F is for FOOD!

If you've been following along, you'll know that one of my recent obsessions is food.  Now, I have been horrible and not done our grocery shopping yet, so tonight's dinner I had to get creative because I didn't have time to go to the store.  I thought about the canned tuna in the pantry for Tuna Casserole, but we didn't have any Cream of Mushroom soup... Then I saw the canned chicken!  I had bought it to make homemade Chicken Noodle soup, but I knew that this evening was not a soup evening.  Then I saw the Refried Beans and remembered the Crescent Rolls in the fridge and BAM!  I knew what I was gonna make!

Grab the following list of ingredients and come with me as I walk you through my version of TJ's mom's Taco Ring.

Cookie Sheet          Crescent Rolls              Refried Beans
Foil                         Canned Chicken           Cheese
PAM                       Taco Seasoning            Your favorite taco toppings

1.  First I put some foil on a cookie sheet and sprayed it with good ol' PAM.  This makes it so much easier to remove sections of your finished taco ring for eating.

2. Next I preheated the oven up to 375 degrees.  Just like the tube of Crescent Rolls calls for...

3.  I opened and drained 2 cans of chunk chicken and mixed in about half a packet of Taco Seasoning.  Honestly though, I only needed one of the cans of chicken.  I had a TON left over... I'll have to come up with something yummy to use it in.

4.  I opened and whipped up a can of refried beans.  I had a lot of this leftover too, I'm thinkin' quesadillas... if only we had tortillas...  haha :)

5.  Next I made this cool looking sun shape with the rolls and smooshed the middle together.  Most of the online videos or recipes call for 2 cans of crescents, but I only had one, so I made a smaller "sun".  Don't worry if the points hang over the edge of the pan, you're going to be rolling them into the middle.

6. I spread out a layer of the beans onto the smooshed part of the rolls.  I made sure to keep the middle of the center circle uncovered so that when I roll the points over I have something to smoosh them into.

7.  Top the beans with the taco chicken.

8.  Top the chicken with cheese.

9.  And then you take each of the sun points and roll it up and over your layers, and smoosh each of them into the middle of the center circle.  I just love how there are gaps between them all.  I think it looks so cool!

10.  Pop that baby in your 375 oven for about 11-13 minutes (like the crescent rolls call for) or until golden brown.  Mine was done at 11 minutes.

11.  Voila!  Now you can use a knife (or a pizza cutter like me!) to slice a section of the ring to enjoy with your favorite taco toppings.  You could make it look real fancy and put a bunch of toppings in the middle like a bowl, but I knew we weren't going to eat the whole thing in one sitting, so... no fancy bowl.

12.  Now, like I said when I started, I had to get creative, and since we only had enough salsa for one serving (how can this house be out of salsa already?) I saved it for TJ and used a hot sauce packet from a previous Fast Food run on the top of my dollop of sour cream.  I put some leftover salad on the side and topped that with cheese. If I had had some preparation for this one, I would have loved to add some olives, more tomatoes, maybe some green chili... yum!

13.  TJ just had plain salad (he did add ranch after the photo) and topped his taco ring section with more cheese (Thorntons LOVE cheese), the salsa and his own dollop of sour cream.


TJ was so surprised to come home and have dinner ready.  He probably figured we'd either have to eat out or go to the store.  Haha.  He's not always a big fan of me experimenting, because let's face it, my experiments don't always work out.  BUT he really enjoyed this, I think because it reminded him a lot of his mom's.  And good thing too, 'cause she was my inspiration!

Let me know what you've done in a pinch.  Was it a success?  A complete failure? 

Until next time...

Warmest Wishes,
Tiffany