Spinach Artichoke Quesadillas

As the nights turn colder, it’s time to warm up with some tasty comfort food…like these Spinach Artichoke Quesadillas!

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As the nights turn colder, it's time to warm up with some tasty comfort food...like these Spinach Artichoke Quesadillas!Ah, the dreaded basement.  Basement stairs are the bane of kids everywhere.  Especially basement stairs when the light isn’t working.  Growing up in Charleston, SC, we didn’t have a basement.  (If we had a basement, it would have been flooded 90% of the time.  The elevation of our house was about 6″ above sea level!)  But then when we moved to Raleigh, NC, our new house had a basement.  And, yes, the basement stairs were the kind where you could see through them.  Which also meant that monsters could reach through and grab your feet when you climbed those stairs.

While I never had a personal encounter with a monster in our basement in Raleigh, I’m pretty sure they were still there.  (We did have a raccoon in the basement once…and I’m certain the monsters let it in.  Heck, that raccoon was probably their pet!)  Our house here in upstate New York also has a basement.  However, this basement is finished, and it serves as our rec room, home gym, man cave and my office.  No monsters here!As the nights turn colder, it's time to warm up with some tasty comfort food...like these Spinach Artichoke Quesadillas!But I started looking around the basement the other day, and I realized it could be a pretty creepy place.

Creepy Basement Point #1: Laura’s childhood doll collection.  Her dolls are in a cardboard banker’s box on a storage rack in our basement.  One of the doll’s hair is kinda falling out of the hole in the box.  If you were just a casual visitor to our basement and looked up and saw hair tumbling out of a box on the top shelf…well, what would you think about that?  Yeah.hair-in-boxCreepy Basement Point #2: Bloody Mary.  I’ve mentioned Bloody Mary before, but she hangs in the electrical closet which just so happens to be in the corner of our basement.  Laura is terrified of Bloody Mary, so a few years back her friends ‘surprised’ her with this life-sized scary Halloween skeleton.  They told her it was Bloody Mary.  Laura laughed and took it in stride, and we bring Mary out every October as a Halloween decoration.  But Mary is big, and I have nowhere to store her.  So she hangs in the electrical closet.  There was that time when we were having electrical work done and I forget to tell the electrician about Mary.  Oops.bloody-maryCreepy Basement Point #3: Iggity.  Iggity is the newest addition to our basement.  When my mother and sister (and niece!) came up to visit this summer, my sister was showing me this video of a witch that she got for Halloween.  It’s a full-sized witch.  And she talks.  I guess I made a pretty big deal about this witch because about a week after the Nashville crew left, a witch showed up in a box on our doorstep.  I assembled said witch, and Laura named her Iggity.  But I assembled her in early September, and I didn’t have anywhere to put her until October.  So I put her on the basement landing.  Nothing like rounding the corner of the basement stairs only to meet a full-sized motion-activated witch.

I rest my case.  Our basement is full of things that go bump in the night!iggityNow that Fall is here and Halloween is just around the corner, it’s time for some delicious comfort food!  One of my favorite comfort meals of all time is a simple quesadilla.  It doesn’t take much.  Just some delicious melty cheese.  Sometimes I’ll add leftover chicken or a can of black beans.  If I happen to have green onions laying around, then I’ll chop some of those up.  A quesadilla is a great vessel for all sorts of leftovers.As the nights turn colder, it's time to warm up with some tasty comfort food...like these Spinach Artichoke Quesadillas! However, I must admit that Laura’s quesadilla makin’ skills are way better than mine.  I could never figure out why her version always tasted so much better.  We used the same ingredients.  But then I watched her make one the other day.  The secret is time.  She lets her quesadilla cook on low for 6-7 minutes per side.  I’m usually too impatient and cook my quesadilla on medium-high for like 2-3 minutes per side.  Turns out those extra few minutes really make a huge difference!As the nights turn colder, it's time to warm up with some tasty comfort food...like these Spinach Artichoke Quesadillas! I set out to make us some delicious quesdillas for dinner the other night.  While I love a good basic quesadilla, I took it to a whole new level with these Spinach Artichoke Quesadillas!  I spent the time to saute onions and garlic and then make a spinach-artichoke filling.  (It truthfully didn’t take that much extra work.)  And then I pulled out a pack of Flatout Flatbreads for this one, too.  And I actually followed Laura’s advice of letting that Spinach Artichoke Quesadilla cook on low temperature.  Woah.  Epically delicious quesadilla dead ahead!As the nights turn colder, it's time to warm up with some tasty comfort food...like these Spinach Artichoke Quesadillas! As you guys know, we always keep Flatout flatbreads in our pantry.  Flatbreads make for easy lunches (like these Thai Peanut Wraps), and they can also be turned into edible bowls for Taco Salad.  So it only stands to reason that flatbreads are perfect for quesadillas, too!

