An easy, kid (and adult) friendly meal

You may have realized that I'm no gourmet.  And I love casseroles.  They are the perfect all-in-one meal!  I can have all my staples in one dish and I love it.  If you think they are grody,  I am not the cook for you!

I'm looking for easy, yummy, cheap dinners to fill 6 bellies every night.  If they have a decent amount of nutritional value that's a bonus.  Most of time that comes in the form of tuna casserole, pulled pork sandwiches from the slow-cooker, and my favorite, potato chip chicken.

In desperation, I have looked for many a casserole involving ground beef.  Once I tried something involving canned tomatos, cream cheese, pasta, ground beef, etc...it just wasn't a huge hit in my house.

It seems like when I look for a 'casserole' with the ingredients: ground beef I find 'Mexican lasagna' or some other such nonsense involving layering tortillas...as if!!

Just the thought of cutting through a top layer of tortillas is enough to send me running to my pantry to devise my own "beef casserole".  Which is exactly what I did last night!

I shall call this, Taco Casserole, and it does NOT involve tortillas of any kind.

Note:  there's probably a similar recipe somewhere else, but I haven't found it.  Please forgive me if I'm treading on someone else's 'taco/beef casserole'.

1 lb ground beef
1 small onion
garlic
taco seasoning
1 can black beans
1 can rotel
1 can corn
2 cups, or so, sour cream
1 or 2 blocks cheese
3 cups cooked rice...or 1 1/2 uncooked, then cooked...you get that?

[yes, we do use that much sour cream.  And yes...I do shop at Aldi's.  There's no better 'rotel' than the Mama Casita brand!]

Cook the beef with onion and garlic and seasoning. In a large mixing bowl combine all ingredients, excluding 1/2 cup grated cheese.  Put mixture into large baking dish (11x15), sprinkle cheese on top.  Bake for 30-45 minutes, or until cheese looks like you want.  I like mine almost brown ;).

Cook beef with onion and garlic and taco seasoning...1 packet, or like I do, sprinkle from the
giant container until it's enough.

Mix it up, all of it, excluding about 1/2 cup cheese.  

Tower of cheese

11x15 pan after cooking.  I don't know why I didn't take a 'before' baking pic.  Maybe I thought it would be redundant?

Mama Bear

Papa Bear...note the roasted jalapeno.

Delicious-ness!

My kids LOVED this!  Sam kept saying that it was the "best-ted and good-est meal you ever made".

I always like to have something green with dinner, so I'm serving the left-overs (we had about 1/2 the pan left) on a bed of broken tortilla chips and romaine lettuce as a 'taco salad'.  It's always good to get 2 dinners out of one recipe!

Also, I think it would be good with crumbled tortilla chips on top instead of the cheese.  Kinda like my beloved PCC.



<div id="aHR0cDovL3RhcmFoc2V2ZXJ0c29uLmJsb2dzcG90LmNvbQ=="><a href="http://www.sverve.com/profile/Tarah-Severtson-NDY0NQ=="><img src="http://www.sverve.com/images/badges/type_1.png" width="200" height="200"/></a></div>