Get yourself a quesadilla maker at Goodwill and make them at home!

I bought a quesadilla maker at Goodwill for next to nothing....I think it was all of $5.....they are around 20 or 25 in the stores....Quesadillas are an easy dinner to make and they are great for nights when you either don't feel like cookin' due to a busy day or you don't know what to cook and you have a bag of cheese in the fridge that needs to be used up....well that never happens but you see where I am going with this don't cha? They are easy for the lazy chef and that wins hands down everytime in my book! ( for the record my dollar store has the tortilla shells)

So get yourself a quesadilla maker or plan to fry them or however you want to do it is fine by me. I will be making mine in my handy dandy quesadilla maker from Goodwill.:)

So I usually serve my Mexican meal with corn and refried beans. Sometimes I cook yellow rice as well. If you have not tried it, do so. Yummy and a great filler if you are running low on meat. Which I was last night so I decided I would make cheese and bean quesadillas....Now if you really want to make them delicious sauté some real onion in some olive oil first and then add it and some cheese and black beans to your tortilla shell but I was also running low on motivation and energy last night. So I planned to make rather unimpressive cheese quesadillas but as luck would have it they turned out delicious and shocked me so I am sharing them with you!!

I started by adding cans of refried beans and corn to the pots on the stove. To my corn I add a little sugar and a pat of butter and to the refried beans I added a dash of cumin ( little goes a long way....do not be heavy handed), generous globs of salsa and some onion powder and some minced onion flakes since I was not in the mood to cook some real onion ( see above). I headed both of these on low heat in the back of the stovetop while the quesadillas cooked.

I then put the tortilla shells on two plates side by side with equal number of shells...so in my case there were 4 of us so 8 shells....4 per plate. You could make them by using one shell per person but my date on the shells is only for a few more weeks and I didn't have rice,etc for additional meal making possibilities.....wanted everyone to get enough in other words. :)

So I went in search of black beans then remembered I had put them back in line due to a big dent in the can....so no black beans to bulk them up. No energy to fix onion to bulk them up. No yellow rice. Hmm......how about blackeyed peas? They are mushy like refried beans....might be able to make them think they are black beans.....worth a shot right?

Started by draining the blackeyed peas in the sink ( I use luck's....it has a wonderful sauce on the beans) and then added about half the can to the refried beans on the stove ( yes you read that right....I am not one for wasting food) and then added the rest to the two quesadillas that my husband and I wanted....the kids will barely eat the cheese ones....hence the rice and corn usually. You can also serve tortilla chips on the side which I normally do and they have chips and cheese and corn. Hamburger if I am up to cooking it but see above....it was a bare bones dinner kinda night :)

So I made two cheese quesadillas and then put them on the plate that did not have any shells on it.....I preassemble my shells and toppings and then end up with several on top of each other waiting for the cooker and then an empty plate....so I sprayed the quesadilla maker with cooking spray ( I am not a fan but in this case easier) and cooked the two cheese ones first ( they were on the top of the stack) ....and then moved on to the cheese and blackeyed pea ones....my only complaint is if you leave them on there too long some of the cheese and the beans fall out ( I leave an edge on the cheese and shell for this reason....stop your cheese about an inch or half inch before edge of tortilla shell)....I then transferred them to plates and used a pizza cutter to cut them and added refried beans, corn, salsa and sour cream to each plate!

Well I am happy to report the quesadillas with blackeyed peas were delicious and the refried beans had a nice lumpy texture to them! Be making these again! Go get you a quesadilla maker and they will be calling you the hit of the block! You could use it at parties or Cinco De Mayo,etc....Enjoy!--Tips