A Tex-Mex meal made in a casserole dish, starting with a layer of flour tortillas, topped with shredded cheese, Rotel tomatoes, sour cream, tostada shells, cheese sauce, taco-seasoned ground beef and more cheese, folded, brushed with butter and baked.

Crunchwrap Casserole

Okay, confession.

While I can recall having had a Crunchwrap from Taco Bell only once before and, in fact, while I also recall it being pretty tasty, it didn't drive me to have a constant craving so I didn't have much of a memory about how I felt about it!

Now don't get me wrong.

If I have a taste for a taco or three in a hurry, Taco Bell is gonna be my quick run y'all. They get a lot of ribbing, but I've always had a good experience with their food.

A favorite dish of pasta with ground beef, tomatoes and chili seasonings, made easy using the Instant Pot!

Instant Pot Chili Mac

I love sauce and pasta dishes like this chili mac. It's so easy to throw together and gives you such a tasty dish that really most everyone loves and it's good any time of the year.

Besides a multitude of variations within the recipe itself that you can make by increasing and decreasing the chili seasonings and yes, even the cheese (or even leaving the cheese out), there are other ways to vary it too, just to give it a different flavor. Taco seasoned comes to mind as does a more mildly seasoned ground beef "helper" style of pasta and everything in between.

Strips of chicken breast, tossed with fajita seasonings and combined with sauteed peppers and onions, served on warmed corn or flour tortillas.

Skillet Chicken Fajitas

I love when you're sitting in a Mexican restaurant and a server passes by with a sizzling cast iron fajita plate filled with veggies and meat. It leaves behind it such a fragrant trail doesn't it?

Apparently,  it's a bit addictive too, that aroma, because you will often see tray after tray after tray delivered after that first one passed through!

Even my veggie adverse hubby aka The Cajun, fell into that fragrant allure once, and ordered some, despite my warning that they were more vegetable than they were protein.

Corn tortillas cut into wedges and tossed with seasoned ground beef, enchilada sauce, green chilies, black beans and cheese and baked.

Sheet Pan Beef Enchilada Casserole

One day I ran across this recipe while browsing through Instagram - something that I like to do when I'm avoiding doing something else I should be doing. That can happen a lot these days and social media can be really good for that!

Anyway, this fella Kevin Ashton (@oldscoolkevmo) is a chef for a sorority house and he makes a lot of good eats that he cooks for himself at home and those gals and shares them on his social media. I'm sure they must really enjoy the things he comes up with because it's a wide variety of cuisines and it all looks good!

By the way, he's also battling stage 4 cancer (but seems to be beating it), so go and give him some love on one of his platforms y'all!

An appetizer of poached shrimp, marinated in a tangy cocktail sauce based on a combination of V8 and ketchup with lime and a mix of vegetables.

Mexican Shrimp Cocktail - Cóctel de Camarones

This is such a great appetizer anytime really, but will certainly go very nicely as a starter for your Taco Tuesday, any cocktail party, football gathering or tailgate and those cookouts too. Heck, just a movie night even - just bust up some saltines or tortilla chips!

A tad bit different from what you're used to seeing with our classic American-style shrimp cocktail, it's sort of a cross between that, a ceviche and a gazpacho, all in a Bloody Mary-like base!

A Southwestern style pasta salad featuring rotini pasta with taco seasonings, salsa, veggies and beans. Drizzle with your favorite salad dressing and garnish as desired.

Taco Pasta Salad   

Pasta salads are such a welcome addition to the summertime menu, aren't they?

Some days it's just so hot that the thought of putting a lot of effort into a full out meal can be daunting and overwhelming, nevermind the fact that I may not even have an appetite for that!

What happens with me during those times is that I end up snacking on a whole bunch of junk, instead of having a "meal."

Not great.

Poached chicken breasts, highly seasoned, shredded and stuffed into warmed soft tortillas and dressed with red onion, pico de gallo, cilantro and avocado, or your favorite classic toppings, finished with a squeeze of lime.

Shredded Chicken Soft Tacos - Tacos de Pollo

My husband, aka The Cajun, is pretty set in his taco consumption and not very willing to branch out.

Seasoned ground beef on crunchy taco shells and dressed with a little bit of tomato and lettuce and lots of cheese. That's it.

