Cheesy Enchilada Soup

Not only did I mow the lawn yesterday, I made a new recipe for dinner. And both the lawn and the dinner turned out okay.

I found this recipe in a Paula Deen favorite recipe magazine that I picked up at the store. I love reading recipe and cooking magazines but don't really like to cook, what's up with that I don't know.

Anyway, this sounded good and easy.

I decided to cut the recipe in half, which wasn't easy because I ended up with half cans of beans and stuff that I wastefully tossed in the trash despite the starving children in China. Next time I make this I will figure out some other way of making it that doesn't leave me with half cans of beans. The original recipe serves 6-8 and I didn't think we would want to eat enchilada soup every night this week, so I improvised and wasted canned beans.

Here ya go, this is the original recipe before I cut it in half.

1 1/2 lbs hamburger
1 onion, chopped (I like sweet vidalia onions whenever a recipe calls for onion)
2 (15 oz.) cans tomato sauce
2 (10 oz.) cans enchilada sauce
1 (16 oz.) can chili beans, drained
1 (15.5 oz.) can great northern beans, drained
1 (15.25 oz.) can corn, drained
1 (14.5 oz.) can diced fire-roasted tomatoes ( I went to Winco to buy these ingredients and they don't carry fancy fire-roasted tomatoes so I just used regular tomatoes. I don't really like chunks of tomatoes in my soup anyway so next time I make this I'm just going to use extra tomato sauce.)
1 tbsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups shredded monterey jack cheese with peppers ( I don't like pepper jack so just used regular jack but cheddar would probably be just as good if not better)
Garnish: sour cream, shredded jack cheese

1/ In large dutch oven (or just a big frying pan if you are making a half recipe which I did since I don't have a large dutch oven) cook hamburger and onion over medium-high heat until done, drain.

2/ Add the rest of the stuff except for the garnish of course, bring to a boil over medium-high heat; reduce heat and simmer for 25 minutes. Or however long you feel like simmering it for. Add cheese, stirring until melted. Garnish with your garnishes if you want. I'm not a big sour cream fan but if you like sour cream on your soup, go for it.

It was good but would have been much much better if I could have had some corn bread or muffins with it.

I think this would also be good with shredded chicken instead of hamburger, so next time may try it that way.

I have no idea what the nutritional information for this recipe is, apparently Paula Deen doesn't think you need to know that.

In preparation for this meal, I rode the bike up to Winco to get the ingredients, not thinking that all those cans of beans and sauce would be kind of heavy to get back home in the bike basket. Fortunately I did not crash on the way home, though.

I've kind of decided that instead of buying a bunch of stuff at the beginning of the week and then still not having anything to make for dinner, I'm going to get what I need each day, which forces me to get my exercise riding the bike to the store, and will hopefully cut down on the buying food that doesn't get eaten and then gets thrown away thing.