We have baseball 4 nights a week right now.  Baseball practice ends “at dusk” which, right now, is about 7pm.  Since I am not willing to eat take out that often and I mostly dislike meals made in the crockpot, I am really having to get creative.  My goal has been to eat as healthy as we normally do, and it has been tough.

We’ve been having a lot of salads.  My go-to salad is to chop up some romaine, toss it with torn rotisserie chicken from Costco, strawberries, feta, and avocado, top it with balsalmic dressing and call it a day.  I make this kid friendly by putting the chicken on the side, giving them their salad separately, and giving them a nice piece of bread to go with the meal.  A steak salad is nice, but a little more of a pain, since you have to grill up a steak and that takes time.  Tacos are another nice, easy baseball night dinner.  I threw this together on a baseball night this week, because I’ve had salad on the mind, I am sick of tacos, and because I had bought some corn at Costco on an impulse the day before.

This salad is so good.  The ranch dressing was incredibly easy to make and it was really, really good on this salad.  The flavors were perfect.  I made the dressing in the morning, and the dinner itself was ready to eat in less than 25 minutes.

This would also be great as a lettuce wrap, in a burrito, or even over rice.

This one is definitely going in the rotation.  Baseball parents, may the force be with you this season.

INGREDIENTS
1 lb ground beef (or turkey, or chicken, whichever you prefer)
1 onion, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
4 ears of sweet corn, corn cut off the cob (or 1 1/2 cups frozen corn)
2 tablespoons taco seasoning
1/4 cup of water

Romaine lettuce
Avocado for topping
Cherry tomatoes for topping

Cilantro-Ranch Dressing
1 package ranch dressing mix (Hidden Valley or Uncle Dan’s)
1 cup milk
1 cup mayo
1/2 cup chopped cilantro

DIRECTIONS
Make your dressing the night before or the morning of by blending all ingredients in a blender (I just use my immersion blender) and place in an airtight container in the fridge for at least 4 hours.

In a large frying pan, cook your beef and drain the grease.  Add the diced onion, red pepper, and corn, and cook for an additional 5 minutes. Add water and taco seasoning, and cook over low heat for another two minutes.  Remove from heat.

Put some lettuce on your plate.  Top with the meat mixture and drizzle with the cilantro ranch.  Sprinkle with cherry tomatoes and avocado and enjoy.

Kid Friendly: I served this to my kids with quesadillas and put the meat mixture on the side for them with some sour cream dip. They had seconds!