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Sometimes you just need a good casserole for dinner. An easy one dish fix that lasts for two meals. That is what I was going for when I threw together this casserole! This mean is around 240 calories per serving and I would say there are about 6 servings here.

What you need:

2 chicken breasts, shredded (I used a rotisserie chicken because it is cheap and easy and already cooked, duh!)

1/2 cup cottage cheese

1 can enchilada sauce

1 can Rotel

1/4 cup salsa (if you have it on hand)

1 teaspoon taco seasoning (or 1/2 tsp chili powder and 1/2 tsp cumin)

1 can black beans, drained

chicken broth (about 1 cup)

cheese – I used Mexican Mix

soft tortillas

green onion

What you do:

1. In a bowl, mix together the chicken, cottage cheese, enchilada sauce, salsa, taco seasoning and Rotel.

2. Spray your baking dish with cooking spray.

3. Pour your chicken broth into a shallow bowl, like this:

4. Dip your tortilla shells in the chicken broth lightly as you use them, and cover the bottom of the baking dish. I used about 3 shells, breaking them apart however necessary to cover the bottom. I use the chicken broth to keep them from getting too dry.

5. Spread a layer of the chicken mixture over the tortillas, followed by a layer of black beans, more tortilla shells, the rest of the chicken, the rest of the black beans, then end with tortilla shells covering the top.

6. Bake the casserole in the oven at 375 degrees for around 25-30 minutes. You want it to be heated through completely and the cheese to be melted on top.

This smells AMAZING when you open the oven. Yum yum yum.

Enjoy! (I am not the best at cutting this, so it doesn’t look all pretty but it sure tastes delicious!!!)

I looked at the weather this morning when I woke up, as I heard thunder rumbling in the distance. Apparently, it is going to thunderstorm every day as far out as they can predict. Lovely. Let’s get in to the weekend recap, shall we?

Friday – Chris and his brother took turns DJ’ing live over internet radio on Friday evening. What was I doing? Jamming upstairs to their sweet tunes while getting ahead on my weekend cleaning, and also unlocking more characters and kart options in Mario Kart! Like you would expect anything less.

Saturday – I woke up early and got ready to head out to do some shopping with my mom. I haven’t really been to The Summit to shop in months. We started out at the bottom at Ann Taylor Loft and Private Gallery, then grabbed some lunch at Primeaux. This was our first time eating there, and I have to say…it was delicious!!!! Primeaux is a french bistro wine and cheese concept.

We started out with a “small plate” of Rogue Blue Cheese Chips – Kettle chips topped with Rogue Blue Cheese, mornay, applewood smoked bacon and sweet apple chutney. You guys…they were AMAZING!!! The tangy blue cheese and sweet apple chutney mixed together was a part in my mouth.

For the entree, I had the Chicken Salad Sandwich on croissant. It had a small salad on the side which was delicious as well. The sandwich was SO BIG that I couldn’t eat it all.

My mom ordered the Croque Monsieur (not pictured)- a cured french ham and Brie Creme on griddled bread with melted Swiss cheese. One of the cheeses was melted on the outside of the sandwich, which really gave it an interesting twist and different flavor! It was delicious as well!

My mom was so sweet, she bought me this dress at Ann Taylor Loft!

We shopped at a few more stores, and then I had to part ways to head to Trussville to meet up with my husband and our friends. The shrimp boil event we were going to check out was a bust, so we ended up heading downtown to none other than World of Beer of course!!

Trim Tab (a local brewery) has their season summer Raspberry Berliner – Weisse on tap right now. It is a Berliner Weiss that is slightly tart with a light raspberry flavor. It was delicious!

I also had a Koppaberg Strawberry Lime, which is an apple cider that has fresh strawberries and limes added. It is my favorite of all the ciders, made in Sweeden.

My friend and I split a Leinenkugel Summer Shandy as well because I had never tried it believe it or not. I liked that it was light and refreshing.

After WOB, we walked down to Jim n Nicks for some dinner. I ordered the turkey potato. It was the size of my freaking head, and I am not even sure I hate half of it because it was SO much food! It was absolutely delicious though!

After dinner, we parted ways with our friends and headed to Petsmart to get some dog food and then back home. I proceeded to play a few more rounds of Mario Kart and read some of my book.

Sunday – I meal planned and grocery shopped, then came home and did some laundry, cleaned some more, took care of the litter box and other such fun stuff, then we parked it on the couch and watched a Law and Order SVU Marathon.

I learned that we have another sun bather this weekend, Olivia parked in by the back deck door in the rectangle of sun and just stared outside for awhile.

She is also obsessed with the refrigerator. It doesn’t matter how long you have it opened for, she will hop on in and pop a squat. Ridiculous!

Here is a picture of Olivia and Chris holding hands while they napped. So cute!

I hope everyone had a fabulous weekend! I am going to try, with the help of Chris of course, to fix my blog layout this week…so if things look wonky for a few days, pardon the construction! I am pretty sure it already looks wonky half the time anyways, as my side bar tends to disappear to the bottom of the blog 9 out of 10 times. Oops. I never pretended to be a professional.

–I get irrationally angry when I call an Assessor’s office or a Treasure’s office for work and the person on the other line can not read the dollar amount correctly to me. Like, WTF?!?!?! How did you get your job if you can’t read numbers? Because like, it’s YOUR JOB! How in the hell can you not read dollar amounts? I mean, I get that you might not see a million often and it could trip you up…and I don’t really want to let you slide on it..but some people can’t even read $245,875. How can you not?!?!?!?!?!?! Here’s a hint for you…if you can’t read that amount…you will never see that amount. Ever.

PS – What the hell did you do in school?!

–Have you heard the song “Play it Again” by Luke Bryan?

