One-Pot Salsa Beef Skillet

I might be a yard sale junkie. More specifically, I might be an estate sale junkie.

I love estate sales because so much more is being sold, and if the family brings in a professional, that professional doesn't have an emotion tie to the products, so you can usually get them pretty cheap.

It's more "get rid of this stuff" than "let's make some money."

One thing I like finding at estate sales are recipe magazines. You know, magazines like Midwestern Living, Cooking Light, or even those bi-monthly booklets food companies like Kraft put out.

I love food magazines because I can get them for a song and don't feel bad ripping them up.

I found this recipe at one of those sales. And after a couple of weeks of more complicated recipes (at least for me), I wanted something I didn't have to think about.

I told my Brother the Chef what I was going to make and where I find the recipe.

"Oh no!" he said. "That'll be awful!"

It can't be that bad, I said. I mean, I'm sure they have test kitchens.

"No, it'll be bad," he insisted. "Make it your own," he advised.

"No, I'll follow the recipe this time," I said. "I'll make it my own next time."

"Make it your own," he insisted again.

Well, dangit, maybe I need to follow the recipe so my readers know what I'm doing! Of course, I wasn't going to tell him that. It's not like I have enough readers for them to be confused anyway. But my friend did back me up that I need to know how it tastes in order to know how to change it.

Like the interior sides of the skillet would have been that clean if the dish had actually cooked in that.

So I followed the recipe pretty closely. I didn't buy that specific brand of salsa, because that's just silly. I did buy the Kraft brand mac and cheese because I didn't know if there would be a significant difference in the cheese taste. And instead of sprinkling the green onion on as a garnish, I just mixed it in because the green onion I had was the frozen leftovers from a previous recipe and wouldn't have looked pretty.

Wow, mine is so much oranger. Or more orange. Take your pick.

We all liked the dish. Everyone was surprised that there was no taco seasoning in the recipe, just salsa. They said they might have liked some taco seasoning, but the taco seasoning right in the cheese (What's up, Aldi?!) helped. The corn was very sweet and still had the pop of not-over-cooked corn. I might see if next time I can use a generic mac and cheese, just to save a buck or two. And maybe dice up some green peppers to add, but that's really, really orange.

Conclusion: Very successful. We'll find out later how the leftovers heat up.