cover with cheese.  Bake according to the package directions. 

Very quick and very good. 

Taco Braid

I loved the spaghetti bread I made before so when I saw this recipe for taco braid I knew I wanted to make it.  It was very good, but spicy, I think next time I will just use diced tomatoes without the green chilis in there.

1 pound ground beef

taco seasoning 

1 can rotel tomatoes- drained

1 can black beans- drained and rinsed

2 cans crescent rolls

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Brown and drain ground beef. Mix with taco seasoning, tomatoes, and beans.  Spread out the crescents on a cookie sheet, but don't separate them. Press seams together to form one piece.  Place meat mixture in the middle and make one inch strips on each side of meat.  

Fold over dough in a braid. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes.  Let sit for 5-10 minutes before cutting. 

Bathroom renovation

Since we sold our house and moved into our rental property we have been tackling some updates that the place needs. The first one was the bathroom.  We didn't really have a plan in mind when we went to Menard's to buy stuff, and since it's a rental we decided to try to keep the costs down in case we have to replace things in a few years.   The whole reno took us about 2 days and only cost around $400.  The problem now is that the bathroom is nice and looks like it doesn't fit in this house.

Here's the before. Mike redid this all when he bought the duplex 8 years ago. The floor is just peel and stick linoleum that was coming up near the tub, the vanity and toilet were dirty and have seen better days and the walls were quite dirty. 

The first step was to peel up all the linoleum and remove the vanity and toilet. We waited until the last possible minute to remove the toilet because it's the only one in the house.  The floor came up pretty easy, but then we were left with a big sticky mess on the floor, it's just cement.  We tried scrapping, goo gone, boiling water and scrubbing. Finally what worked was a can of mineral spirits. However, it smelled awful, but it did the trick. 

For the floor we decided to put down vinyl tiles that you grout.  We've never used them before as we had all wood or ceramic at our last house, so we weren't sure if we would like them, but they were a little cheaper and much faster than ceramic. Once we got all the glue off the floor you have to put down a primer. You just roll it on with a paint roller and wait for it to dry. 

Once we started the tile, Mike did all the cut pieces and I did all the big pieces. This part went really quick. I was done with the whole pieces before he had even stuck down the tiles around the toilet.  After all the tile was in we put in the new toilet, new vanity, new medicine cabinet and new baseboard heater.  We went back and forth over removing the heater or getting a new one, but since it had the wiring right there near the base of the bathtub and Mike didn't really want to leave the wires where they could somehow get wet we decided just to replace it with a new one. 

Next up was grout.  Last time we did ceramic Mike was the grouter and I was the cleaner. However, there wasn't space for both of us so Mike got to do it all just working his way towards the door.  The directions said to clean the grout off right away, but we noticed that he was just wiping the grout right out of the cracks so we sort of skipped this step for now.  We let it dry for the recommended 72 hours and then went back with a amonia based cleaner and cleaned all the tiles. It took a while, but was much better than having to re-grout because we weren't making any progress.  

After Mike was done I got to paint. Yes, you probably should paint before you install all new flooring and other items, but we weren't sure which color we wanted to go with. We decided to go with a very light gray color.  We also purchased a new door and of course we got new white trim.  We also moved the medicine cabinet down and install a light bar above it.   

It's such a huge improvement and I am in love with the tile.  

Here's a price breakdown-

Tile $1.70 a sq. ft. x 40 sp. ft = $68

Toilet  $90

Vanity  $50

Medicine cabinet  $50

Light $15

Door $50

Paint & Grout Supplies  $30

So this whole project was $353 give or take a few dollars. Not to bad for a practically brand new bathroom.  

Salmon Patties

This is one of my grandma's recipes. She made these for me often when I was younger and stayed the night at her house. I haven't had them in so long, and they're so good.

1/2 cup milk

2 eggs

2 cans of salmon- pick out any bones

1 tbsp flour

saltine crackers (I used about half of the sleeve)

Mix all ingredients in a bowl.  You can add more milk, flour or crackers to your liking. You want them to be sort of thick.  Form them into patties and fry them in a pan until browned flipping as needed.