I can hear ya already, “Reba! What’s with another Tex-Mex dish?” Well, I love me some Mexican food, that’s what the deal is!

This here iddn’t real Mexican, and it iddn’t real Tex-Mex for that matter either, but it is real easy and a favorite of my family for a quick one-dish meal.

 

– 1 big hand full of yur favorite flavor of corn tortilla chips

– 1/4 pound lean, seasoned ground beef (you ask for it, you got it, no bean substitutions here!)

– ½ cup Ranch-style beans (ha! Here’s yur beans!)

– 1 oz. shredded cheddar cheese

– 1 cup shredded lettuce or torn up like for salad

– 1 Roma tomato

 

OK, we’re cooking for one here, so there’s a few things yur gonna have to measure down. First of all, don’t you dare open up that big bag of chips and eat the whole thang! Restrain yurselves, Girls, to just one generous handful of yur favorite chips and put it in the bottom of a large soup or salad bowl. Close the bag, clip it with a cloths pin or something. Put it away – farther… farther. OK, now that that temptation is resisted, let’s get on with the dish.

You can’t buy a quarter pound of uncooked ground beef, so get ya a pound and first thing home from the store, divide it into four equal parts and put them in sandwich baggies. One in the fridge for use over the next few days, the others in the freezer. But don’t leave them there too blame long! They’re just in sandwich bags. Meat don’t keep in a sandwich bag for more than a couple of weeks before it starts to taste like bad ice –or worse, yur ice starts to taste like raw meat!

So now yur just dealing with ¼ pound of that meat. Brown it in a skillet and then do one of two things: either add some of yur own favorite Mexican seasonings to it – salt, pepper, garlic, cumin, chili powder – or buy yurself a package of cheap taco seasoning from the store and use about ¼ of the package to season yur meat. You can just fold up that package and put a cloths pin on it (dang! That’s the second time I’ve said cloths pin – woop, that’s three! What in the world?) or put a rubber band around it and stick it in a little plastic, tight-sealin’ container that has all yur partially used envelopes of soup mix and seasonings. (That’s a hint, Girls, that you oughta start one of those little containers!)

While yur meat is cooking, warm up ½ cup of Ranch Style beans, that’s a brand of the best beans in the known universe. If you search yur grocery store in the canned beans section and don’t see the black can with yellow and red writin’ on it, then just get any old canned pinto or kidney beans with some sort of flavor to em. Ranch Style also cans a black bean and both the pinto and black come with or without jalapeñer. So, if you like it hot, grab the jalapeñer variety. Store away the rest of them beans for another use later in the week. They’ll last ya a good week sealed up tight in the fridge. (You do know not to stick a tin can in the fridge, don’t ya?)

Now wash, dry and shred and chop yur veggies, any kind of lettuce you like and a Roma mater – or any ole kind of mater! Shred yur cheese if you didn’t buy it shredded already. 

OK, time to assemble. On top of that handful of chips, add yur meat, then yur beans on top of that – I like to add a little bean juice to help break down those chips. You do what you want. Then on top of the beans, stack yur lettuce, mater and sprinkle with the shredded cheese. When you dig in, try to dig deep to get a little bit of every layer in every bite.

Ay Caramba! That’s good stuff!