Tater Tot Casserole

I'm really not trying to turn this blog into a food blog, but I'm afraid I won't remember my creation tonight if I don't write it down. Tonight was a keeper recipe, but a bit more processed than I prefer. It's a good time crunch sort of throw together meal. Benjamin told me it looked disgusting, but after tasting it, it was very edible. To quote James, "Delicious!" (Not that it sounds quite like delicious when he says it). I didn't even have to coax Alexander to eat it after he had the first bite. (Amazing with how visible the green beans were!)

We've gone through the first month of my dinner menu (28 meals -- minus 3 which I skipped for one reason or another) and I think it went pretty well. We'll see how long it takes for us to get bored of it, but considering the average American family supposedly rotates through the same 10 meals, we might not get bored. The nice thing is that I don't have to spend much time meal planning now and can focus on improving each dish to "keeper recipe" status.

Tater Tot Casserole was a compromise to the menu. Ryan puts up with a lot of "crunchy granola cooking" from me so I figured I should indulge him at least a couple times a month ;) This is one of those times. I have a good recipe for Tater Tot Casserole, but I wanted to see what was better out there... and I was procrastinating browning meat (probably turkey burger).  I HATE browning meat and was about to resort to microwaving it, but luckily I googled "Gourmet Tater Tot Casserole" and amazingly had a bunch of hits (I wasn't really expecting to find much in the way of gourmet). Anyway, I found a link (http://www.food.com/cookbook/the-best-tater-tot-casserole-ever-141424) of someone's mission to find the best recipe. I was inspired by one that added canned chili.

This is what I came up with:

Elizabeth's New and Improved Tater Tot Casserole

1 can Hormel Chili with Beans
~ 1 cup Kefir (I just dumped some in. Someone said adding sour cream made their recipe the best... I wasn't about to waste greek yogurt and I have an abundance of Kefir. Ryan couldn't even detect the Kefir in the final product ;)
1 can Cream of Mushroom Soup (I had probably the equivalent of 1/2 of can of homemade white sauce cream soup base stuff lying around in the fridge that I added)
~1/2 bag frozen green beans (Because that's how much I had in the freezer. I probably would have added more had there been more in the bag. Uh oh, this is starting to sound like "Back of the Cupboard Tater Tot Casserole"!)

Mix ingredients and put in greased casserole dish. Top with one layer of Tater Tots. Bake at 450 for 25-26 mins (This is what the bag of tater tots said to do). Add shredded (medium cheddar) cheese and bake 5-10 more mins until cheese melts. Serves 4-5. (I had 1 cup left for Benjamin's lunch tomorrow. I'll have to adjust the recipe for next time so there's at least lunch for Ryan also and maybe the rest of us too).