Adventures in Cooking, part 2

Once I started to realize that there were only so many times you could have grilled chicken tenderloins or grilled burgers before your stomach started craving other things, and wanting junk food as well.

So I started looking in my church's cook book for ideas and reading the back of my rice and pasta sides boxes to see what I could do for a meal.

Mexican meatloaf and Mexican rice

I do not like meatloaf. But I found this Mexican meatloaf recipe and thought that it sounded really good, so I wanted to try it out and see if I was going to like it. I LOVED IT, and have cooked it a couple times since living here.

The recipe is this: For every 1 lb. of ground beef, add 1 egg, 1/2 cup salsa of your choice, 1c. shredded cheese (any kind). Mix ingredients and form loaf. Bake at 375 for 45 minutes to an hour, or until top is browned. Serve topped with sour cream (I added more cheese on top of the piece of meatloaf).
The only thing that I didn't like about this first time I made it was that I used a picante-style salsa, and I'm not too big of a picante fan because of the huge chunks of onion and bell pepper in it. But every time since then that I have made it, I used a salsa that I like and it is wonderful.

For the Spanish rice, I followed the instructions on the package.

Chicken Fried Rice

For this meal, I used the chicken fried rice Pasta Roni box, and if you look on the back of the box, it gives you instructions on how to make it a meal by adding chicken, frozen peas, and an egg. I didn't have frozen peas so I had to add canned peas. And I like peas a lot so I added more than it called for, but other than that I followed the directions on the box.

This wasn't one of my favorite dishes I made, and to be honest I think the canned peas had something to do with it. I probably won't make this again.

Extra meaty chili

For this one, I bought a package of McCormick's chili seasoning and followed the directions on the back of that to make the chili. I used a little more meat than it called for because I like thicker soups. The one package made enough chili that I was able to freeze it to eat at a later date.

You should definitely try out the Mexican meatloaf if you're looking for something new to try! I really do like that recipe quite a bit and was glad that I decided to try it out.