Chicken quesadillas

This is one of my favorite "fast and easy" meals: Chicken and cheese quesadillas.

First, I assembled all the ingredients for dessert: Pumpkin Spice Cake with cream cheese icing:

I only used a half a brick of cream cheese this time.  The cake mix cost $1.33 (I haven't seen a 99 cent mix since winter, actually, but the can of pumpkin was on sale for 99 cents.  I just prepared the cake mix as directed, but added a can of pumpkin to the mix.  I like walnuts but the kids don't, so I poured a little more than half the mix into a 9x9 brownie pan, added a cup of nuts to the remaining half, and poured that into an 8x8 pan.  I baked at 350 for 25 minutes.  The one with nuts ended up taking longer (maybe because it was thicker - you would think less actual batter in the pan would lead to a lower baking time but even physics surprises me from time to time).  While it was baking, I began work on the quesadillas....




Normally, I make these one at a time and microwave them to melt the cheese.  This time, though, I already had the oven on, so I just made four of them and put them on a cookie sheet in the oven to melt the cheese.  I mixed some cheddar cheese with taco seasoning.  I bought this jumbo jar over half a decade ago and it's still half full.  But it hasn't grown sentient life, so I guess we're good.






I had some extra chicken left over from making a whole chicken once upon a time, and some chives from my garden that I'd just tossed in the freezer.  The tortillas were $1.50 for a ten-pack.  The cheese was $4 a pound, and I used a little more than half the bag, so we'll call it $2.50 worth of cheese.  I'm the only one who used the salsa and it was only a Tbsp or so, so we're calling the price on that negligable.  



I put them in the oven for 5 minutes to melt the cheese, and microwaved a bag of peas ($1.70) then pressed the quesadillas (that's fancy chef-like talk for I smushed them down with the palm of my hand) and put them on a plate to serve. 

It turns out I had two 10-inch tortillas left over from a previous meal, so the kids got 8-inch "kid sized" ones and I got a larger one.  It kind of worked out pretty well.





When the cake was done, I mixed up some cream cheese icing using a half a brick of cream cheese (50 cents - I ONLY buy cream cheese when it's $1 a brick, usually around Thanksgiving) and about 2 cups of powdered sugar, a tsp of vanilla, and enough milk to make it the right consistency.  Since the cake was still warm, it kind of melted the icing, which is why it looks thin in the middle and thick at the edges of the cake.  But that's OK.  It's delicious enough that we don't care what it looks like.

So, our total for tonight is: 

$1.33 mix, $0.99 pumpkin, $0.50 cream cheese, $0.63 powdered sugar,

 $1.50 tortillas, $2.50 cheese, $1.70 peas

= $9.15 

(And that's counting much, much cake that we haven't yet eaten)

Mmmmm...   Delicious, it is.

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