The Blonde Diaries

Yum…Taco Pie

My grandmother had quite the knack for creating recipes and meals for me during my college years.  It started with that aweful meal plan most freshman living on campus are required to purchase.  Well my parents couldn’t understand my constant complaints until they ate a meal on move out day. Of course I had a good many of meal credits left at the end of the semester that they didn’t want to waste and we had to go use them, but I digress.  So after that memorable meal, I was able to exchange visits with my grandmother for meals and no meal plan.

One of her most popular recipes with my friends at school was Taco Pie.  It is a very simple recipe and I’m not quite sure how she came up with it or the inspiration.  One warning though is any recipe that calls for a pound of ground beef, a can of pureed beans, and an entire bag of crushed fritos is not going to be close to healthy or low calorie.  It is excellent for a free day and does freeze/defrost well.

Taco Pie

• saute 1 pound ground beef
• puree 1 can pinto beans
• crush 1 regular sized bag of fritos
• Create layers in your casserole dish:
  • Fritos
  • Chili
  • Meat
  • Beans
  • Cheese (use shredded cheese to your liking)
  • Repeat until you run out
• Top with Jiffy cornbread mix (prepared following directions and add in a 1/2 creamstyle corn to mix)
• Bake until topping is golden brown

One warning on this recipe- buy the jiffy cornbread mix the day you are planning to make this and do not put in your pantry.  Weevils tend to love this stuff so you don’t want everything to get contaminated by storing the mix in your pantry.

Homemade Pizza

Today Mike and I decided to stay home and watch the AFC and NFC Championship games.  We had spent our Saturday night hanging out at Buffalo Wild Wings for fight night (about 6 hours total) and were quite worn out over the whole ordeal.  While I love fight nights this one was just way too long and there were just too many people there.  We also are just not cold weather people.  Our high was somewhere in the upper 30s/lower 40s today which added to our laziness.

So I did some digging in the pantry and came across a pizza crust mix and thought it might be fun to try out.  It was a one time use/one pizza mix made by Martha White.  I like her quick and easy muffin mixes (just add water) so this one should have been pretty easy.  Reading the back of the package confirms this thought.  Mix 1/2 cup hot water with mix and then form into a ball and let “rise” for 5 minutes.  Simple enough. 

So I proceed to create the dough and notice after sitting covered for 5 minutes it doesn’t really rise.  No biggie probably won’t matter anyways once I get it into the pan.  Wrong on so many levels!  Lets just say the bag advertised a crisp crust and that was because it was a thin barely there crust!  So I was skeptical but continued on.  I layerd on the toppings and placed on the lowest rack (as suggested) and baked for 10 minutes.  The result was quite a scary looking, uneven, slightly overdone pizza.  So we threw in the Tony’s pizza (our emergency pizza stocked at all times in the freezer) and let the homemade creation cool down and hopefully improve its appearance but it didn’t really improve :( 

Not wanting to give up (or let this food go to waste) I decided to cut a slice and give it a try.  It was actually quite tasty and not as crunchy/burnt as I thought it was.  The uneven edges that I had left to be an outer crust had been slightly overcooked and brown but the areas covered in topping stayed perfect!  So not all was lost.  We ate both pizzas and enjoyed them equally.

So all in all I would definetly buy this mix again.  I think next time I will try to let it rise a bit longer than 5 minutes and not cook it nearly as long as the package suggests - only until the cheese melts.  The pizza crust was pretty low calorie and would probably do well for those on a diet/Weight Watchers as you could get the crunchy pizza taste without too many calories from the crust.

Pop Beauty: Lid Silver

 My mom has a knack about finding makeup palettes to throw into my Christmas stocking or Easter Basket.  This past holiday season was no different as I found the POP Beauty Palette Lid Silver in my holiday stocking.  I was quite excited as I have never tried POP Beauty products but I love how their palettes contain a bunch of colors for a reasonable price.

I gave the palette a try a few weekends ago as I was not sure how it would go the first time using it.  I am use to using 2 eyeshadow colors not 6! I have to say it was quite easy as there were pictures and instructions included on the lid which tells you where to put which color and how to blend.  The end product was a gorgeous shimmery purple/silver eye lid with a black eyeliner on the top lid and a purple liner on the bottom lid.  The picture below (courtesy of sephora.com) shows the shadows with a darker pigment than they actually have so don’t let that fool you into thinking this will make a dark eye on your lids.  If you are more of a gold shadow fan definitely check out Lid Gold or Lid Bronzer.

 For application the applicators in the palette will do just fine but if you want to use a brush to apply I would recommend these two from the Sephora brand.  One is a contour brush and the other is an angled eyeliner brush.

 

What’s for dinner: January 14th

Its been a while since I added a new slow cooker/weight watchers friendly meal mainly because I have not been an active cook lately.  I made this recipe right before the Christmas holidays but due to unexpected plans each night I never got around to eating it so straight into the freezer it went for a lazy night like this.  I rate this one a 3 out of 5 stars. It probably would have been better had I eaten it the night I cooked it instead of refrigerating it, freezing it, and then defrosting it. Still all in all not too bad on a cold night.

Chicken and Dumplings
1 pound uncooked boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1 inch cubes
1 pound frozen veggies of your choice
1 medium sized onion, diced
2 12oz jars fat-free, low sodium chicken broth, divided
1 1/2 cups low-fat buttermilk biscuit mix

1. Combine chicken, veggies, onion, and chicken broth (reserve 1/2 cup plus 1 Tbsp broth) in slow cooker
2. Cover. Cook on high for 2 hours.
3. Mix biscuit mix with reserved broth until moistened. Drop by Tbsp over hot chicken and veggies.
4. Cover and cook on high for 10 minutes.
5. Uncover. Cook on high 20 minutes more.

Makes 5-6 servings.
Per Serving: 330 cals, 8gms fat, 65mg cholesterol, 600mg sodium, 31gms carbs (5gms fiber, 7gms sugar), 33gms protein.

Now what I did: I put in a 1 pound bag of peas and carrots, 1/2 bag of corn and instead of just one onion I put in a 2/3 cup mix of onions, bell peppers, and celery.