Enchilada Grande Casserole

I love Mexican food--both authentic and American.  This is definately not authentic but still good.  It's a very easy recipe to make and pretty quick also.  It's not the most glamerous of meals, but casseroles never are!

Enchilada Grande Casserole
Printable Recipe

Ingredients:
1 pound ground beef
1 16 ounce can refried beans
1 15 ounce can no-salt added tomato sauce
1/2 cup water
1 envelope enchilada sauce mix
8 7-8 inch flour tortillas
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  In large skillet, cook ground beef until brown.  Drain off fat.  Stir in beans, tomato sauce, water and enchilada mix.  Bring to boil, reduce heat, and let simmer uncovered for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. 
Arrange half of the tortillas in bottom of a greased 3 quart rectangular baking dish, trimming and overlapping as necessary to fit.  Top with half of the meat mixture and half of the cheddar cheese.  Repeat with remaining tortillas and remaining meat mixture.
Bake for 20 minutes.  Sprinkle with remaining cheese.  Bake about 10 minutes more until heated through.  Let stand 10 minutes.  Serve with sour cream or guacamole.

Amy's Notes:
From beginning to end, this recipe take me about 1 hour to make--including baking time.  I serve it with corn, because I like to mix it in when I eat it, tortilla chips, and any combination of salsa, guacamole and sour cream. 

Taco Soup

I'm trying to use up all the random things in my cupboard and fridge/freezer before we move.  It's actually really hard for me to come up with meals that I don't have to buy anything for.  So hard that I've yet to do it.  I planned to make taco soup to use up things I had on hand, and ended up having to buy another can of tomatoes and a can of beans, but I had everything else.  I didn't have a recipe, but the following is what I ended up doing.

Taco Soup
Printable Recipe

Ingredients:
1 pound ground beef
1 package taco seasoning (1/4 cup seasoning and 3/4 cup water)
2 cans diced tomatoes (1 can petite diced and 1 can Mexican Rotel)
1 onion, diced
1 can black beans
1 can corn
2 cans water
Salt and pepper, to taste
Optional:
Shredded Cheese
Sour Cream
Tortilla chips

Directions:
Brown ground beef in large pot.  Once browned and drained, add taco seasoning and water.  Let simmer about 2 minutes.  Add tomatoes, onion, black beans, corn, water, salt and pepper.  Let simmer about 30 minutes or until the flavors have mingled together.  Add shredded cheese, a dollop of sour cream, some crushed tortilla chips, or whatever else you would like!

Amy's Notes:
I had originally planned to also add rice in this soup, but once I got making it decided not to.  Overall, I thought the soup turned out well.  My husband thought it had too much meat in it though.  So next time, I might either half the meat or add another can of beans and corn.  For me, it was a success and I will make it again!

Pot Roast

Everyone has their own recipe for pot roast and this is mine.  Actually this one is my mom's but it's the recipe I always use when I make pot roast.  It's the perfect meal for this time of the year as it's getting cold outside.  I will warn you, most of these numbers are approximate as my mom's recipe has no measurements on it!  So feel free to add or take away whatever you need when you make this.  Enjoy!

Pot Roast
Source: Carlista Barttels
Printable Recipe Here

Ingredients:
1-2 pound chuck or round roast
1 can beef broth (plus a little more)
1 can cream of mushrooms soup
2 onions
2 gloves garlic
8-10 carrots
6-7 potatoes
3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Cut roast into small pieces.  In electric skillet, iron skillet, or dutch oven, brown meat with salt, pepper and a small amount of oil. 
Once meat is browned, add beef broth, cream of mushroom soup, onions, garlic, potatoes, carrots, Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper. 
Cover and cook on low heat if using an electric skillet or at about 250 degrees in the oven for 2 hours or until the veggies are cooked.  Add water or more broth to keep pieces from sticking to pan and to keep the veggies moist. 

Amy's Notes:
You can add whatever vegetables you want to use here or think would go well with pot roast.  And I think that chuck roast works the best with this recipes as it seems to be the moist tender when finished.  Also, you can adjust any of the measurements as needed since most of these measurements are approximations to begin with.

Veggies, broth, soup, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, salt and pepper all ready to add.

I always end up adding too many veggies

And some rolls go perfectly!

Saucy Skillet Lasagna

Who doesn't love lasagna?!!  As delicious as lasagna is, it isn't the fastest dinner to make.  This recipe is a quicker take on lasagna.  It is tasty, quick and pretty easy.  The taste is pretty comparable to traditional lasagna and takes less than 30 minutes to make!

