Pinterest find: Mexican Haystacks

First, Pinterest has to be my favorite addiction EVER. I am a visual person and I love to bookmark cool recipes and sites that interest me, but six months later I can never find what I bookmarked because it's just an http address. Enter Pinterest. It satisfies my need for a visual bookmark as well as my need to live vicariously through other people's obsessions. One of my favorite things to pin is recipes. Due to health issues, my family is gluten/dairy/soy free. I usually like to try new things and I don't like getting in the rut of fixing the same things over and over and over. After we got back from Suzanne and Kory's house for New Year, I felt invigorated enough to go try one of those many pins I had marked. Originally I was going to make some sort of lettuce wrap thing but when I went to view the recipe I saw that the link didn't work. All I had was a pretty picture. That was okay, I still purchased the ingredients that I thought would work. When I came home from the store, no one was hungry so I started looking on Pinterest and came across a recipe I had pinned a few weeks ago called "Mexican Haystack".

Seeing as I didn't have all the ingredients for this recipe on hand, I decided to make it with what I had. Here is what I used (all spices were to taste - my family likes to use a lot of spices!):

Meat mixture:
2 pounds ground turkey
1 yellow onion, diced
Cumin (lots of it)
Onion powder
Garlic powder
Red pepper flakes
Salt
Pepper
4 cups jarred salsa (I think I had La Victoria on hand, but use your favorite.)

Rice mixture:
2 cups Brown rice, uncooked
Cilantro

Topping:
2 Avocados, diced
1 Carrot, grated
1/2 cup Cherry tomatoes, halved
1 Cucumber, diced
Cilantro
Lime juice
Salt & pepper to taste

I prepared the rice in my rice cooker and when it was cooked I chopped up the cilantro and mixed it in with the rice as the recipe said. I made the meat mixture in the Ninja Cooking System that I received for Christmas (yay!) with the help of my two year old. We browned the turkey, drained it off and added the diced onion and spices. When the onion was cooked and I was satisfied with the flavor of the meat and onion mixture, I added the salsa. I covered the mixture and turned my Ninja to low and let it cook while I prepared the topping.

Intently stirring

Realized the camera is on him.

Next I mixed up my toppings adding the grated carrot last minute to give it a little more color. Finally I plated it to look like the original picture, which was beautiful, and I received many 'ooos' and 'awws' from the family... right before they mixed it all up into one big pile on their plates. Which is what I did as well. But I didn't take a picture of that.

Kathleen's version of the Mexican Haystack

And you know what? It was awesome. Everyone ate two helpings which is a sure sign that it was a hit. I think this recipe would be great wrapped in corn tortillas or as a lettuce wrap too, but on it's own it was a complete and satisfying meal. This is definitely a pin to save and use again. I think this is one of those recipes where you can't really go wrong. You can use what you have and spice it up as you like. I don't see myself making it like the original recipe because I am kind of weird about my fruits being mixed up with my meat and savory stuff, so for me this was the perfect combination.

So long Chang...

Happy new year my dear sister! Thank you for all your wonderful hospitality and of course, friendship. I am really excited about our new project. I wish we lived closer to one another! I love you very much. Can't wait until we get to hang out again.

Love,
Wang