CORE Salsa Meatloaf

I don’t recall where I found this recipe, but I know it’s been many years since I did. In fact, I think Fred sent it to me because he spotted it in some forum and thought it sounded good. I used to make it all the time, and then the recipe disappeared from my recipe box and I hadn’t made it for years. Then recently, I stumbled across it again, and made it.

I had forgotten how good it is! In fact, when Nance and I made meatloaf earlier this year or last year, or whenever the hell we made it, I declared that that was my go-to meatloaf recipe forevermore. But the good thing about the CORE Salsa Meatloaf is that it’s got shredded veggies in it, which means it’s good for you!

If you’re on Weight Watchers, it is also Weight Watchers CORE program compliant. I’d love to tell you exactly what that means, but I haven’t got a clue. I assume it’s a good thing?

Anyway. Your ingredients:

Core meatloaf (2)

Ground beef, egg whites, shredded zucchini, carrots, and onion, Worchestershire sauce, garlic, salt and pepper, oatmeal, and thyme. Also, salsa – but warning: I didn’t use the salsa because I had a better idea for the topping.

Really, aren’t all meatloaf recipes pretty much the same? Throw all the ingredients in a bowl and mix them up.

Core meatloaf (3)

When the ingredients are well-mixed, shape them it all into a loaf and put it in a loaf pan; bake. As an aside (and to use our brand-spanking-new Amazon affiliate link, woohoo!), I have this meat loaf pan. I like it because it allows the grease from your meatloaf to drain through into the bottom pan, and thus you’re consuming less of the grease and fat. I CALL THAT AWESOME.

Core meatloaf (4)

I veered away from the recipe. The original recipe says after the meatloaf has baked for 40 minutes, spread 1/2 cup of salsa on top of the meatloaf and cook another 20 minutes.

I didn’t do that, because salsa on meatloaf is just gross to me. I know, I’m a picky bitch.

What I did was steal the idea for the topping from the meatloaf Nance and I made, the 1/4 c. ketchup, 1/4 c. BBQ sauce and 2 T. brown sugar, spread that on top of the meatloaf and then cooked it another 20 minutes.

It was DIVINE.

Core meatloaf (5)
Look – NO ONE takes a decent picture of meatloaf. IT CANNOT BE DONE.

You know how sometimes meatloaf is just a big, solid mass of meat? This meatloaf is much less dense, and it’s tasty and it’s chock-full of veggies, and really just SO good. Give it a try – shredding the veggies is a pain in the ass, but it’s very much worth it, I promise!

 

CORE Salsa Meatloaf
 
Prep time
Cook time
Total time
 
: Entree
Cuisine: Weight Watchers
Serves: 8
Ingredients
  • 4 egg whites (or ½ c. pasteurized egg whites) (or two whole eggs)
  • 1 c. old-fashioned oats
  • 1 onion, grated
  • 1 c. grated zucchini
  • ¾ c. grated carrot
  • 4 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 t. Worcestershire sauce
  • ½ tsp salt
  • ½ tsp each dried thyme and pepper
  • 1¼ lbs extra-lean ground beef
  • ½ c. salsa
Instructions
  1. Throw everything but salsa in a big bowl; mix together well. Don't be a priss; use your hands to mix that stuff up.
  2. Place in a greased loaf pan. Bake at 350ºF for 40 minutes. Spread salsa over top (see note below if baked salsa on top of meat grosses you out); bake an additional 20 minutes. Makes 8 servings.
  3. Note: as an alternate topping if you prefer not to use salsa, mix ¼ c. ketchup, ¼ c. BBQ sauce, and 2 T brown sugar. After meatloaf has baked for 40 minutes, spread on top of the meatloaf, and bake an additional 20 minutes. (If you go with this topping, the nutritional information below is incorrect.)
  4. Nutritional information (if made with the salsa topping) Per serving: 206 calories, 22 g. protein, 7 g. total fat (3 g. saturated fat), 12 g. carb, 2 g. fiber, 47 mg cholesterol, 382 mg. sodium.

 

Doritos® Cheesy Chicken Casserole – Robyn & Nance try a new recipe

Every week we’ll post a recipe that we both made. This week’s recipe was Doritos® Cheesy Chicken Casserole found over at Plain Chicken. Printable recipe can be found at the bottom of this post.

Nance’s take:  I picked this recipe because I am a sucker for an all-in-one casserole meal.  And because I was curious to see what a meal that included an entire bag of Doritos® would taste like.  Certain fatties in my family (I’m looking at you, mom and Rick) were all excited to see how this was going to turn out.  Please note that I did not include myself in the whole fatty remark.  Ha!  I am such a pretentious asshole.  I was all up in that shit, too.

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The recipe calls for 3 cups of cooked chicken. You might not be able to tell it here, but these are HUGE chicken breasts.

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It didn’t say anything about salt and pepper, but I cannot even look at unseasoned chicken for some reason. Does anybody remember the fad diet in the late 80’s in which you had to eat nothing but boiled (yes, BOILED) chicken 3 times a day? I can’t remember what it was called, but of course I tried it. And, of course, I did not lose weight. Probably because by the second day I was gagging at the sight of boiled unseasoned chicken. Please note the well placed arrow pointing out where I cut into the thickest part of the chicken to make sure it was done. I am the queen of over-cooking meat (think petrified) so I’m forcing myself to get better at checking it instead of just over-cooking it.

