Easy Tamale Casserole

So, hopefully by now you realized that I am crazy about recipes, and have lots of them, from many different places :) My husband has to put a cap on the number of cookbooks I have, otherwise, I will go nuts for sure :)

Whole Foods Market has great recipes. Even better, they made an iPhone app that houses a lot of those recipes, and you can search for recipes by the ingredients you have at hand. Really pretty cool.

If you are following the menu, and have been shopping the items on the list, you may do what I did: use the leftover beans from the Black Beans and White Rice recipe for this recipe, instead of using canned beans. It certainly added some extra spice to these tamales.

Ingredients
1 lb lean ground beef
1 15oz canned black beans ( I used the ones from Black Beans recipe, see index)
1 jar medium salsa (Mrs. Renfro's has the best ones, their peach salsa is super flavorful and not too spicy)
1 12 oz box gluten-free corn bread and muffin mix
1 egg
1/3 cup low fat milk
1 to 1 1/2 slice jalapeno pepper ( optional, for extra heat)

Directions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a large sautee pan, brown the meat and jalapeno. Cook thoroughly, for about 10 minutes. Add beans and salsa, simmer over medium heat 5 to 7 minutes. Let it cool a bit, then place it in a 9 x 12 inch casserole dish.

Prepare the cornbread mix according to instructions. Place mix over the other ingredients. Smooth out to cover. Bake for 20 minutes, or until lightly brown.

 I love love love this recipe, because it mixes the sweet of the cornbread with the spice of jalapeno and salsa. It is the next best thing to my next door neighbor's real tamale, which I am sure takes longer than the 30 minutes needed to cook this one :)

Please email me if you have questions, hope you're enjoying the blog so far :)