Tuesday Tip and Recipe

Today is Sept 1 and I am so excited because my time of year is here at last!

I love the cooler weather and all the upcoming holidays - Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas - I just love the holidays!

Another thing I love about the cooler weather is comfort food. I love to cook especially when the weather is cool.

Last night and tonight we had Taco Junk for supper along with corn bread. We don't mind leftovers and dishes like Taco Junk are even better the next day.

There are any number of recipes for Taco Junk on the internet but this recipe came from my dear friend, Brenda.

1 pound ground beef or ground turkey that has been cooked and drained
1 (11 ounce) can Whole Kernel Corn, drained and rinsed
1 (15 ounce) can Great Northern Beans, drained and rinsed
2 (4 ounce) packages ranch salad dressing mix (dry mix)
1 (10 ounce) can Rotel diced tomatoes and green chilies
1 (16 ounce) jar salsa (your favorite brand and choice of hot, medium or mild)

Mix all the ingredients together in a crockpot and cook on high for 4 hours stirring occasionally.

It can be served any number of ways. With baked chips or in a taco salad. On tostada shells with refried beans, lettuce, onion, shredded cheddar cheese, etc. Even served in a bowl with a spoon. The choice is up to you.

Now I've got to confess something and this makes the above recipe even more versatile. I've made Taco Junk exactly as shown above many, many times and we love it.

Unfortunately I didn't have the 4 hours for it to cook in the crockpot yesterday. So I browned the meat in a pot, drained it and then just threw everything else in and heated it through . I also didn't have all the ingredients in the pantry yesterday so I did some sub'ing and this version came out pretty tasty too.

My substitutes -

no corn so I used yellow hominy (drained and rinsed)
no Great Northern Beans so I used black beans (drained and rinsed)
I didn't have a whole 16 ounce jar of a single salsa so I used a combination of a couple of different salsas I had in the fridge.
And I threw in a can of green chilies just because.
Usually we eat it with shredded cheddar cheese but I was out of that too so we used shredded mozzarella.

See the versatility of this recipe? Changes can be made depending on tastes and it still comes out great.

And for the tip I promised in the title -

We decided another option for serving this would be over corn bread. I didn't feel like I had the time to bake my from scratch recipe so I grabbed a package of Jiffy cornbread mix, mixed it up and instead of baking it - I used my waffle iron and made corn bread waffles! They were ready in a "jiffy" - no pun intended.

That's it for today. Oh, and sorry for no pictures but I just flat didn't think about taking any.

Enjoy the changing of the season. Here in Oklahoma it doesn't seem like fall lasts all that long so I try to savor each sweet minute of it.