Hot Salad

This is another Peaden family favorite from David's youth. It is fairly healthy, very filling, and definitely delicious. It has all the components of a taco salad, while maintaining it's own unique style and flavor. The best part is that it is so easy to make. The only hard part is that it doesn't make very good leftovers (and we are definitely leftover-lovin' people.)

Hot Salad
Source: Sue Peaden

Ingredients:
1/4 lb ground hamburger
Salt and Pepper (to taste)
Onion Salt and Garlic Salt (to taste) 
1 can chili con carne
1/2 cup salsa
Cheese (about 1 1/2 cups)
Tortilla Chips
Lettuce
Medium Mixing  Bowl

Directions:
Brown the ground beef in a skillet. When almost done, season with salt, pepper, onion salt, and garlic salt to taste. After ground beef is completely cooked through, add can of chili and 1/2 cup salsa. (Sometimes I add more salsa - it just depends on my mood.) Cook until heated through.

Wash and dry lettuce and place in the mixing bowl until it is about 2/3 the way full (it shrinks a lot before the meal is ready to serve). Crush up tortilla chips and mix with lettuce. How many tortilla chips is definitely personal preference - but we like a lot of chips. Grate cheddar cheese and add to chip/salad mixture.

Combine chip/salad/cheese mixture with meat/chili/salsa mixture and serve immediately. You could add toppings like olives, tomatoes, or sour cream - but we eat it like this and we love it.

(One things that we have tried recently is to make our own "hot salads" where you just mix the lettuce, chips, and cheese in a small bowl and then add on your topping. It works for us, where there are just two of us, and it makes for better leftovers. However, when you are feeding a lot of people - it's better to mix it all up before hand because then you don't run out of the meat mixture - it's all mixed up in the right ratios already. Thats just our two cents.)

*I would like to try this with corn in the meat/chili mixture. I think it would be yummy.

Enjoy!