I have two adult daughters, both of whom live in Austin. I try to visit as often as I can. It always seems like our visits revolve around food… generally Tex Mex kind of food, because that’s what they eat, more often than not. When they first moved there, it was the design your own burritos at a place called FreeBirds. Later, it was Texas beef brisket barbecue at Rudy’s and other places. We’ve also had good Texas steak at a few different locations.

But lately, what my girls have adopted as a regular habit is what they call breakfast tacos. We have something similar here in Boise that we call breakfast burritos, but the Texas variety is definitely better! The place they go to the most makes their own tortillas and are they ever good… and fresh, of course.

So anyway, I was thrilled recently when one of my readers added a recipe for egg tacos on the site. Perfect!

This version is a bit different, but it could still form the basis of something wonderful. If you want to check it out for yourself, go to the Egg Tacos recipe page on my main site. After you get there, you may want to look at our other egg recipes or even share one of your own very special recipes. Either way, I’m happy to have you!

I love chili! I grew up on it, but my mom made it the old-fashioned way, with dried beans that had to be soaked overnight, fatty ground beef and large chunks of tomatoes. Much as I loved it (and made it that way myself for years), once I became a single, working mom, I had to come up with an alternative if I wanted to keep eating chili.

So, I developed this easy vegetarian chili recipe. I went vegetarian because my girls became finicky about eating beef during their teen years and neither white chili nor ground turkey were too mainstream in the early 90s… at least not that I was aware of. So I developed this recipe that has lots of protein, but it comes from TVP and beans, rather than from beef.

These days, I often make this recipe using ground turkey because I cook now for my hubby and mother, both of whom like meat, but if you want to stick with the vegetarian version, you certainly can.

You’ll find my Easy Vegetarian Chili recipe here on my Thrown-Together-Meals.com website, along with some suggested variations. It’s certainly not the only vegetarian chili recipe out there, but it is uniquely mine and it’s fast and easy, not to mention healthy! Hope you enjoy…

Our Mexican Rice Casserole is another thrown together meal, crafted on the fly from stuff I had sitting around the house, including ground turkey.

Even though I love to cook, I hate to shop, so I frequently find my cupboards and fridge getting a bit bare around the time I need to force myself to head to the grocery store for my monthly trip. One time, I came up with the Mexican Rice concept using the only kind of meat I had left in the house (ground turkey), some old prepared rice side dish packets (Southwestern Style and Mexican) I’d bought for lunch and never used and a few of my usual staples that I almost always have on hand, no matter how overdue grocery shopping is.

My hubby, mom and I were pretty pleased with the results!

I hope you like it too…

Serve the casserole with a green salad and/or cornbread or corn muffins. Yumm! To check out this recipe, you can go to our main Thrown-Together-Meals.com website and view the Mexican Rice Casserole recipe page. You can also find lots more great ground turkey recipes or ethnic recipes too. Or, if you’re feeling inspired, you can even share some of your favorite recipes there too!

Enjoy!