Dinner Recipe: Taco Ring: New Way To Have Tacos!

After sharing my families favorite desert recipe, I think it is only fair to share one of our favorite dinner recipes as well. Since my mom is a consultant with Pampered Chef, this recipe like S'more Cups comes from Pampered Chef's cookbook. Taco Ring is a fun new way to eat tacos. The recipe is easy but the results look like the chef spent a long time preparing it.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 lb  ground beef, cooked and drained
• 1   package taco seasoning mix
• 1 cup  shredded cheddar cheese
• 2 tbsp water
• 2  pkgs. refrigerated crescent roll dough
• 1 med. green bell pepper
• 1/2 head lettuce, shredded
• 1 med. tomato, cubed
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1/2 cup  whole pitted black olives, sliced
• 1 cup  salsa
• sour cream

Preparation

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees (200 C.).
• Combine meat, seasoning mix, cheese and water in a bowl.
• Arrange crescent triangles in a circle on a round baking stone, with bases overlapping in center and points to outside (there should be a five inch diameter circle in center).
• Using medium stainless steel scoop (approx. 2 T) spoon meat mixture over rolls.
• Fold points of triangles over filling and tuck under base at center (filling will not be completely covered).
• Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until golden brown.
• Using a knife, cut off top of bell pepper.
• Place bell pepper in center of ring; fill with salsa.
• Mound lettuce, onion, tomato and olives around pepper.
• Garnish with sour cream.
• Cut and serve.

This recipe is good for dinner parties, for your family, or alone. The nice thing about this recipe is that the clean up is less that it is with regular tacos. People will just take a slice and add what they want on top instead of trying to fit everything inside of a shell. Another bonus is that the crescents gives a nice taste to the taco meat. This is another recipe that children can help with. My niece helps with the crescent rolls and loves it. This is a recipe that everyone will love and you will make it many many times!

I would like to know if anyone else has a new take on tacos? What does your family do to make their taco recipe stand out? When I make regular tacos, I add rice and black beans to the meat? What are your thoughts and ideas on how to make tacos better?

I hope you enjoy the Taco Ring, and if you missed desert the recipe for S'more Cups is still posted!

Desert Recipes: S'more Cups, No Campfire Needed!

Sometimes it's better to eat desert before dinner, so the first recipe I want to share is a favorite with my family. It comes from the Pampered Chef cookbook and the desert is s'more cups. This recipe is perfect for small children to help with or for a dinner date. It makes 24 cups at a time and each cup has 100 calories!

Credit: Pampered Chef

S'more Cups


Ingredients:
7 whole graham crackers, finely crushed
1/4 cup powered sugar
6 tbsp butter, melted
4 Hershey bars, divided into single squares
12 large marshmallows

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place graham crackers into a plastic bag and crush them with a rolling pin. Place the graham crackers, powered sugar, and melted butter into a bowl and mix together. Use a spoon and place a small amount of mixture into a small tart pan or small muffin pan. Place in the oven for 4-5 minutes. While mixture is in the oven, cut the marshmallows into halves, this can be done with scissors, and break the Hershey bars into squares.
2. When the mixture comes out of the oven, put 1 piece of Hershey bar on top, followed by the marshmallow half. Put the cups back into the oven for another minute. Take them out and let the cups sit and cool for 15 minutes.
3.After the 15 minutes is up, take the left over Hershey bar and melt it in the microwave. Use a spoon and pour a nice amount of Hershey bar on top of each cup. Let the cups sit until chocolate has hardened or the way that my family likes to eat them, straight out of the oven with the chocolate is still gooey.

This recipe is easy to complete and can be changed according to taste. For example, you can use dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate or even white chocolate.

I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I do! Happy Cooking!

Picture of the Day

Image Credit: AmUnivers

To many people, this image is of leaves in autumn, but to me, this image shows how the simplest item can be beautiful and easy to capture. This picture is beautiful because the leaf is a beautiful shade of red with the perfect amount of sunshine on it, and the thing that makes this picture beautiful is the fact that it can be taken in anyone's backyard. Any person can achieve this level of beauty without much effort or time involved. All it takes is a setting like the leaves on a tree, a camera, and the photographer and the rest is easy peasy.

This image applies to this blog. The recipes that will be used are for simple yet beautiful dishes that anyone can make, no matter where you live. Food does not have to have a complicated recipe to taste good, just like the image of the leaves did not have to show the whole tree to be beautiful. The entire tree would show the complexity of the tree along with its size, the lone leaves shows the simple yet sophisticated appearance of something much smaller.  The kitchen will be the setting, since this is where the cooking magic will happen. The camera in the case of cooking will be the different ingredients that will be used in order to make the food. Finally, we will need a photographer, or you, the person cooking the food. I want the chef to feel like they are taking a complex thing and turning it into something that was simple but still delicious. Just like the tree and its leaves.

About This Blog

This blog is geared towards college students or anyone who wants to enjoy easy meals that do not cost as much as tuition. Being a student is hard enough, why worry about what you are going to eat. This blog will show students that they can enjoy meals cooked at home, instead of eating fast food or processed foods. I will have made all the items prior to writing about them and I will include a picture of the final product. This blog will add if I would make this meal again or if it was a disaster. Hopefully, these recipes will help students realize that they can have delicious food that was easy to make and light on the pocketbook.

Everyone around me cooks. My mother is a consultant with Pampered Chef and my grandmother has learned how to cook Polish and Italian food from her parents. I am slowly learning these family recipes and I am eager to make and share them!