Taco Salad Always Pleases

We are eating through the contents of the kitchen freezer this week.  All the ice cream is gone.  I had some frozen steak leftovers, good quality stuff, some from a restaurant meal.  What do make?  Somewhere, I thought I had a steak salad recipe calling for red peppers and black beans.  I couldn't find nothin'.  Grrrr.  What I did find was my ancient taco salad recipe using ground beef, onion, iceberg lettuce, kidney beans,tomatoes, grated cheddar and avocado. 

Hmmm.  Substitutes!  The steak for the ground beef, Boston lettuce and romaine for the iceberg. Black beans for the kidney beans.  The pantry provided the cheese  and the makings for the dressing (dynamite) which was 1/4 cup mayo, 1/2 cup sour cream, and a 3 oz. tin of chopped green chilies which I drained.  Mix together and chill.  Very tasty. 

I had already purchased a smallish red pepper and an avocado.  Had leftover red onion.  I roasted the pepper and the onion for a few minutes to take the rawness off of them.  We also had tortilla chips.  And homegrown tomatoes, small yellow cherries and bigger red ones. 

Looked like a lot of ingredients when assembled.  The recipe said serves 4 and there were two of us.  I served the lettuce separately and also the crumbled tortilla chips.  Used only 1/2 the avocado, and yesterday we had a second meal that tasted as fresh as the first.  Cut the meal up into 1/3 inch cubes.  It went a long way.  This is meat as flavoring, not meat as main course.  Dressing on the side.

Having a well-stocked pantry saves lots of trips to the store:  we had on hand
1)  the beef
2)  onion
3)  cheese
4)   all ingredients for the dressing
5) tomatoes from the garden
6) some cilantro which I forgot the first time and added the second meal.  
7) I chopped up a couple scallions, too.
8)  tortilla chips
9)  black beans 

I bought one smallish red pepper and one avocado and got 2 meals out of the taco salad.

Forgot about a jalapeno in the veggie drawer, but the dressing gave the salad a nice pop of flavor.

This would be a delicious vegetarian meal without the steak.  

I always have onions, cheddar, tomatoes, tortilla chips and black beans.  Also mayo and usually sour cream.  The diced chilies were a serendipitous pantry item.  

Main dish salads are "da bomb" in hot weather, like soup is to cold weather.  No issues with getting enough veggies either.  Shrimp, chicken, beef--all are ideal for summer salads.

Next we travel from Mexico to Italy. Stay tuned for my chicken pesto salad.  

The taco salad looked pretty much like this:  I didn't go overboard with the cheese.