It’s Saturday! Saturday! Saturday! I love my Saturdays. And Elton John. 🙂

Averi has Hebrew School in the morning, so it’s like Michael and I have a baby sitter for three hours. Sometimes we do nothing during this time but veg around the condo, and sometimes we explore. Our explorations have included Lincoln Road for breakfast (Michael thoroughly enjoyed the irony of eating bacon while Averi was in Hebrew School), the downtown/Bay Front area, and the Ancient Spanish Monastery.

But today was one of the nothing days. Which was followed by a nothing afternoon of sitting on the beach with friends. It’s nice to be lazy.

Although, I wasn’t truly lazy. I washed grapes and cut up pineapple for snacking on the beach. I even offered to soak some of the pineapple in rum for Michael, but he passed on my generous offer. 🙂

I also cooked, so we could have dinner on the beach. I was going to do this yummy looking rice and bean salad with a spicy dressing, but Michael felt it was to heavy for the beach. So instead I went with steak and potato empanadas. Cause that is definitely lighter. Ha!

I had seen a recipe in Taste of Home for something called Chicken Swiss Bundles, which was essentially chicken and other ingredients encased in a roll, like an empanada. But some of those ingredients were honey mustard, which I don’t like and roasted sweet red peppers, which Michael doesn’t like. But the concept seemed perfect. And it seemed like a good way to get rid of stuff from the fridge.

I found a potato and yellow onion leftover from mom making latkes, and decided to pair it with some steak from the freezer (way to much meat frozen in there right now, leaving me no room for important stuff like ice cream). I also had some Mexican four cheese shredded cheese that was taking up space in my meat and cheese drawer.

My final filler ingredient was some of the Sofrito sauce that I had around ¼ of a jar left of. I decided to use it because 1) it would add great flavor to the meat and potatoes 2) I was cooking these in the morning, and would be reheating them later in the day, and wanted to have a sauce in them to keep from drying out and 3) it got a practically empty jar out of my fridge, freeing up space for something else. 🙂

The original recipe also called for frozen dinner rolls, thawed. But I had a container of Pillsbury Biscuits that were also cluttering up the fridge. So much extra space now available in the fridge! I’m thinking a trip to Trader Joes in the next week or two will now be necessary.

The concoction turned out delicious. The Sofrito sauce kept it moist and flavorful on the inside, while the biscuits were perfectly toasted and crunchy, and stood up really well to the reheating. Which made them perfect for the beach. Clean and easy to eat, with one hand and no plates or silverware needed.

Since its beach weather every weekend, we will be making these (or versions of these) a lot over the next few months. And since they reheated so nicely, I may even try making a double batch next time and freezing some. I’ll let you know how it works out if I do.

Steak and Potato Empanadas

1 tbsp olive oil

1 brown potato, cut into bite size pieces

¼ cup yellow onion, diced

1 tbsp garlic, minced

¼ Sofrito sauce

1 lb top sirloin steak, cut into bite size pieces

½ cup Mexican shredded cheese

1 tube Pillsbury Grand Biscuits

2 tbsp melted butter

Heat olive oil in medium size pan. Add potatoes, onions and garlic. Cook for approximately 10 minutes, until potatoes have softened. Add Sofrito sauce, stir to coat.

Add steak, and cook for approximately 5 minutes, until steak is done. Remove from heat. Add in cheese, and stir until melted and mixed will.

Preheat oven to 350.

Open tube of Biscuits. Separate the biscuits, flattening them into a five-inch circle, then place onto a sheet of waxed paper. Spoon some of the steak and potato mixture into the middle of half of the biscuit circles (should be 8). Top with remaining circles and press edge edges with a fork to seal.

Place on greased baking sheet, brush with melted butter.

Bake for 15 minutes, or until golden brown. Either eat immediately or let cool on baking rack, then refrigerate. When ready to eat, microwave for ninety seconds. Then place in toaster oven, on bake at 350, for approximately five minutes to finishing heating up and retoast the dough.