Over the weekend, Ann Davis aka “Alice” passed away.

It got me all reminiscent about watching The Brady Bunch with my mom when I was little. I loved it, still do! I realized that The Brady Bunch taught us many things. I wanted to share a few of those with you today.

1. Don’t play ball in the house. – Just ask the Brady boys, you might break a vase and take an entire episode trying to fix it, only to be caught anyways.

2. While on vacation, only buy souvenirs  from legit shops. – Ask Peter Brady about his misfortunes when he woke up with that nasty spider. No thanks tiki man, you are going back!

3. The oldest daughter is the best daughter. – I mean come on Jan, with Marcia’s hair…who wouldn’t pay her more attention? Stop being a little bitch!

4. Some people don’t need to have power. – Remember when Bobby was the hall safety monitor?!?! What a douche!!! Like, I am pretty sure that Hitler gave more slack.

5. Don’t hide your journal in the garage. – Marcia left her journal sitting out in the garage and when Cindy was packing up stuff to donate, her diary was mixed in. I mean, Cindy probably did that crap on purpose to air out all her dirty little secrets.

6. If you don’t have a boyfriend, make one up. – Hello, George Glass. Jan, if you didn’t spend so much time hating that Marcia gets all the attention, you probably could have scored one of the boys that your parents tried to set her up with for the dance.

7. Sometimes words will trip you up. Like sea shells by the sea shore. I mean, saying it a few times fast will trip anyone up.

8. Be yourself. – Also see, not everyone can pull of a black wig. But really Jan, you should be loved for who you are, not who you want to pretend to be!

9. Don’t visit ghost towns. – The whole family ended up locked up! If you can’t help yourself and must visit, maybe make arrangements to check in with someone by a certain time and if you are not reached, the search party must be called.

10. Sometimes things just work out. – Like how Marcia got to meet Davy Jones. He was so dreamy.

What did The Brady Bunch teach you? Or am I the only one who was lame enough to watch it over and over and over again….

Well, hello there June! You sort of snuck up on us a little bit there didn’t you? I hope that everyone had a great weekend! Let’s just get right to it, shall we?

Friday – If you remember correctly, my morning started at 4:15am when we decided to go to Walmart and pick up our copy of Mario Kart 8 to ensure a weekend of awesomeness. We got two rounds in before work.

Friday after work I stopped by Target got a few things, then Chris and I headed over to his parents house to celebrate his mom’s birthday.

Saturday Morning – My morning started out with some reading and a coffee. Like all mornings should start out!

We hung around the house in the morning and I got some laundry done. Drank more coffee. Then it started to rain. Chris fell asleep on the couch, so I did what anyone would do…I played some more Mario Kart! Unlocking three more cups and a few more characters and kart options. YES!

When Chris woke up, we decided to get out of the house for a little bit. We went to Bargain Hunt in Irondale. After there we figured we were already basically in the city, so we headed downtown to World of Beer. They had a reggae band playing out on the patio and changed up their draft list a lot. I tried a new local brew, Cahaba Brewing Company’s “Cahaba Kiwi Kolsh.” It was light and refreshing. I didn’t really taste much kiwi, but still a good one!

There were pretty crowded, which was great to see. Usually on a Saturday afternoon there haven’t been that many people there. Although, we were there a few hours later than we usually were so maybe that is why. Every table outside stayed full while we were out there.

After we enjoyed a beer, we were talking about what we might want to do for dinner. We have been waiting on Jack Browns Beer and Burgers to open up in Lakeview, but they haven’t yet. Then our meal at Southern Kitchen from last weekend started popping in our minds….sooooo….we headed on over to Uptown! There was talk for a moment about going to Mugshots, but their patio is tiny in Uptown and we wanted to soak up more of the nice weather so we put our names in Southern Kitchen and waited at the bar for a patio table. I enjoyed a nice Abita Root Beer while we were waiting.

Our food was delicious, as always!!! I had my eye on the Jackson Burger last weekend, and I decided to go for it. It consisted of black angus beef, smoked bacon, melted pimento cheese, and purple onion on a brioche bun. For a side I got the hand-cut jalapeno honey fries. I got the jalapeno honey on the side, and OMG!!!! It was seriously AMAZING!!!!! It took everything I had to leave half the fries behind. Their burger can only be cooked at medium-well according to our server, but it was perfect. The pimento cheese was a really great change up from the usual.

Chris got the blackened grouper again with the macaroni and cheese. Obviously he really enjoyed his dish since he ordered it a second time! It looked great!

Sunday – I got the meal planning and grocery shopping done and straightened up around the house a bit. My mother in law asked me to come along with her for some shopping, so I did just that. We went to Kohls, TJ Maxx and Marshalls. I scored some great beauty loot while I was there! I had also picked up my trusted Loreal BB Cream and wanted to try the Burt’s Bees Cuticle cream and the Age Rewind Eraser Concealer when I was at Target. Below is my mini-haul.

I couldn’t believe that TJ Maxx had Butter nail polish on the cheap! That stuff is usually $15 a bottle and I was like ahhhh no thanks. I scored it for $6! I also got the Rusk Hair Mask to try, on clearance for $5, whoop whoop! As well as a new angled brush, a bottle of a light pretty pink OPI and some Green Tea foot scrub. I will of course share my thoughts on the new products. So many beauty bloggers swear by that age rewind eraser so we shall see. I have about tried every damn concealer on the market with no luck. I am not holding my breath, but I was running out of my Tarte one. The Tarte concealer is ok, but not awesome.

The rest of what was left of Sunday was spent looking like this:

Also, while I was out….it had started to rain and Chris ran to let the dogs back in. He found Gracie looking like this under the over hang of the back deck. Too stinking cute! The dogs are not fans of getting wet.

Hope everyone has a great week!