Baked Black Bean Taquitos

As you can tell from the picture of today's lunchbox, I had a little bit of trouble last night with this dish. But, not to worry, it still tastes really good. That Bean and Cheese Enchilada Casserole that I made for yesterday's lunch put me in the mood for some more Mexican food this week, so last night I just winged it and made some Baked Black Bean Taquitos. I really didn't use a recipe (except for the bean part), but there are several of them out there if you do a search on Yahoo! or Google. I just kinda' made mine up as I went along, but I did encounter a few technical difficulties.

I started out by just making a big double batch of Joanna's Refried Black Beans. That's what I used for the taquito filling. Most taquito recipes that I found online recommended microwaving the corn tortillas prior to filling and rolling so as to make them more pliable and less likely to crack on you. Well, that didn't work out too well for me. My corn tortillas wanted to crack really bad as I tried to roll them up. You can see it in the picture of the lunchbox. After getting my cookie sheet about half covered with rolled up (and cracked) taquitos, I finally spotted what the problem was. I was using corn tortillas that were marked down on clearance at the grocery store. It was a huge pack of 100, but it was the brand I normally buy, so I figured maybe just not enough people bought that large of a size. Anyway, I got to looking more closely and discovered that there was a dang hole in the bag that the tortillas came in! So I guess that's why they were so dry and prone to cracking. I guess I could have spent some time microwaving them in a covered dish with a wet paper towel or something to try and rehydrate them, but I didn't fool with it. By this time, I was so frustrated that I was just slinging the things together and throwing them on the cookie sheet. UGH!

Anyway, after baking them, they turned out really tasty, although they're not too pretty to look at. I brought come Tofutti Better Than Sour Cream and some guacamole to go along with the taquitos, as well as some vegan cheese sauce, which I just whipped up from the recipe for the Bean and Cheese Enchilada from yesterday's lunchbox. I also had tons of that Spanish rice & vermicelli mix left over, so I brought some more of that too.

So there it is, my half-baked (pun intended) attempt at making black bean taquitos. Like I said, they taste really good, I just wish they had rolled up better and came out looking a little bit nicer. Oh well, maybe next time.

Thanks for checking out the blog today. See everybody on Friday!