Me, I'm open to pretty much any variation out there. Shredded beef. Ground turkey. Ground chicken. Shredded chicken. Shrimp. Fish. Steak. Pork. Even potatoes and eggs. I love them all!

American-style tacos made with slow braised, seasoned ground beef or turkey.

Tex-Mex American-Style Taco Meat

I love American style Mexican food, and I'm certainly not opposed at all to using seasoning packets to season them.

They are 100% convenient and I usually keep a few on hand, but sometimes I also like to change up the ingredient amounts for different kinds of dishes.

I've tried a few different ones, including generics, and the brand that I like the most personally is Taco Bell Original (#affiliate) because it seems to have the best combination of flavors for me, but hey... I also enjoy their tacos on occasion when I'm hungry and I just want a quick snack!

Pork chops, rubbed with Southwestern seasonings, seared in a skillet and finished in a tomato-based sauce. Serve over hot cooked noodles or steamed rice.

Southwestern Pork Chops

Pork chops are on a regular rotation around here. My husband, aka The Cajun, loves them and he'd probably be perfectly happy if I just fried them all the time, I tell ya!

Gotta admit, yeah those are really good, and I love watching my husband gnaw them down to the bone, but let's be real.

Far as I'm concerned, speaking as a Southern born and bred gal, I think fried food is perfection, and much as we'd like to, well we just can't eat it that often y'all. I'm always looking for different ways to serve my pork chops.

Known as Mulitas in Mexican culture, highly seasoned chicken is sandwiched between homemade corn tortillas with shredded cheese and finished with guacamole or avocado, sour cream, pico de gallo or salsa, or whatever your favorite toppings are.

Chicken Tortilla Sandwiches (Mulitas)

I don't remember where I first heard about mulitas, and, in fact, when I first did, I mistakenly assumed it was just another name for a quesadilla!

The reason for that is that I usually make my quesadillas the same way as these mulitas.

Although both can have very similar fillings, some of the differences I've seen between quesadillas and mulitas include:

Mexican-style sandwiches of refried beans and cheese, served on sturdy rolls and toasted, then topped with pico de gallo, make for a nice snack, though they are often served at breakfast, lunch or dinner as well. Add your own favorite toppings!

Molletes - Mexican-Style Bean and Cheese Sandwiches

I am an animal lover. Most of y'all who have been hanging with us know that because you've heard me talk about the TNR program I have participated in the past 7 years since moving and discovering a neighborhood filled with strays and discards that needed to all be fixed. 
 
My dog Boo has been with me since he was found as a puppy, left behind in a box, inside a buggy in a Walmart parking lot in 2008. Hurricane Katrina had already changed the course of my life and I was just entertaining the idea of Deep South Dish. Boo and I have literally been together 24/7 ever since, so we became best buds.

We're both aging and it shows, but it's the natural course of life isn't it? You don't think about that much when you're younger.

A skillet meal of yellow squash and zucchini, corn, onion and tomatoes with garlic, that can be used as a side dish or served stuffed into warmed corn tortillas for a vegetable taco.

Skillet Squash and Zucchini with Corn - Calabacitas con Elote

I think it may have been when I shared the recipe for my Southern-Style Skillet Ratatouille on the Facebook page recently when a reader, Austin, mentioned calabacitas, a Southwest/Mexican-style dish that also uses some of the summer bounty of fresh vegetables that many of us love.

Summer is coming to an end soon so let's get them in while we can y'all!

Highly seasoned grilled shrimp served on grilled fresh corn tortillas with salsa fresca, onion, cilantro and fresh lime.

Tex-Mex Grilled Shrimp Tacos

I love any kind of Mexican or Tex-Mex food, though outside of the usual standards of tacos, burritos and quesadillas - we pretty much go out more often than making it at home. The main reason is I have an adventurous palate and almost never order the same thing.

The Cajun, well he's the total opposite and almost never steers away from the crunchy beef tacos. It's kinda funny really, because he'll study the menu for awhile, but then when the server arrives, it's always crunchy tacos!

A bold, cream cheese-based chip dip, with the addition of Rotel diced tomatoes with green chilies, chopped black olives and loaded with southwestern flavors.

