Recipes | Hicks House

Have you ever had a Double Decker Taco? Perhaps you have at Taco Bell – I used to eat them there all the time back in the day. For me it was an easy step to take the idea and apply it at home, however I find that whenever I talk about it, the idea hasn’t occurred to most people. When Ken and I first started dating I suggested making them for dinner one night and he looked at me like I had lost my mind – flash forward 30 minutes and crazy had turned to genius. In fact they are so good that whenever we have a planned Taco Night we both look forward to it like giddy school children.

So this isn’t a recipe per se but rather a new way to make something you may be making already. So this what you need:

Ingredients:

Taco Kit
Ground Beef or Turkey (we use turkey)
Refried Beans
Shredded Mexican Cheese
Taco Toppings of Choice (ours generally consist of shredded spinach, fat free sour cream, black olives, and diced tomatoes)

Put your refried beans in a small saucepan and heat on medium low while you prepare your taco meat. The kit we generally use comes with a seasoning mix, however we have bought others that give you extra taco shells instead and then you have to buy it separately.

The real magic is in the assembly. Take your warmed tortilla shell and spread your refried beans over the entire surface.

Then place your hard shell in the middle and wrap your tortilla around it. (I did take a picture or this step but it came out super blurry) Fill your taco as you normally would – if you put the cheese on the bottom it will melt a bit when you top it with the hot taco meat.

Then enjoy the best taco you’ve ever had!

It’s that easy! I hope you enjoy as much as we do!

If you like comfort food then this recipe is for you. It’s a favorite winter weekend dish in our house. A kicked up version of traditional meatloaf we use turkey instead of the more traditional ground beef to cut back on fat and because after years of substituting turkey for ground beef we now prefer the taste. To help make it somewhat ~~less bad~~ more nutritious we also add in spinach.

For such a flavorful dinner the prep is extremely easy even wannabe cooks with no kitchen skills (like myself) can do it without supervision. 😉

Ingredients:

1.5 lbs of ground Turkey
3 cups of shredded low moisture part-skim mozzarella cheese
6 oz Stuffing mix or bread crumbs (I prefer the chunkier texture of stuffing mix)
2 cups of chopped fresh baby spinach tails removed
4 cloves of garlic minced
1/4 cup of onion diced
1 egg lightly beaten
1 cup of your favorite sauce
1/4 cup of parmesan cheese
Italian seasoning
Ground Black Pepper

Assemble all of your ingredients together

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Dice up your onions and mince or dice your garlic and add it to a large bowl

Add in your egg

Then your chopped spinach

Measure out your stuffing mix and break up any extra large clumps if you find it necessary then add that to the mix too.

Then add 3/4 cup of the sauce reserving the other 1/4 cup, 2.5 cups of the mozzarella and the parmesan cheese.

Lastly add the ground Turkey and seasonings to your liking (don’t taste there is raw egg and meat in here – gross). All of the directions up until this point could have simply been “Combine all ingredients with exception of 1/4 cup of the sauce and 1/2 cup of mozzarella. However, if your like me and I wrote it like that you would dump in everything or forget something.

Then mix it all together with your hands. Go ahead get in there and make sure its all good and mixed. (I hate this part – I usually ask Ken to do it for me, if your less of a chicken you can handle it yourself)

Put the mixture into a sprayed loaf pan, pack down and form into a loaf-like shape.

Put in your pre-heated oven uncovered and bake for 50 minutes. Remove from the oven and top with the sauce and cheese you saved.

Return to the oven for an additional 10 minutes to allow the cheese to melt and ensure the loaf is cooked through.

Remove from oven and let cool a few minutes. If you cut right into it when it’s super piping hot it will most likely fall apart. (I do this all the time, I can’t wait. It still tastes the same just doesn’t look “pretty”)