I COOKED!

Laurel's Taco Salad - The vegetarian version....

Alright so it's Saturday night and I've got a friend coming over. I used to be a mean vegetarian cook. The whole nine yards. My boyfriend at the time was vegan and both roommates were vegetarians, so if I was cooking - normally it was meat free. Otherwise I was eating by my lonesome. This unfortunately was several years ago. Now I'm a big meat eater and couldn't actually think of anything worth cooking that was veggie friendly. Ha! So I recalled my tried and true well mastered taco salad recipe. I modified it for m'veggie friend:

1 bag o salad - you're choice - normally I'd say butter lettuce or well whatever you like.
1 avocado diced
1 can of black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can of corn drained and rinsed (unless you're a goof like me and accidentally buy creamed corn and have to use defrosted frozen corn)
1 thing of Gimme Lean ground beef style soy product
1 packet of taco seasoning
tomatoes
green onions (2-3)
tortilla chips
your favorite salsa = dressing
some carrots - diced
grated cheese - I like cheddar


Alright so it's pretty easy to make, first thing is first cook your ground beef, or ground turkey or ground beef style soy. Lemme just say it was my first time cooking gimme lean in a long time. It's dry as hell, so toss in some EVOO or just some VOO or whatever, I also added some water to the taco seasoning so it wasn't so powdery. Let that cook until it's done. Set aside.

In several small bowls - place the rest of the ingredients that are diced. I personally used grape tomatoes and that was good. I also used baby carrots because I was lazy. When dicing the green onions, I use the whole thing. I like the whites and the green parts. Toss that in there. I put each thing in its own bowl. I did this for two reasons, one because it looked pretty, and two because I couldn't remember what my friend liked and didn't like. This is useful if you want your friends to serve themselves. This way they can make their own. Warm up your beef mixture if it's not already and then mix the whole business together and added the cheese, meat and crunched in some tortilla chips. I like to dress the salad with the salsa, but my friend used ranch. Works either way.

Serve and eat. Yay! You will have left overs. We did.