Quesadilla Night

This Wednesday's dinner was as much about the quesadillas we were eating as it was about next week's meal.  Thanks to Bambi, our sometimes sous-chef and this upcoming week's celebrity chef, we had a ballot.  Our guests voted for what ingredients they wanted in the calzones (one veg, one meat) for this following week.  Not everyone knows how to follow directions, I learned, but a decision was made and the ballots were a success (Thanks, Bambi!!).  Anyway, back to this week's quesadillas.

Guests: 14
Challenge: All vegetarian meal

On the menu for this week were two kinds of quesadillas: one with yellow squash, zucchini, and cheddar, and one with spinach, portobello mushrooms, and mozzarella.  Additionally there was a bean salsa, a mango salsa, and guacamole. Despite the Sun having several anxiety attacks about there not being enough food, the meal turned out great. Delicious! (. . .And there was enough food.)


Making the quesadillas: 

                                                 Sauteeing zucchini and yellow squash

                                                    Sauteed spinach and mushrooms

Normally we include recipes on this blog but this seems to be pretty self explanatory.  We sauteed up the vegetables and set them aside until it was time to make the quesadillas.  We put down one tortilla and then a layer of cheese, vegetables, and another layer of cheese.  We then put a second tortilla on top of this in order to maximize the amount of portions.  This later proved to be a problem as we started running out of tortillas.  We then switched to the regular one tortilla folded over method.  It tasted the same either way.

                                              The Wolf expertly flipping the quesadillas

                                                 Teamwork: the Sun cutting up the quesadillas

                                                Two kinds of quesadillas, ready to eat

The salsas and the guacamole:

Half way through making the salsas, the Sun received a call from her boss and had to do work for about 20 minutes.  She apologizes, again.
Anyway, so there were two salsas: mango and bean.  The mango one contained: two mangos, red onion, cilantro, cucumber, salt, pepper, jalapeno, lime juice, and sugar.  The sugar was the secret ingredient and boosted the flavors considerably.  The bean was black bean, red bean, corn, red onion, cilantro, and lime juice.
The guacamole was standard: avocados, onion, tomato, salt, pepper, lime juice (we ran out of cilanch).  Thank you, Joshua Bates and Mike Nep for chopping/mashing.  Josh loves cutting and scooping avocados. . . in a really weird way.

                                                     Salsas ready to be eaten

                                                Joshua Bates cutting avocados. . . at eye level

                                                                Dinner is served

             Thanks, Bean! Final product: quesadillas, salsas, guac, sour cream, salsa verde

And then after dinner. . .

                                                                Guests

                                                 Late night guests, as usual :-)

                                                   Looks like these guys got the memo

                                            The calzone night ballots for this upcoming week

                                                          The Wolf filling his out

                                            With Joshua Bates getting ready to tally up the votes

                                                          Tallying up the votes

                                   John O'Connell was in fact here (special guest of the week)

                                                 Fancy Wednesday night dinner beers