Low Fat Fiesta

Sometimes, you just want some good old junk food, or possibly some modestly healthy take on good old junk food.

When Julie and I go to The Lighthouse Cafe in Hermosa Beach for live jazz on a weekend day, we occasionally will buy their nachos.  What they bring to our table must be four iches high and fills a platter about a foot in diameter.  By comparison, consider the movie theater version of nachos: 40 chips with 4 ounces of "cheese" in a little cardboard tray. 

Yes, the Lighthouse Nachos are a terrific value and can easily feed a table full of people, but sometimes we tackle it with two or three people,  getting suprisingly far through layer after layer of tortilla chips, cheese, beans, guacamole, sour cream and, to make us feel like we're eating vegetables, pico de gayo and sliced jalapenos.  Add chicken for a couple of bucks more, and still pay less than the price of two movie theater trays of chips and Queso.  There must be ten movie theater nachos in that pile of goodness.

Diners can gloat in value-shopping awesomeness, because  the live jazz show is usually free, as opposed to a $12 movie theater ticket.

However, consider this: typical movie theater nachos are about 1,100 calories with 59 grams of fat, a third of which are saturated, if that means anything to you.

In short, you have to be very tall or a professional athlete to get away with splitting the Lighthouse Nachos between four people without exceeding your daily recommended calorie intake.

But perhaps you still want that spicy flavor with some crunch.

Here is an easy and tasty Quick-Clean Cuisine Low Fat Fiesta recipe that makes a tasty dinner, lunch or snack.

Cover a cookie sheet with parchment paper, and then put two or three of your favorite flour tortillas on it.  Avoid overalapping tortilla edges, but they can hang off the side of the cookie sheet a little if necessary.  I usually buy thin and cheap Romero's tortillas for myself and Mission Low Carb tortillas for Julie.  For this reciepe, I strongly recommend regular tortillas, as thin as possible (lower calorie), because they toast better than the low carb ones.  This is a splurge treat, after all, not an every day meal.  You can cut them into chips or strips if you like, but I usually just make gigantic round tortilla chips.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and stick the tortillas in the oven while it warms up.  Set a timer for about 6 to 10 minutes, depending on how fast your oven heats.  If it is super fast, check at 3 or 4 minutes to make sure the tortillas aren't burning.  Once you know how long it takes cooking them one time in your oven, adjust your time for your oven for future tortilla bakes.

Now that you have your "chips" cooking, open a can of Rosarita No Fat Zesty Salsa Refried Beans. Yes, this is haute cuisine with complex, top of the line ingredients, but you can substitute whatever refried beans you like, and you'll still be better off than movie theater nachos.

 

Put half of a 16 ounce can of beans (or however much you think you will eat, adjusting cooking time) into a microwave safe bowl.  Stir in one to two table spoons of grated Mexican cheese.  If you happen to have some leftover taco meat, you can add that too, but it isn't necessary. 

 

Thoroughly cover the bowl in wax paper, because beans can splatter if it gets too hot (no es bueno para Q-CC, si?).  Heat it for about 60 to 90 seconds.  If it isn't hot when you check it, stir it and put it back in for another 30 seconds.

Check to see if your tortillas are light brown.  If they are, take them out of the oven and proceed to enjoy them.  Keep checking until they're done, and then make a note of how long it took.  Eat off a plate or even a napkin or paper towel, if you find rinsing a plate lightly to be too strenuous.

My closing comment will only be clearly understood by those who went to a high school like mine that served refried bean burritos from a stainless steel food truck on campus.  The toasted tortilla with beans tastes almost exactly like those high fat chimichanga-like burritos deep fried by the food truck.

I think you can figure out how to clean up after this meal, but the most complicated part is that you will, if you followed the recipe exactly, have a half can of refried beans leftover.  Rather than washing the bowl, you can, assuming you will be eating your leftovers, put the rest of the refried beans in with another 1 or 2 tablespoons of grated cheese, cover it with Cling Wrap and put it in the refrigerator for another fiesta in a couple of days.

By the way, I suppose this should be enough for two people, but if you eat it all, you're still not going to hate yourself in the morning.