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This was supposed to be an action shot, but I had a helluva time holding the bag of Doritos® while taking a picture at the same time.  My left hand doesn’t work for shit.

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Ugh!  This is going to take all freaking day!

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And then they all came flying out because that is how my life works. Sigh.

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I’ll be honest here. I was very, very unsure as to whether or not this sour cream was okay to use. My general rule is this: Sour cream is okay to use the first day you open it and then the very next day. After that, it should be thrown away. Seriously. That’s what my rule is because I am a freak about spoiled food. Except I am not militant about throwing it away on the third day. I just don’t use it and then I throw it away when I clean out the refrigerator (which is usually at the end of the week when Shirley isn’t looking because she’s a nut bag that thinks we should save everything and just cut and/or scoop out any mold, ahem). This sour cream was opened sometime the week before. I’m sure you can imagine my trepidation.

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I adore Rotel®.

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Full Disclosure: I substituted a second can of Cream of Chicken soup for the mushroom soup as Rick is allergic. I like it when I can throw every single thing in a bowl and be done with it. Even if it does look like vomit. Tomatoey vomit.

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This is what it looked like when I put it in the oven. In fact, the picture was taken directly from the oven because I forgot to take a picture before. Please note the cookie sheet that I placed underneath it. NO WAY was I risking this cheesy shit bubbling over and making a mess of my oven.

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The finished casserole in my dish.

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A close-up of the finished product. Since I am not one to plate my food, I don’t care about what it looks like as long as it tastes good. Rick said it was okay. Trey said he didn’t care for it. I was unimpressed with the whole mess and I feel like I wasted an entire bag of perfectly good bag of Doritos®. Never again.

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Robyn’s take:

This week’s recipe was Nance’s choice, and when I saw that it took a bag of Doritos®, I was definitely on board. Fred read the recipe and said that it sounded like King’s Ranch Chicken, which we’ve had at his parents’ house. There’s definitely a similarity, but I think their version uses tortillas or tortilla chips instead of Doritos®.

Anyway.

Ingredients:

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We tried to get all healthy (HA HA HA) by using the lower fat or baked versions of all the ingredients (except the condensed soups). So we’ve got baked Doritos®, reduced-fat cheese, and light sour cream. I cooked a chicken in the crock pot the night before and pulled all the meat off the bones after it had cooled. It’s possible I had more than three cups of chicken here, but I didn’t even bother to check, because I was using all the meat either way.

(You’ll note that the bag of Doritos® was opened and then clipped shut. Fred decided he needed to do quality control and check to be sure the Doritos® were still good. In other words, he was hungry and they looked good.)

You crush the Doritos® (I left them in the bag and just crushed them with my hands – I’m sure there are a bunch of other ways to do it, but that’s what worked for me), and then dump them in the bottom of a (sprayed with Pam) 9×13 dish.

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Then mix everything else (except for 1 cup of cheese) together in a bowl and dump it over the crushed Doritos§. I didn’t get any pictures of that step, because you know how to mix stuff. Maybe Nance got a picture of that step (she’s already written her part, but I don’t read hers before I write mine because I don’t want to pollute my artistic process)(HA HA HA)(who’s feeling parenthetical today?)

Then you bake it for 20 minutes, top it with your remaining 1 cup of cheese, and bake for another five minutes. I also didn’t get a picture of that. I was a slacker this week. Here, maybe this will make you feel better:

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“I’M STAYIN’ LIKE THIS ‘TIL SOMEONE BRINGS ME SOME DORITOS®=^..^=!”

This is what it looked like fresh out of the oven:

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I didn’t even bother to take a picture of the casserole on my plate, because I am not a food artist, and all the artsy lighting in the world wasn’t going to make that stuff look decent on a plate anyway.

Was it good? It was… okay. I mean, I ate one serving of it and then saved another for lunch the next day. If I never have it again in my entire life, I will somehow live. I am NOT saving this recipe and I’m not going to bother to make it again. I would have rather used the chicken to make a chicken salad sandwich with a side of Doritos®, honestly.

 

Doritos® Cheesy Chicken Casserole - Robyn & Nance try a new recipe
 
Original Source/Author:
: Main
Ingredients
  • 3 cups cooked chicken, chopped (I used a rotisserie chicken)
  • 8 oz sour cream
  • 1 can cream of mushroom soup
  • 1 can cream of chicken soup
  • 1½ cups salsa or 1 can Rotel
  • 1 can of corn, drained
  • 2 cups Mexican cheese, shredded
  • 1 bag of nacho cheese Doritos®
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Lightly spray a 9x13 pan with cooking spray. Crush the entire bag of Doritos® and cover the bottom of the dish. Reserve one cup of cheese. Mix together remaining ingredients in a large bow. Pour chicken mixture over the Doritos®. Bake for 20 min. Top casserole with the remaining cheese and bake 5 additional minutes or until melted.