Sure enough, these Spinach Artichoke Quesadillas made for one delicious dinner.  I used Flatout’s Original flatbreads for this one, but I want to try these with some of Flatout’s other flatbreads next time.  I’m thinking the Harvest Wheat flatbreads would be quite delicious in quesadilla form!

As the nights turn colder, it's time to warm up with some tasty comfort food...like these Spinach Artichoke Quesadillas!

Spinach Artichoke Quesadillas

As the nights turn colder, it’s time to warm up with some tasty comfort food…like these Spinach Artichoke Quesadillas!
Print Pin Rate
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 20 minutes
Total Time: 35 minutes
Servings: 2 servings
Calories: 550kcal

Ingredients

Instructions

  • Cook the spinach according to the instructions on the package. Once cooked, press the spinach into a colander to drain out as much water as possible. Set spinach aside. (Tip: Fold several paper towels and press the spinach to help draw out excess water.)
  • Using a large frying pan, add 1 Tbsp of olive oil. Once hot, add the onion and garlic; sauté over medium heat for 3-4 minutes, stirring often.
  • Add lemon juice, Parmesan cheese, cream cheese, diced artichokes, salt, paprika and drained spinach. Stir and continue cooking over medium-low heat until cream cheese is fully melted (~3-4 minutes).
  • Remove from heat and stir in mozzarella. Divide mixture between 2 flatbreads. Fold each flatbread in half.
  • Using a large skillet, add remaining ½ Tbsp of olive oil. Place flatbreads in skillet and cook over medium-low until cheese has melted and flatbreads have begun to brown, ~4-5 minutes per side.
  • Remove from pan and cut into wedges before serving.

This Spinach Artichoke Quesadillas post was sponsored by Flatout Flatbread, but the recipe and opinions are entirely my own.
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As the nights turn colder, it's time to warm up with some tasty comfort food...like these Spinach Artichoke Quesadillas!

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31 Comments

  1. OMG! This is seriously too funny, David! I’ve never really thought of the basement as scary, but now you are making me wonder, lol 😀 That box with the doll’s hair coming out? And you may be onto something with the monsters letting the raccoon in the basement years ago!! Hahahaha! Well, quite fitting for Halloween 😉
    I love quesadillas, but never had this combo before. It sounds delicious and love how yours are jam packed with stuff. Pinning these. They would be so perfect for Friday night eats! Have a great week!!

    1. Hey, the basement can be a creepy place! Actually, my office is located in the basement and that alone makes it creepy! 🙂 I’ve had more than one friend comment on the creepy things in our basement…but to me, they are completely normal. Not sure what that says about me…but we’ll go with it. As far as these quesadillas? Totally perfect Friday night eats! Yum!!

    1. Haha…tell me about it! Dark, rainy nights are NOT the time to venture into a dark basement. Especially if there are sudden flashes of lightning and occasional creepy noises coming from downstairs. 🙂 We’ll just stay upstairs and dig into some quesadillas instead, ok? Thanks, Kathy!

  2. David, Lil Shashi LOVES quesadillas and much like Laura, she takes her time making them (while I rush and burn them and don’t quite melt the cheese in my hurrying) so this spinach artichoke one is one that so needs to happen! Love your use of Flatout bread in this one!
    And oh gawsh – I sure am glad I didn’t see that doll hair when we visited! Or Bloody Mary! And GAH – Iggity (to me) is the creepiest! I think I have issues with witches! Basements weren’t big in Sri Lanka when I was a kid – but I was even scared of darn hallways (we called them corridors). In one house we lived, the hallway/corridor was super long with a super high ceiling with rafters in it and guess what lived in those rafters in addition to ALL my make-believe monsters? A Snake! No lie! And my dad would laugh at me but I swear I saw one, once when my cousin visited, he even found a snake skin!
    Hope y’all had a wonderful Anniversary weekend! Happy Monday my Upstate NYC friend!

    1. So it sounds like we’re one in the same, Shashi! We’re just too excited to get to our quesadilla…and then we end up burning the darned thing. Wait. You had a snake living in your hallway in Sri Lanka? Uh. No thanks. I can deal with witches. I can deal with Bigfoot. But snakes are the one thing where I draw the line! I’m shuddering just thinking about living in a house with a snake! Either way, thanks for the anniversary wishes and hope you aren’t too hot down there in A-town today! 🙂

  3. Hi David! Cut into smaller wedges these would make great appetizers! Whenever I make spinach artichoke dip I finely chop up water chestnuts to add a little crunch factor. Just put flatbreads and artichokes on my shopping list! Shashi’s comments about that snake sent shivers down my spine!! We live in farm country so we frequently have rats in the basement (and the chicken coup). They don’t scare me, but when I go down there to get canned goods they certainly have startled me on more than one occasion!

