BakeAwayGirl

This recipe was a find years ago, but I never remembered to take a picture for the blog until this last time.  It combines two delicious things into one.  As the name indicates, it is a combination of taco salad and pasta salad.  I will admit, I was skeptical at first.  First off, I'm not a fan of French or Western dressings (which this recipe uses), however it does work with the other ingredients. I've played with a few different ingredients, but the nice thing about both tacos and pasta salads is that you can add anything you'd like.  Besides the basics (taco meat, lettuce, pasta), I use cheese, black beans, and tomatoes.  You can do corn, any kind of peppers, or other types of beans.  This practically begs  for black olives, but I hate them so... no. Important:   We ate this the very first time without the crushed fritos.  We decided we wouldn't make it again.  Then we ate the leftovers with  the crushed chips and i...

Salad from the top view You may have noticed that I love Southwestern American food.  I love Mexican food, but I think I like the Tex Mex better.  It has a lot of spice and flavor and cheese.  The best way to do this, in my opinion, is salads.  They taste so fresh but have so much more flavor than your every day salad. Last month, we had a potluck at work.  Potluck at my work is code for snacks and desserts, but usually no real food.  I had a recipe in my To-Do List Pinterest board, and decided it was perfect for a more substantial aspect of the potluck.  The recipe made way more salad than I anticipated, but it was no problem!  The recipe was a hit, and I even sent the bit of leftovers home with people because they loved it so much. Here's the catch.  The recipe for the dressing wasn't very good, in my opinion.  Some people really liked it, but I wouldn't do it again.  I'll include it here because some people loved it. ...

I have been eating like a pig lately.  I mean, it doesn't bother me too much because I just love food.  Yes, I've got my warm winter padding on my body all year, but I'll keep my brownies and you can have the bikini :)  But still, I like my jeans and the way they fit so I will cut back on the onion rings for a few days. Maybe. When I stumbled upon the recipe for a chopped salad, I thought, "Hot damn, nothing better than a Portillos chopped salad."  Even better, this one was a southwestern chopped salad!  I was a little skeptical on this one, to be honest.  Salads can really easily be bland and not very filling, and I love me some good flavor.  But, we had most of the ingredients already and had to go to the grocery store anyway, so picking up the last few ingredients was easy. Mostly, though, I was worried that the salad dressing would be gross.  I love ranch dressing.  Mmmm.  Judge away, but I would douse everything in some good...