I'm making this today. My only concern is that the refried beans has 20 g of carbs (1 sugar and 8 fiber). Is this bad? It is organic.

Remember that this is a good carb rather than a low carb diet. The carbs in beans are important to your body. You do not want to go into ketosis in phase 1 when you are not getting carbs from the usual sources.

The important thing is that the beans are fat free. I use a vegetarian fat free black refried bean and it is really good. Just check your ingredients.

I have made the recipe before, but I had a craving for chicken enchiladas. I'm going to use the same recipe but using shredded chicken breast (or cubed) in place of the ground beef and mix it with a red and green pepper, no mushrooms. Instead of all the spices, I was going to mix in some cans of green chile sauce. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Changa, I've combined the taco bake with the Salsa chicken recipe -- a definite keeper that one! I just followed the salsa chicken recipe, but baked it on a bed of refried beans that I mixed some of the salsa in ... A B C DELISH!!!!

Lori - Pesto in your taco bake? interesting...

I make this a lot on P2 as well....sometimes wrapping it up in a ww tortilla and other times adding brown rice to the beef mixture. Both are excellent!

Here's a twist on the taco bake (not a complicated one)
I assembled mine on Monday night after making black bean chili (with beef for a change) and I wanted to pump up the veggies a bit So I drained the juice from a 28 oz can of petite diced tomatoes (you could Use Rotel)
1 layer ff RF beans
1 layer chili
1 sizeable layer tomatoes
1 layer rf cheese
Since everythings cooked you can nuke it for 10-15 min on 50% power or do what dh did when I was out and scoop and nuke individually
The tomatoes make it really fresh!

My taco Bake is a tad different too...I got the recipe off the Yahoo! South Beach group years ago...

1lb Ground Beef or Turkey, browned
Rotel
Taco Seasoning
Cheese
FF Refried Beans

Preheat oven to 350
Layer the Refried Beans into a casserole plate and add a layer of cheese (how much is up to you). Put in the oven for 15 - 20 minutes
While that is cooking, brown the meat, drain, add the Rotel (drain) into the meat along with the Taco Seasoning.
Take the Refried Beans out of the oven and layer the Meat/Rotel mixture onto the beans. Add another layer of cheese. Cook for 20 or so minutes.
This is really delicious and easy to make!

THIS WAS AWESOME!!

I am not vegetarian, but I am poor and I try not to eat too much meat, so I used TVP (1 cup + 1 cup boiling water and about 1 tsp of better-than-bullion chicken flavor).

It still tasted great! The most hilarious part? My meat-loving, Tofu-hating boyfriend said it was his favorite thing I ever made... BECAUSE IT HAD MEAT IN IT. hahahahahaha.

It was so hard not to tell him. I figure I'll let him know after the 2nd or 3rd time I've made it so he can't claimn it was a fluke.

I finally made this today using the "FAST" microwave version. It was very good. DH has requested it again and two out my three kids ate it, the picky one and the youngest one! Loved the mushrooms in here. I also added a can of Rotel Original & ground turkey. OP, if oyu see this, thanks for the recipe.

Thank you for this recipe! It as GREAT, everyone liked it.

I add more spices, 'cause we like things spicy around here.

I also cook with ground buffalo, which is much leaner than ground beef. With the ground buffalo, you don't even need to drain off the fat, because there isn't enough to that. In fact, I usually have to spray the skillet with cooking spray before I cook ground buffalo, otherwise it sticks. It takes like ground beef, maybe just a little "fuller" for lack of a better word. We live in a rural state, and my father buys a buffalo every year. We pretty much exclusively eat buffalo as our ground meat and soup meat, and when I serve it to friends, they can't tell the difference.

So if you're looking for a low fat option to ground beef, consider ground buffalo. Availability varies, but if 2-4 families go together and buy a buffalo directly from a rancher, you will have enough meat for a year.

What kind of fat do they contain? It would have to be pretty awful to convince me to toss it out since the beans are just part of the dish.

Okay, found a discussion about this here: http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/sbd-...ied-beans.html

Ok, from the can:
130 calories, 4gm fat, 1.5gm sat fat per serving.

And a serving is 1/2 cup, which I don't think I got in one serving of the taco bake because it's spread out so far on the casserole dish.
So what do you think? I will defer to the expert opinions on here that have been doing this much longer than me.
Is it too bad to keep eating in my phase 1? Should I toss the whole pan? I don't want to sabatoge myself so early on. Thanks for ALL the help!!

CyndiM: I looked at that site and that definitely helped. The can I picked did have lard though, which is a "bad fat". So I will definitely not make that mistake again, just not sure what to do with the pan I made already.

We are now up to over 100 posts praising this recipe so I am closing the thread. If anyone, has something else to add, please start a new thread.

MODs try to read all the new posts.