Old School Taco salad

Mmmm, my family loves our taco salad!  My mom made it all the time for us as kids and there were never any leftovers!  Ours always had:

Crunchy iceberg (still good for a few-very few-things in life)

Dark red kidney beans

Carrots

Tomatoes

Cucumbers

Grated cheddar cheese

Tortilla chips

Taco meat

Now we were weird and always ate our with Wishbone Russian Dressing.  Like, none of us would even touch a "taco salad" unless there was Russian Dressing to go with it.  And every time we would use an entire bottle, and my mom would bark "THAT'S ENOUGH, look I don't even HAVE any on my salad, the flavor of the meat is good enough!!!" and we would all ignore her and pour another 1/4 cup on our "salad"

Now that having been said, my friend Emily introduced me to taco salad with Catalina dressing.  Gasp!!! But I have to say, it adds a tanginess that the Russian doesn't have.  Russian is more sweet, but it has the bitterness of the celery seed in it that balances it out.  (Yes, I have issues, I can taste the freaking celery seed in a salad dressing full of high fructose corn syrup).  That having been said, they are both delicious, and take me right back to the good ole days around the Blickenstaff family dinner table!

Mexican Pizzas

An ode to Taco Bell!!!

As a teenager, I LOVED Mexican Pizzas from Taco Bell.  Well, I take that back, since I don't think I even went to Taco Bell until I was like 19.  My parents never ate there and I really didn't even know what it was.  I went to grab some food for a boy babysitter we had coming over and I asked him what he wanted from Taco Bell and he said he didn't know because he'd never been there.  Whaaaat??? And then I laughed, because at his age I hadn't been there either! 

Anyway, this is definitely a "splurge" recipe with the fried tortillas, but they brought me right back to those yummy fast food naughties.

Cowboy Quesadillas

These are some all time favorites!!!  Most of the ingredients I typically keep stocked in my pantry--love that!  I can't even count how many times I have made these already...

Baked Creamy Chicken Taquitos

I've seen this recipe all over the web and I don't know why it took me so long to try it.  The cream cheese always throws me for a loop because I'm not really a cream-cheese lover.  But they were awesome!  And easy!  I love taquitos, and this was a great lower calorie recipe.  I made one batch to eat and put the rest in the freezer, and before I knew it, every single taquito was gone!

Basic Taco Meat

I LOVE me some good taco meat.  I remember as a kid my mom barking at us, "Don't take so much meat--fill your tacos with veggies and leave some for everyone else to eat!"  I always thought she was crazy and Hello, now I find myself "barking" at my husband as he scoops 1/2 a cup of taco meat onto his tortilla, "Not so much meat!!!"  Oh, and I won't pretend that I don't hide the leftovers in the back of the fridge so he doesn't scoop it out during the rest of the week, if there ever even are leftovers!

Here's how I do it:

1 lb. lean ground beef OR ground turkey

1 chopped onion, garlic cloves (or garlic powder if I'm lazy)

Brown, drain off fat if the fat content is higher than 7%

Add 1 can tomato sauce and then spice it up:

Salt, pepper, cumin, dark red chili powder, cayenne pepper all to taste.

(I never measure anything, I just keep adding until I like it)

Mexican Stuffed Shells

I found this recipe on my foodgawker app and I knew I wanted to try it! 

I always make my own adjustments, so here's what they are:

Instead of adding marinara, I just made a basic taco meat and added frozen corn and black beans.  I loved the addition of the goat cheese.  It gave it just the right amount of creaminess and tangyness.  I wouldn't normally have bought some but I happened to have some on hand and I don't think I'll be able to make it without it now!  I also prefer white cheese instead of yellow, so I used Monterey Jack on top and ditched the Panko because I didn't have any and I was over it with 2 kids pulling at me while I was trying to finish stuffing the shells.  Boiling the shells for 9 minutes was the perfect amount of time, and 1 lb. of meat worked perfect for a box of 35 shells (the addition of 1/2 cup of corn and about a can of black beans gave me a little more filling).  All in all, it was a really easy recipe, and I had most of the ingredients on hand already.  It seems like it would be an easy one to freeze too.