Ever since we watched the inspiring documentary Spirit of the Marathon last year, in which the awesome runner Deena Kastor makes her favourite training meal, I’ve wanted to make her Avocado Enchiladas. I’m a Deena Kastor fan, not only because she is an incredible athlete, but because she sounds like a big foodie. She totally won me over when in a Runner’s World interview, she said she liked to celebrate a big race by drinking a bottle or two of great red wine–now that is a runner to which I can relate!

Carlo had bought a bag of 8 avocados last week when they were on sale at Fresh & Easy for $3.48, but we went to meet his family in Carlsbad, California over the weekend and needed to use them up before they became too soft upon our return home. So it was the perfect time to test out Deena’s Avocado Enchiladas.

Deena Kastor’s Avocado Enchiladas easily feed 8 very hungry people at $1.36 per serving.

Deena’s recipe calls for frying the corn tortillas in a bunch of oil. Instead, I coated the frying pan with a light spray of olive oil in between “frying” each tortilla and that worked really well. You might have to cook it a little bit longer, but the tortillas will still get soft and be able to be rolled, but just with a bit less oil.

Since I love spicy food, I threw in a bunch a chipotle flakes to increase the heat of the enchilada sauce. The secret ingredient that Deena Kastor refers to in her recipe is balsamic vinegar, but I totally forgot what it was until I just googled it, so I didn’t add any. Regardless, the sauce still tasted great even though I was a quite dubious at first about the huge amount of cumin that the recipe required.

We had some chicken legs in the fridge that needed to be used before we went out of town too, so Carlo put some chipotle rub on them and grilled them on the bbq. He then shredded the chicken and put the meat in the avocado filling. When we were eating the enchiladas, we both agreed that some rinsed black beans would taste incredible in the enchilada filling to provide a nice contrast to the texture of the avocados.

I ended up using less than the 20 corn tortillas that the recipe suggests, but that may be because I stuffed my tortillas too full so I ran out of room in my baking dish. The frying and the stuffing of the tortillas was a tad time intensive, but the results were worth the effort and the recipe made so much food that you will definitely have some leftovers!

Bake and enjoy.

In addition to being an awesome runner, Deena Kastor has got a great palate–these enchiladas were really tasty, even though people who don’t regularly run 140+ miles a week might not want to indulge in them as frequently as she does. Now, I’m only hoping that her enchiladas will somehow make me run as fast as her since Carlo and I are resuming our running this week after a too long hiatus.

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