creamy chicken enchiladas.

a recipe, as promised.

[ps. they look and taste WAY better in real life than what it looks like in this picture. it's really hard to get good pictures of food when you and 2 grown men are starving].

my mom used to make this for dinner when we were growing up, but for some reason i didn't like them then, i don't know why. so my mom stopped making them as much [my sister still blames me]. and because she stopped making them, i never really got to try them as an adult, now that i actually know what good food tastes like. 

until, over the summer, i went to visit my boyfriend's family and his mom made them for sunday dinner. i couldn't tell her that i didn't like them, it would be rude and everyone would think i was weird. so i decided i would just eat them as best i could and fake a smile. but you know what? i actually liked them. it was a really exciting day for me.

then last week, i was craving chicken enchiladas like you would not believe. i e-mailed my mom for her recipe, but apparently she doesn't have one. she just throws stuff in as she goes. so that's what i did - with the help of my friend justin.

here's what you'll need:

12 tortillas

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts

1 lb. container sour cream

2, 10 oz. cans of cream of chicken soup

1 can olives

9 oz. diced green chiles

3 c. grated cheese

first, preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

then, boil your chicken breasts. i had never boiled chicken before this, but it was so easy and they turned out so tender and delicious. boil for 10-15 minutes, until cooked all the way through.

if you use frozen chicken breasts, like we did, you may have to cook them for closer to 20 minutes. because if they look like this, they're not done.

feel free to use already cooked tortillas. but as for me, i love love love the raw tortillas that you have to cook yourself. so while the chicken was boiling, i cooked up 12 tortillas.

next, you'll want to mix together the sour cream and the 2 cans of cream of chicken soup.

then, add the green chiles. we used a 2oz. and a 7oz. can, and the spiciness was moderate. feel free to add more or less, depending on how spicy you would like your enchiladas to be. [i might add more next time].

and make sure you get lots of pictures of stirring in green chiles, because it is apparently exciting.

once this is stirred through, put about a cup of it aside to spread across the top later.

struggle opening a can of olives. or open it easily, it works either way.

slice the olives, and stir them into the filling mixture.

then, slice the chicken into bite size pieces, and stir them into the mixture as well.

now to the last, and most important, part. cheese. grate 3 cups of cheese - we used medium cheddar and pepperjack. mmm, pepperjack. only pour 2 of the 3 cups into the filling mixture; you'll use the remaining cup to spread across the top. stir it up and the filling is done!

put about this much mixture inside each tortilla.

fight a little bit over who gets to roll them up.

[i won. obviously].

roll up the enchilada.

and place it in a glass pan.

once the pan is full, spread the filling across the top - the cream cheese, cream of chicken soup, and green chile mixture you saved earlier. (sorry, we forgot to take a picture of that step).

then, sprinkle atop the cup of cheese you saved. yum.

put pan into the oven at 375 for 35 minutes.

my mouth is watering.

our 8x11 glass pan only fit 9 of the tortillas, but our filling made enough to fill 12. so we cooked the extra 3 in a little glass bread-sized pan. 

and just fyi, these heat up to make amazing leftovers, and you can even freeze them, unthaw them, and bake them another day if you feel like making more than one batch.

happy cooking :)