Saucy Skillet Lasagna

Ingredients:
1 Pound ground beef
1 26oz jar spaghetti sauce, with mushrooms
1 14oz can diced tomatoes, slightly drained
1 cup ricotta cheese
1 large egg, beaten
1 9oz package no-boil lasagna noodles
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

Directions:
Cook ground beef in a large skillet over medium-high heat, stirring frequently, until browned and crumbly, about 5 minutes; drain well.
Add half of the jarred spaghetti sauce to ground beef in the skillet and mix well.  Pour diced tomatoes evenly over the ground beef.
Combine ricotta and egg in a small bowl and mix well.  Spread evenly over tomatoes.  Top with a layer of lasagna.
Layer with remaining spaghetti sauce and remaining lasagna in the skillet.
Bring to a boil.  Reduce heat to medium-low.  Cook, covered, until lasagna is tender, about 10 minutes.  Sprinkle with mozzarella.  Cook, covered, for 2 minutes.  Serve immediately.

Amy's Notes:
I almost always use petite diced tomatoes in place of diced tomatoes based on my preference (I have a weird thing about big chunks of cooked tomatoes).  I used a whole container of ricotta cheese, mostly because I knew I wouldn't have anything else to use it for in the next few weeks, and it tasted good with a little more ricotta.  I had a large container of sauce on hand and didn't measure how much I used, just eyed it until it looked nice and saucy!  I added a small can of chopped mushrooms after the meat was browned and before I added the spaghetti sauce and tomatoes.  The only downfall for me was that I love the crunchy edges of oven baked lasagna and you don't get that with this stove top version.  I will definitely make this recipe again, but might have to still make an oven baked lasagna once in a while for those crunchy edges!

I forgot to take a picture before I began serving it up!  Woops!

My husband distracted me and my garlic bread got a bit brown.  Still tasty though.



Yummm



Meat Cupcakes?!

Well, not really meat cupcakes, but that's what these mini meatloaves look like!  I love all things miniature.  Cupcakes and mini cupcakes.  Miniature dogs.  Travel size anything.  Things just seems more fun when they are little!  The other night I was trying to figure out something to make for dinner with what I already had.  I decided to make meatloaf.  It's pretty easy to make plus we hadn't had meatloaf in months.  I like making the mini meatloaves because you there is no cutting of slices and that makes them super easy to serve.  The process is all the same, except the cooking time is a bit shorter!  So, whip up your favorite meatloaf recipe, bake them in some cupcake tins, and enjoy!

Mini Meatloaves

Creamy Taco Mac

When my brother and I were growing up, my mom used to make a skillet meal with beef and macaroni.  I was never very fond of it.  Until I got married and began running out of easy, cheap dinner options.  And then I gave my mom's beef-mac-skillet another try and found it was pretty good.  It makes a ton and is super easy.  Pretty much everyone has a their own version of beef-mac-skillet but the following recipe is a different take on the skillet meal.  It's easy, cheap (my two favorite things in a recipe) and very tasty! 

Creamy Taco Mac
Adapted from: http://annies-eats.com/2010/04/27/creamy-taco-mac/
Ingredients:
1 lbs. ground beef
8 oz. dry pasta shapes
1 small onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 (14 oz.) can diced tomatoes, drained
4 tbsp. taco seasoning
3 oz. cream cheese
½ cup sour cream
Salt and pepper
Shredded cheddar cheese (optional)

Directions:
Bring a large pot of water to boil. Cook pasta according to the package directions. Drain, reserving ½ cup of pasta water. Set aside.
Meanwhile, in a large skillet cook the ground beef over medium-high heat until no longer pink. A few minutes before the beef is cooked through, add the chopped onion to the skillet. Once the meat is cooked through, mix in the garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Mix in the diced tomatoes and taco seasoning and let simmer over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Stir in the cooked pasta, cream cheese, sour cream and reserved pasta water, and continue stirring until the cream cheese is melted and the sauce is well blended. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Simmer over medium-low heat 3-5 minutes to reduce the sauce a bit. Remove from the heat and top with shredded cheddar cheese, if desired.

Amy's Notes:
Be careful to use either a large enough skillet or a large enough pot for the noodles.  My skillet wasn't big enough (mine was 8in) so I dumped the meat mixture into the pot I used for the noodles, which worked but I made a bit of a mess in the process.  The original recipe calls for ground turkey but I only had ground beef in my freezer.  Either would work.  I used petite diced tomatoes, only because I don't like big chunks of cooked tomatoes (weird, I know).  Also, I didn't use a whole onion because I had a half of one already cut, but added a little dried onion.  My husband and I both like this dish and I will definately make it again.

The meat combo before the noodles were added

Mix it all together good.

With a little cheese added on top!