I love Mexican food!  Or, at least what I consider Mexican food- probably not very authentic. But, a major ingredient of everything I consider Mexican is cheese, so I had to rethink this.

I love Mexican food more than anyone else in my family does. So, I can’t really make Mexican for dinner as often as I would like. I do get my Mexican fix at least weekly by fixing myself something at lunch.  My most frequent would be a little taco meat on a slice of bread with taco sauce and cheese melted on top. It was easy to use whole grain bread and make my taco meat with ground turkey, but what to do for the cheese??

Today, I got out my quesadilla maker and got creative. I’m sure you could do this without an actual quesadilla maker, too.

No Queso Quesadilla                                 PDF version

• 2 Mi Mama’s Low Carb tortillas
• 1 oz ground turkey cooked with taco seasoning (I like to keep some on hand)
• 1/4 cup Old El Paso Fat-free Refried beans
• 1 slice of onion, chopped
• 3 springs of cilantro, chopped
• 2 black olives, sliced
• 2 TBSP medium salsa, mine is Kroger brand

Spray the quesadilla maker and warm it up.  Spread the refried beans on one tortilla. Put the tortilla on the quesadilla maker and distribute the turkey on each section, so it doesn’t cover the ridges.  Add the olives, cilantro, and onion.  Dab on the salsa. Top with the second tortilla.  Close the maker and let it cook until the ‘done’ light comes on – about 5 minutes.

Move to a plate and cut into wedges.  I ate this with some slices of red pepper. It was a really good Mexican fix.  And, it ticked the box for whole grain – I am going to call it 2 servings of whole grain. I know ‘low carb tortilla’ doesn’t sound like whole grain, but it looks like it qualifies to me. This type of tortilla is locally made. The reason I like it, besides it being whole grain, is that the 6 inch tortillas are just 70 calories each. I am also calling this one of my 4 servings of beans for the week. I didn’t even miss the cheese (much).

According to MyFitnessPal, the calorie count is 268 calories.