    1. Ooo…good tip on the water chestnuts! I like that one! I’ll have to remember that next time I make spinach artichoke dip…or these quesadillas. They turned out really well, so I imagine we’ll be making them again sometime soon! 🙂 Yeah, basements with rats are no fun. But basements in the south are so very different than basements up here in the north. Up here, they are just extensions of your house…that and a place to store creepy things! Haha! Thanks, Dorothy!

  4. Wow, you guys got quite the collection of things that go bump in the night to scare the kiddies come Halloween. The photo of the doll hair was the best! Too funny.
    Great recipe here, love all the gooey filling oozing out of crispy flatbread. Perfect snackin’ buddy!

    1. See, we didn’t set out to get creepy things. The creepy things found us instead. Does that make us the Addams Family now? 🙂 Haha! Thanks, Kevin!

    1. Yeah, more than one friend who has come over to visit has commented on that doll hair. I actually didn’t even think about it…but I know what’s in the box. If you didn’t know what’s packed away in there, then it would get mighty creepy indeed! 🙂 Let’s forget about creepy things and just eat spinach artichoke quesadillas, ok? Thanks, Lydi!

  5. Quesadillas are a go-to meal idea of mine, and I love spinach & artichoke dip… so there’s no way I wouldn’t dig these quesadillas!

    Wow, you do have a creepy basement! I grew up with an unfinished dingy-feeling kind of basement so I usually associate them with a not so nice part of the house. I don’t have one in my house now, but I have an attic that I literally have never been in — also a creepy place to me!! Haha.

    1. Haha…quesadillas are totally a go-to meal around here, too! In fact, if Laura has to go to a work dinner or something, then I almost always make myself a quesadilla. 🙂 Ah! Attics! Those are indeed creepy places, too. Our basement is finished (well part of it), so it doesn’t scare me…but the attic? Yeah, I don’t have any need to go cruising around up there…

  6. David!! Luckily I grew up in a house without a basement, if not I am sure I will find that super scary!! But off to these incredible grown up pimped quesadillas my friend! You have done good! loved these, they are pinned!!

    1. Haha! Yes, basements can be scary places for sure, Gaila. Our house now has a partially-finished basement, but we have plenty of creepy things still hanging out down here. 🙂 Love that you called these ‘grown-up pimped quesadillas’! Thank you!!

  7. That doll hair is very creepy, I truly Laughed Out Loud when I read that David. Bloody Mary is SCARY!!! I couldn’t live with that in my house, you guys are brave, old balloons scare me. Iggity doesn’t look like a friendly witch at all. I will avoid your basement at all costs! 🙁 These quesadillas are loaded with spinach and artichokes, they look heavenly.

    1. Bloody Mary is indeed scary…and it doesn’t help that I think the hot water heater might have melted part of her face. All in the name of scary fun, right? 🙂 How about this? I’ll just keep these quesadillas up in the kitchen so you can stay clear of the basement! Thanks, Mary!

  8. These quesadillas look like the epitome of comfort food; they look delicious! I love your post about the basement–they are creepy places! Growing up, my basement was always the playroom, so we were never creeped out!

    1. Thank you so much, Amanda! These quesadillas did indeed turn out well. 🙂 So well that they disappeared quickly. So our basement now is finished, and I imagine it will become Robbie’s playroom over time (minus my office portion), but there’s still some creepy things hanging around here. Like Bloody Mary in the electrical closet. Haha!

  9. Oh my gosh…please don’t take me to your basement if I ever visit you one day. That might be a cool place for kids to camp though 🙂 and of course, enjoying these quesadillas. What a perfect combo for the filling!

    1. You’re totally right…the basement is gonna be awesome place for Robbie and his friends to “camp out” when he’s older! And I’ll already have plenty of things that go bump in the night. Haha! Thanks, Linda!

  10. Is this the same basement which has the bike, your photo studio and more in one? Dude, what ISN’T in there? Ha! Maybe let’s not let little R head down there anytime soon.

    Now for this twist on the quesadilla- Count me in. Count (dracula) me in.

    1. Oh yes, it is indeed the same basement, my friend. Our basement serves a bunch of different roles…not the least of which is the spooky place in the house!

      Also, I love the count dracula you in reference there. Hahahaha! 🙂

  11. That looks absolutely beautiful and I just can’t wait to make it. If I could make it right now I would. Be at the store getting everything tomorrow. Thank you for sharing.

    1. Hey Vicie! Thanks so much for stopping by and grabbing this recipe…it’s a fun one for sure. And feel free to add a few of your own touches. That’s what makes cooking fun after all! I really hope you enjoyed this one! 🙂

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