Taco (Pie) Casserole

So my mom had an amazing best friend, Ginger.

They lived 1/4 a mile away for over a decade, raised their kids together, went on cruises together, went to the same church, worked at the same company and went out on a group date almost every weekend for their entire 30 year married lives. Ginger climbed in the hairstylists chair to have her hair cut short-short after mom shaved her head before she would loose it to chemo. She came and sat with mom at the hospital every night so that my family and I could have a hospital break and go out to dinner together. When mom was too sick to work Ginger would leave company-wide voice mail updates on my mom's condition and always end with a prayer. Someone actually recorded every update/prayers that Ginger did for my mom and put them on a CD for my family to hear. We had no clue she was doing this until after mom was gone. My mom actually waited to say goodbye to Ginger before she went to live with Jesus. Ginger was on vacation with her family when mom took a turn for the worse. I know that Ginger was hesitant to leave in the first place but mom urged her to go. I think it was a day or a few days after Ginger came back, mom was able to say goodbye and went to live with her Heavenly Best Friend. I know mom waited to see Ginger.. to faithfully say goodbye to thank Ginger for how faithful of a friend she had been.

Wow, my plan for this post was to give you all an amazing (inexpensive) recipe and I was going to give you the background on where I got it from and man, I guess I needed to give you a little background on the amazing person my mom called a best friend. I'm sitting here sobbing obviously needing to heal just a little bit more with my moms death! I can only hope and pray that I too will have a friend like Ginger. Okay, after you've now been introduced to Ginger, I'd like to share one of her recipes with you!

Funny story first: so after my mom died Ginger made Wednesday nights "feed Denny night" for over a year. (Denny is my dad.) She'd send him home with the left-overs and dad would ration them out so he could eat for days. Ginger often made a dish that dad RAVED about and told me I HAD to have the recipe. Dad said he thought she called it "Taco Pie". So stupid me does a google search for this beloved "Taco Pie" before I bothered Ginger for the recipe. I was working at the time and typed in "Taco Pie" over my lunch hour on my work computer. To my dismay, hard, graphic porn showed up on my screen. I gasped and QUICKLY "x"-ed out of the porn assuming that the IT department would be calling my boss soon to inform him that I was looking up porn on my work computer. Why ever the filters that filtered OLD NAVY didn't filter these sites is beyond me. =/ Anywho, had to tell you the story behind the fabulous Taco CASSEROLE. And I put Taco (Pie) Casserole as the subject for this post so that the next poor soul that googles "Taco Pie" will get my blog and the recipe they intended for.. not hard porn.

I don't know about your family, but we are sure trying to cut corners in the money department. This dish is super easy and budget friendly. Here we go!

Taco (Pie) Casserole
1 tube crescent rolls
2 cups crumbled Nacho chips
1 - 1 1/2 lbs ground beef (I used ground turkey today)
1 can refried beans
1/2 cup salsa
1 pkg taco seasoning
1 16 oz container of sour cream
2-3 cups shredded cheddar cheese

Brown hamburger and add taco seasoning and 1/4 cup water. Add refried beans and 1/2 cup salsa. Set aside.

Place crescent rolls in bottom of 9x13 pan. Then layer the following ingredients after the crescent roll layer:

1 cup crumbled nacho chips
1/2 of the hamburger mixture
all of the sour cream
1/2 of the cheese
the rest of the hamburger mixture
the rest of the cheese
1 cup nacho chips

Back at 350 for 45 minutes. I serve this with extra sour cream, salsa and cilantro. YUM!

I will take a picture of it tonight to share. It is SO good!