 

7 Layer Taco Dip – Cooking with Trey Vol. 1

001

This kid in desperate need of a haircut is the baby of my family (He’ll be 18 in March). His name is Trey and he’s agreed to be a part of Dinosaurs Can’t Eat Pizza. If by agreed you mean that he went along with this crazy shit because I am his mother and can make his life a living hell. I did not want him to wear that tack-ass camouflage Dollar Store sweatshirt for the pictures, but he insisted on wearing it because his Grandmother got it for him. That pretty much tells you what kind of a kid he is. He’s also the one bitching about needing a haircut (he’s obviously not a natural blonde, it’s a phase he’s going through and I’m all about waving your freak flag when you’re young and it doesn’t matter). Homeboy does not like his hair getting in his eyes. I find it funny because a lot of kids let their hair grow just to piss off their parents. Mine are ass backwards. Always. Sigh.

I’ve seen recipes all over the place for this taco dip and always wanted to try making it. Now when I say that I have seen recipes that means that I have seen it on sites like allrecipes.com, blogs, food gawker.com, etc. I’m not like that nutcase Robyn. I don’t print out recipes that I might try sometime in the next half dozen years. When I went Internet searching for the recipe I did my standard move – Go to Google, type in what you want to search for and then hit IMAGES. A shit-ton of beautiful pictures of what I want to make comes up and then I spend a good hour clicking on all of them and reading up on how the different sites made it. Then I either print out a recipe if I find one I like or I jot down the ingredients that I know I have and WING IT, always hoping for the best. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. This time it worked.

020

One can of refried beans.  I freaking love refried beans and went through a phase where it was the only food I would eat for a good month about 10 years ago.  And then I couldn’t eat them for a long, long time.  We’re talking about 8 years.  Everything in moderation, people. I had to learn my lesson the hard way.

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I didn’t have a clear glass dish to make it all pretty so I just settled for this Fiestaware platter.  It’s just as well.  My OCD would have went into crisis mode trying to make the layers all even and shit if I would have been using something that you could see through.

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Layer of one cup of cheddar cheese.  I will not tell you how much of this cheese I ate while making this.  And OMG, be thankful I just erased what I had typed here because y’all would have known way too much about me and constipation.  Ha!  Gotcha!

My apologies.  I’ve obviously been hanging out with Trey too much.

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So the next layer is Guacamole.  If this was a real food blog, we would have been all up in here mashing avocados and shit.  Yeah, right.  Maybe you can get Robyn to do it, but I can’t be arsed.

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Gross, huh?

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Smear it around.  This is when I lost interest in it looking pretty.  Seriously.  I just gave up because there was no way this was going to look good.

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Take sour cream and add 1/2 envelope of taco seasoning.

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This is what cooking with Trey is like.  I’m pretty sure I was breaking out in hives right about now.  Sloppy cooking.  Do you see the pieces of cheese laying around amongst all the other clutter?  My last nerve.

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Added because this shit is funny.  Homeboy was seriously going to hold that huge block of cheese to grate it.  This is where we learned about cutting a piece off and then grating it.

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The next layer is the salsa (ignore that pouch of guacamole laying there, it was an extra one that hadn’t been put away yet)

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Lettuce.  I love me some shredded lettuce.  And obviously I love cheese!

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This was Shirley’s pathetic attempt at helping out with the finished product.  NOTE:  this is where you could/would add black olives, chopped green onions and peppers to make it pretty.  I personally think that olives are Satan’s kidney stones so I won’t go near them.  My mother likes green olives so we have them here.  She threw those on top to try to make it look nicer and as you can see, it didn’t help much.  Heh.

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Trey really liked it.  In fact everyone in the house liked it except for Shirley.  Homegirl hates refried beans (weirdo).

The only real bitch I have with this is the fact that it makes so much.  You can’t really tell in that picture, but the platter is big (and reasonably deep).  It would most definitely be a fantastic idea for a party and I think a lot of people make it for football games, tailgating, etc.

7 Layer Taco Dip - Cooking with Trey Vol. 1
 
This recipe can easily be adapted from the ingredients, the amounts you use, and the way you layer it. No matter how you switch it up, it's going to be good!
Original Source/Author:
: Appetizer
Ingredients
  • 1 can re-fried beans
  • 1-1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese, divided
  • 1 7 oz. pouch of guacamole
  • 1 cup sour cream
  • 1 envelope Taco Mix (or 2 tablespoons)
  • 1 cup salsa
  • 1 cup shredded lettuce
  • Black olives, chopped onions, tomatoes or peppers (optional)
Instructions
  1. Start with re-fried beans and spread them in a bowl of your choice (glass is better).
  2. Lay 1 cup of cheese over the beans.
  3. Spread guacamole over the cheese layer.
  4. Mix sour cream and taco mix in a bowl.
  5. Spread sour cream mixture over the guacamole layer.
  6. Spread salsa over the sour cream layer.
  7. Add lettuce.
  8. Sprinkle the remaining half cup of cheese over lettuce.
  9. Garnish with optional black olives, chopped onions, tomatoes or peppers.
  10. Refrigerate until ready to serve. Serve with Tortilla chips.