Mexican Catalina Bake & Orange Honey Chicken

My kids aren't big on fish, though we do make them suffer through it from time to time. So most of my meals are either beef or chicken-based, which is what these two are. It gets pretty hard, though, to get inventive with ground beef or chicken and I am always looking for something new to do with either.

This Mexican Catalina Bake is awesome. I've done it with ground beef a dozen times, but think it would work great with shredded cooked chicken, too.

Mexican Catalina Bake

2 pounds ground hamburger (I've also used ground turkey)
1 onion, diced
2 cups cooked rice
1 can cream of mushroom soup (I've used the fat free soups in this with no problem)
1 can cream of chicken soup (trust me, I know this all sounds weird but it does taste good)
1 small jar mild salsa
1/2 bag crushed taco chips (I had a bunch of those Old El Paso taco shells, like 12, and I just crushed those up...my kids like burritos, not tacos, but I'd had a coupon for the taco kits, so I got those essentially free...which was why they were in my cabinet)
8 ounces shredded Cheddar cheese
1 bottle Catalina dressing (I used the Fat Free version with no problem...Kraft makes a great one)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Brown the ground beef, then add the onion and cook until onion is translucent. Add the rice and stir until rice is warmed and not clumpy from being cold and leftover ;-). Mix in soups and salsa. Pour into 9 X 13 pan. Crush taco chips and sprinkle over the top. Drizzle the Catalina dressing generously over the top of that (I use 2/3s of the big bottle of this...I forget what size that is, but it's the bigger size bottle you can buy, and I use most all of it).

Bake at 350 for 30 minutes. My family ate nearly half of this in one night. It was a huge hit. HUGE. DH wanted me to make it again the next night I had lost the recipe for the longest time (never put a recipe on a tiny piece of paper ;-) so he had missed this!

Orange-Honey Chicken

My kids love Orange-Honey chicken from Chinese food restaurants but I have yet to find a recipe that isn't like high in fat and complicated from all the frying. Then I came across this one and it was GREAT. I doubled everything (used 8 chicken breast halves) and ended up not having enough breading so I fried the remaining chicken in some sesame oil and liked those ones, too, though the baked versions are YUMMY.

Enjoy!

Shirley