We love teachers! Amamos a los maestros! This week is Teacher Appreciation Week and in honor of the fabulous individuals that guide, teach and mentor Mr. N, we cooked up a few Mexican dishes for the PTA’s teacher appreciation lunch today. We also couldn’t pass up an opportunity to explore a few more Mexican recipes in honor of Cinco de Mayo. We once again consulted the book Mr. N gave me for Christmas, The “I Don’t Know How to Cook” Book Mexican by Linda Rodriguez for ideas.

As the primary appetizer we selected the Mexican Roll-up. It’s easy to serve whole, or sliced into appetizer-sized bites. The first step was to chop the jalapeno peppers and green onions. Then we combined all the ingredients, including cream cheese, spices and veggies, into a large skillet.

We cooked everything over medium heat until the cheese was melted and the ingredients were easily blended. We then removed from the heat and finished mixing in a large bowl.

Mr. N then took care of spooning and spreading the creamy mixture onto the flour tortillas. He was very excited to make something to take to school. The tortillas were then rolled up and placed on a cutting board seam-side down.

We then sliced the rolls into 1-1/2″ pieces to serve as appetizers.

We reserved the end pieces for ourselves to sample – and yummy! This recipe makes for tasty little bite-size snacks. The cookbook suggested serving the roll-ups with a variety of salsa – so we made a few. We started with a Roasted Red Pepper Salsa.

We started by slicing 1-1/2 red bell peppers into 1/2″ strips and coating the insides with olive oil.

We roasted the peppers for an hour at 350F. We then chopped the green onions and cilantro.

Once the peppers were roasted we chopped them into 1/2″ pieces and combined with the onion, cilantro, olives, parmesan, lime juice, salt and pepper in a mixing bowl. The salsa is then refrigerated for 12 hours and returned to room temperature before serving.

Next we made a sweeter salsa – a Pineapple & Mango Salsa. We started by cutting the mango, cucumber and tomato into 1/2″ pieces. (Side note: The mango corer has been wonderful!)

Miss A was a big helper this afternoon and quite eager to do some chopping. She helped finish the job.

We then chopped the remaining ingredients and placed it in the serving dish.

And finally we blended everything together, including juice from the canned pineapples and refrigerated the salsa overnight.

We hope that the teachers enjoy these recipes as much as we enjoyed making them. The kids were very excited to be cooking for teachers and also happy to revisit Mexican recipes. And of course we’ll have our own Mexican fiesta to share as well. Mr. N wouldn’t have it any other way, after all it was his first selection on this blogging adventure back in January!

HELPFUL HINT: Wear gloves when working with jalapeno peppers. If you do not wear gloves, wash hands with an alcohol based cleaner or lotion prior to washing your hands with soap. And if by chance, some jalapeno makes it into your eye (even after washing your hands), flush the eye with milk. Then cleanse with water and keep cool with a cold compress. The milk does wonders and I can now speak from experience. Yowsers!

Print this recipe: Mexican Roll-up

Print this recipe: Roasted Red Pepper Salsa

Print this recipe: Pineapple and Mango Salsa