Easy Mexican Casserole
I always say that Mexican food is my favorite food, but in reality it probably isn’t. I only really like nachos and fajitas. It doesn’t really matter though, most Mexican food places have both of them on the menu. Even knowing this, for some reason, when I’m looking for recipes, I always seem to look for something that falls under the Mexican food umbrella. To be honest, I’m not really sure what actually makes something Mexican food versus just regular food…I just knew I wanted to make a casserole that could last me for about a week. Of course, I looked on Pinterest for the easiest “Mexican” casseroles I could find. This one was adapted from a pin from Trickchef’s blog. I don’t know that this could be defined as a true casserole or if it is more of a cooked seven layer dip. Either way, it was really yummy and I highly recommend it for people on the go, like I seem to be!
Ingredients:
1 pound lean ground beef
2 cups salsa
3 cups tortilla chips, crushed
2 cups sour cream
1 (2 ounce) can sliced black olives, drained
1/2 cup chopped green onion
1/2 cup chopped fresh tomato
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese
Brown the ground beef until there is no more pink in the middle. Add salsa to the meat after it’s cooked and let it simmer until there is no liquid.
Spray pam on the bottom of the casserole dish, then crush up some chips to cover the bottom of the dish.
Put the meat sauce over the chips
Cover the meat with sour cream
Cover the sour cream with olives, tomatoes, green onions, cilantro
Cover with cheese and put in the oven at 350 for 30 minutes
Take out of the oven and get ready to chow down!
This was a delicious meal. It lasted about a week for me. I doubt it will last longer than that for a party of dos.
Nutribullet Salsa
I love my Nutribullet. I have been making a smoothie every morning for breakfast since I got it. I have been wanting to try something different with it and decided salsa made the most sense for someone that craves chips all the time. This was really an easy recipe and a lot of fun to make. The salsa should last for at least 7 days, but I finished it in 2.
Ingredients:
1/4 cup red onion
2 jalapeños, seeds removed (or you can keep them in for more heat)
1 tsp of minced garlic
1, 14.5 oz can of Diced Tomatoes
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp cumin
1 tsp lime juice
small handful of cilantro
Put the ingredients in the nutribullet and blend until you get your desired consistency.
Pour in a bowl and enjoy with some chips!
Italian chicken
I really need to start eating a little more healthy. I’ve been enjoying my time back in Dallas so much that I haven’t been watching what I eat. It’s time to get back on track and what better way than to eat chicken.
Ingredients:
Chicken
Italian dressing
Pour about half the bottle of Italian Dressing on the chicken and cover.
Cook in the oven at 350 for about 45 minutes.
Sunday Breakfast
Now that I’m back in Dallas, I have to take my turn making breakfast for everyone on Sundays. I am getting much better at cooking and almost had my breakfast timed out perfectly. Had it not been for my breakfast casserole taking longer than it was supposed to, I would have had breakfast on the table for everyone right when they got here. It ended up taking a lot longer than the recipe said it would. It might be because I doubled the recipe I found at The Real Housewife blog. It really didn’t matter though. It all tasted great!!
Ingredients:
- 1 Pound Sausage
- 8 Eggs
- 2 Cups Bisquick
- 2 Cups Shredded Cheddar Cheese
- 4 Cups Milk
Brown the Sausage
Blend the eggs, milk, and bisquick
Put the sausage on the bottom of the casserole dish
Cover with cheese (sorry about the blurry picture)
Dump the egg mix on to the sausage and eggs
Put in the oven at 350 for about 45 minutes. Stick a fork in it to make sure that it is cooked all the way through.
Enjoy!
Rolo bites
My mom’s idea of cooking for the holidays is ordering all the food, picking it up, then bringing it to the party. That can get really expensive, so my sister and I said we would make the food ourselves this year and she could pay us. We were only (half) joking about the pay us part… We did manage to make my corn casserole, green bean casserole, stove top stuffing, and these rolo bites on our own and everyone seemed to love it all! My sister also made a turkey and a ham, but I can’t claim that I helped with that at all.
It was extra exciting this year because it SNOWED on Christmas in Dallas. The weatherman said that it hadn’t snowed in Dallas on Christmas for 83 years. I’m so glad my niece and nephew got to have that experience, even though they probably won’t remember it since they are so young.
Ingredients:
Pretzels (the waffle looking ones work best)
rolos
pecans
m&m’s
Put the pretzels on a cookie sheet, put a rolo in the center of the pretzel and put in the oven at 250 degrees for 4 – 5 minutes. 
Add an m&m or a pecan on the top of the semi melted pretzel/rolo.
Put in the fridge for about twenty minutes or so to cool them off. Put on a plate and enjoy!!
Sausage Waffles
One of the gifts from the cookie exchange was the movie Elf with a bottle of syrup. The movie got stolen from me, but I got stuck with the syrup. Since I had syrup, I had to make some waffles. I really liked the idea of making sausage waffles, so I thought I would give it a try and make the people at work try it with me. I think everyone that tried this is now a fan of sausage waffles!