Southwestern Chip Dip

I originally got the idea for this dip when going through a box of clippings. This one came from a rural EPA newsletter featuring a community cookbook called Cooking with Osyka! It's one of a few fundraiser cookbooks for the Osyka Civic Club of Osyka, Mississippi, usually available at their annual Fall Fest events in October, or by calling their business office at 601-542-5994.

They referred to this dip as Southern Heat Chip Dip in their cookbook, though I've played around with this one enough that I'm not even sure how close I am to the original clipping anymore!

Corn tortillas, stuffed with a seasoned, cooked shredded chicken or beef, rolled, fried to crisp and garnished with lettuce, tomatoes, sour cream and fresh cilantro.

Mexican-Style Rolled Chicken Tacos

Depending on who you're talking to, these are sometimes known as taquitos, Spanish for small tacos, flautas, which is Spanish for flute, or simply rolled tacos.

I have read that taquitos are generally smaller than flautas and usually made with corn tortillas, and flautas are longer and usually made with flour tortillas, though both are prepared much the same and sometimes one or the other of them are made with the other kind of tortilla!

Fresh tomatoes, onion, jalapeno, fresh lime juice and cilantro make up this fresh salsa. Use it as a dip for tortilla chips, as a garnish for tacos, fajitas and quesadillas, or as a side condiment for grilled meats.

Pico de Gallo

Although we are nearing the end of backyard season, tomatoes, like most other once seasonally available vegetables, are actually now available year round.

Even still, you and I both know that winter tomatoes are picked early to survive their long travel path and just do not taste the same as our summer tomatoes, especially those backyard tomatoes, straight off the vine. Now is the perfect time to enjoy this fresh salsa as much as you can.

Thing is, with pico de gallo, there really is no "right" recipe. It's strictly personal.

Quick Small Batch Refrigerator Corn Relish

Whether you serve as a condiment alongside grilled meats, or a simple snack with tortilla or corn chips, this small batch, quick refrigerator corn relish will be a refreshing addition to the menu.

Quick Refrigerator Corn Relish

I had a craving for some corn relish, but didn't want a huge batch made for canning. I wanted more of a snack-sized, easy version to enjoy right away!

A hot corn dish, Veracruz Corn may be served as either a side dish, great alongside your barbecue, or as a hot corn appetizer with crisp tortilla chips. Filled with goodness of fresh, off the cob corn, marinated in a fiery blend of Southwestern seasonings, tossed with veggies and then dressed with a chipotle aïoli and cheese, and passed under the broiler.

Veracruz Hot Corn Dip

I based this corn dish off of one that I saw in Eva Longoria's cookbook, Eva's Kitchen: Cooking with Love for Family and Friends. It sounded a little like maque choux, but with some spicy flair, which it most certainly has!

Veracruz corn was a popular dish on the menu at the now shuttered Beso Steakhouse in Hollywood, owned by Longoria, and though I believe it was considered a side dish on the menu, I really enjoyed it best as an appetizer, served hot with some crisp tortilla chips.

South Mississippi-Style John Wayne Casserole

A Tex-Mex style casserole with seasoned ground beef, layered between a biscuit crust, with tomatoes, topped with a sour cream and cheese sauce and finished with a cornbread topping, perfect for potlucks, church suppers, or just dinner at home!

Mississippi-Style John Wayne Casserole

So, it seems lots of folks around the country and in my own home state of Mississippi seem to love this casserole, and I went all my life without knowing that!

How it came by the name John Wayne Casserole is uncertain, though some say it appeared as a contribution in a 1979 cookbook of celebrity recipes, as a favorite recipe of Wayne's. I can see why. It's super tasty!

Chile Cheese Tex-Mex Cornbread

Easy to make, this tender and moist Mexican Cornbread brings a sweet heat to those Tex-Mex and Mexican meals, soups, stews and chili dishes. 

Mexican Cornbread

I know for a southerner it's likely to sound a little sacrilegious, but we aren't super huge on cornbread down here along the Gulf Coast. 

Sure, we eat it and we enjoy it, but French bread and yeast rolls are much more prevalent down here. Because of that, we don't necessarily subscribe to the idea that there is only one way to make cornbread, and, we don't even mind, if occasionally, it's got a little sweetness to it. I know. I can hear the gasps.