Mexican Pasta Bake

I like mexican food but the prep work for it soooo messy and I hate the clean up! Still when I came across this recipe I just had, HAD to try it. Little did I realize when I decided to make it that it would make SOOOOO much. My suggestion to you all is to freeze half of it or else cut the recipe down by half.

MEXICAN PASTA BAKE

2lbs of ground beef
1 red bell pepper
1 yellow bell pepper
1 orange bell pepper
1 large white onion
6 cloves of garlic (minced)
1 tbsp Olive oil (substitution is 2 tablespoons butter)
4 tspns cumin
4 tspns chili powder
4 tspns dried oregano
1 28 oz can diced tomatoes in oregano, basil, and olive oil (like it actually says that on the label)
2 14 oz cans of black beans
2 14 oz cans of corn
Mexican cheese blend (I used regular old cheddar cheese)
2 box Penne Pasta
Step one:

Dice and mince the peppers, garlic and onion. Heat the olive oil, or butter if you use that instead, next you're going to sweat the onions, peppers, and garlic until the aroma permeates your kitchen. Basically your going to saute until all the flavors come together yumm.

Step two:

Once you've sweat the veggies put your ground beef in the same pot and add all your spices (cumin, chili powder, oregano) and the cans of diced tomatoes. Start brown the meat and veggies and spices all together. Now while that is cooking start your water for your noodles.

Step three:

Once the meat is browned and the noodles are cooked you'll need a LARGE bowl. Mix in that bowl the browned meat concoction along with the noodles and the cans of black beans and corn. and mix it all up. Divide your mexican pasta into two 9x13 casserole dishes and cover with the mexican cheese and bake in the oven at 350 until the cheese melts. Viola you are done :)

Side Note:

As I said at the beginning of this post this makes a LOT of food and I divided mine up to make more meals than just this one. The awesome thing about this meat mixture is it's a great mexican filling for tacos, taco salad, and nachos. In order to use the meat mixture for other mexican dishes I suggest only mixing your noodles in with the first 9x13 pan and leaving the noodles out of the second one. This way you can use the meat mixture for many and more recipes throughout the month. The meat mixture freezes extremely well and anytime you want to throw together a quick mexican meal you have the filling already made :-) I do suggest leaving the cheese out of the portions you plan to freeze though. So far out of this one recipe I've made:
the original pasta bake
Taco salads
Quesadillas
Soft Tacos
Loaded nachos
Since the meat mixture is a basic mexican blend of spices, veggies, and ground beef it translates well into many different meals so left overs don't have to be boring :)

Kid reviews:
Gavin 5 yrs old: Liked the pasta bake and the soft tacos was not crazy about the Quesadillas. (he never likes Quesadillas no matter what's in them lol)

Magnus 2yrs old: Magnus felt the need to eat this with his hands and at one point abandoned even that method and just stuck his face in the bowl. I'm taking that as two thumbs up :)

Andrea 14 yrs old: Andrea really liked this she even ate with black beans in it and she HATES black beans. I think it helps that you really can't taste them because they are just mixed in with everything else. It was her idea to make loaded nachos, leave it to a teenager with the metabolism of a greek god to come up with that LOL, she also added sour cream and salsa to her mexican pasta bake as a topping. That was surprisingly good and made my foodie heart proud to see her experiment.