Ingredients:
Waffle mix…I used bisquick and their recipe
Ground sausage
Syrup
Butter
Make the waffle mix
Put Sausage on the waffle iron and then add the waffle mix on top. Cook until brown.
Add butter and syrup and eat!
Box of Chili
It’s December and the weather has been really warm prior to this week. Since I knew it was supposed to get cold, Sunday I decided to make some chili. I have always been afraid to attempt making chili until I heard that you can buy chili in a box. It’s really a lot better than it sounds. It’s actually just the spices in the box and you add all the good stuff to make the chili your own. Let me tell you, this was REALLY easy to make. I highly recommend making some to keep you warm this winter!
Ingredients:
1 box of Carroll Shelby’s Chili Kit (There are other brands out there that I hear are really good, too)
1 8 oz. can of tomato sauce
1 can of diced tomatoes, (drained)
1 can of rotel
2 8 oz. cans of water
1 lb of browned ground beef, (drain fat)
1 lb of browned stew meat, (drain fat)
Add tomato sauce, diced tomato, rotel, water, spice packet, cayenne pepper, and salt packet in to the crockpot and put on high.
While the sauces are cooking, brown the ground beef, drain the fat.
Brown the stew meat, drain the fat.
Add the meat to the sauce mix and cook on high for three hours.
Add the Masa flour (from the kit) and 1/3 cup of water into the crockpot and cook for another 30 minutes. 
Once it’s cooked, put fritos in a bowl, put the chili on top and then add cheese on top of that. YUMMY Frito Pie!
You can also add additional things if you like to make it your own. I just don’t like all the extras, so this is all I added!
Salted Caramel Pretzel Chocolate Chip Cookies
For the last few years, we have had a cookie exchange with the girls at work. Every year, I try to make my own cookie. Last year, mine turned out so bad that I had to throw them away. It was a really simple recipe, so I’m not sure what possessed me to attempt to make a cookie from scratch this year. I followed the recipe EXACTLY the way that I found it on The Diary of Dave’s Wife website.
We also do a gift exchange at the party. I brought a leopard print santa hat and an iTunes gift card. I LOVE doing white elephant exchanges, but I always stress about what I’m going to bring. I have decided that everyone needs gift cards, so that is going to be my new go to for the future exchanges. At first I got the movie Elf and a thing of syrup in the exchange, but someone ended up stealing that from me. They didn’t want the syrup, so I ended up going home with syrup, a bottle of wine, and a corkscrew with a mustache top.
Ingredients:
3/4 cup unsalted butter, (softened)
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 cups of all purpose flour
2 tsp. cornstarch
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup milk chocolate chips
1 cup Kraft caramel bits
1/2 cup crushed pretzels
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
cream the butter and sugars together
Add egg and vanilla and blend it all together
Mix the flour, cornstarch, baking soda and salt
Stir in the chocolate chips, caramel bits, and crushed pretzels
Drop the dough on to a cookie sheet. The cookies don’t spread a lot, so you can put them fairly close together. I kind of smooshed them down a little bit on the cookie sheet and then added salt on top of them.
Bake for 8 – 10 minutes or until kind of browned around the edges. (Don’t over bake)
Mexican Chicken Casserole
I’m still trying to make a dish that I can eat when I get home from work, but the biggest problem I have is that I make all this food and then life gets in the way of me eating my creations. I made this casserole on Monday and here it is Thursday and I’ve only eaten it once. I think tomorrow I will bring some of it to lunch or maybe I will even eat it for breakfast. The one time I got to eat this, I really enjoyed it. I recommend it as a keeper recipe since it’s good and REALLY easy to make! I found this recipe on the Paula Deen website and made a few adjustments to meet my tastes.
Ingredients:
1 can of cream of mushroom soup
1 can of cream of chicken soup
1 can of cheddar cheese soup
2 cans of rotel (I drained the second can)
1 whole cooked chicken cut up in pieces, I bought a pre-made chicken at Target
6 flour tortillas
Enough cheddar cheese to cover the top of the casserole
Mix the three soups, rotel and chicken in a bowl.
Spray the pan with pam, then put tortillas down for the bottom layer
Put a layer of the soup/chicken mixture on the tortillas, then repeat tortilla then mixture ending with the tortillas on top
Put a layer of cheese on the tortillas
Cook in the oven on 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until cheese starts to brown
Enjoy a great meal!!
Doc’s
If you are looking for somewhere to go eat on a Tuesday night, I highly recommend Doc’s. They have a pan-fried nacho special for $5.00 and it is heavenly!! As much as I LOVE nachos, I never get them when I go out to eat. My microwave nachos are always better. I have finally found some that are worth ordering!! My friends thought I was crazy when I ordered a plate for myself because they didn’t think I could eat them all by myself. Well, they were wrong!! I ate every last bite and wanted more, they were soooo good!!! They also have $2.50 beers on Tuesday too, but the nachos make it worth the trip!!
Fabulous after FIFTY 