100% Food Storage: Mexican Casserole

Yesterday morning I was putting something in the freezer when I spied this Rubbermaid container with 'something' in it - I couldn't remember what.  Inside was some of the extra 'fake' taco meat I had made a couple weeks ago.  I pulled it out of the freezer and placed it into the refrigerator to thaw for 'something' today.  And that is how this recipe came to be.

The idea was to use up some of this food storage imitation taco meat - which was already reconstituted for a previous post.  I saw next to it I had a food sealed package of corn tortillas leftover from last Fall (we don't normally eat them but we had a family get together so I had some random foods on hand left).  I grabbed those, a food sealed bag of frozen diced avocados, one fresh avocado a family member left here this week, one of my few remaining packages of frozen shredded cheese, and a can of enchilada sauce.  I had to go to the 2-3 year pantry to get a can of refried beans and a can of black olives.  I had some green chilies in the pantry so I grabbed those.

Lastly, the onions were freeze dried, and you all know how I hated the sour cream powder and did actually go to the store to buy a container of sour cream.  I used that in this recipe and finished it off with some homemade taco sauce (already posted).

Mexican Casserole

Reconstituted 'taco' meat
Refried beans
Green chilies
Cut up corn tortillas
Enchilada sauce
Sour Cream
Avocado
Cheese
Black Olives
Green onions
Taco Sauce

Layer the taco meat, beans, green chilies and corn tortillas.  Bake at 350 about 25 minutes.  Remove from oven and top with the rest of the ingredients.  Return to the oven for another 25 minutes.  Serve hot.  Goes well with flour tortillas and corn.

 NOTES:  I'm still using up the can of Auguson Farms imitation Taco Meat as I rotate out the oldest cans in our food storage - which are from 2012 ish.  Use that if you have it or use freeze dried ground beef, freeze dried diced beef, fresh or frozen ground beef or diced chuck, whatever you have.  Use freeze dried or canned chicken if you wish.

 

I happened to have some corn tortillas on hand in the freezer - which I normally don't.  What I do have however, is the ingredients to make them from scratch if I needed to, and I have one of the 'bucket' meals some of the popular food storage companies sell as a "Mexican Food" bucket that has a package of corn meal in it to make them as well.

 

Random... frozen avocado.  I also have freeze dried avocado if I need to break into that at some point.

 

Still blessed to have some fresh shredded (frozen) cheese and haven't had to use any of the freeze dried so  far, although I am out of cheddar cheese so if I want that I have to go dig through food storage to find a can of it.

 

Topped with my homemade taco sauce (recipe on the site a lot of times already) - and used freeze dried green onions.  Love black olives - and I have some in the 2-3 year storage.  Leave those off (obviously) if you don't like them.

 I don't have a finished picture of it.  I sent some with Mr. Husband for his dinner at work tonight and I had a LOT of it for my lunch today.  The rest is in the refrigerator and I don't  want to get up and go to the kitchen to take a picture of it.  So you get this... prior to baking.