Taco Salad--a Great Summer Meal

Taco Salad
Serves 1

This isn't a recipe post, because I'm not going to tell you how to make a salad. I am posting this as a reminder that meals can be very easy and delicious.

Whenever I buy ground beef, I always buy an extra pound and brown it off. Then I freeze it for use at a later time. Today was a later time. So all I needed to do was thaw and heat the meat.

The pinto beans are made from scratch in my pressure cooker. They went from dried beans to ready-to-eat beans in 40 minutes. (I cooked them in beer instead of water for added flavor. Even Tammy, who does not like beer, said that the beans tasted of beer, and that they were good.) You can certainly use beans from a can, but I prefer mine fresh because I can control the sodium content. While they were cooking, I prepped all the toppings and warmed the meat.

The red tomatoes are from the farmer's market, but the yellow are from my upside down tomato baskets. The red jalapeno is also from my container garden.

I used only 2 tablespoons each of cheese and plain Greek yogurt, and 1/4 of a mashed avocado, and I built the salad on an ounce of tortilla chips and three cups of mixed greens.

And of course, I served this with a cold beer. This was Totally Naked, a seasonal offering from New Glarus Brewing in New Glarus, Wisconsin. It is a simple pilsner-style beer, clean and crisp. Perfect to cut through the spices of a taco salad. I'm sorry if you line somewhere beyond the Wisconsin borders. New Glarus does not distribute out of state. (Yup. We keep it all for us! And for any tourists that visit.)

I hope you decide to make a similar meal.