Easy One-Dish Tex-Mex Beef with Rice — The Recipe You Cook with Your Hands When Your Mind Is Somewhere Else

I want to start by saying that this is going to be a quiet entry. The week did not have a lot of words in it. The week had a lot of silence in it, and I am going to write the silence as honestly as I can, and then I am going to tell you about the recipe I made on Sunday afternoon.

It has been a week since the night I wrote about last time. Eight days since the knocks on the door. Six days since Cody walked through the door from the Tulsa County Jail in the same clothes he had been arrested in. Five days since I made the loaded potato soup. The arraignment hearing is in three weeks. Mrs. Patel called Mama on Monday with the date. October seventh. We are all going to learn together what happens.

The household has reshaped itself in the last week the way households reshape themselves around something heavy that has come into the middle of the room. Cody is here. He is sleeping in his bed. He is eating at the table. He is not going to the GED class anymore, because Mrs. Patel said it would look better at sentencing if he were employed, and the GED night class conflicts with the only kitchen-helper opening at the auto-body shop on Sheridan Avenue where Cody’s friend Anthony from middle school works. Anthony went to his boss. The boss said yes. Cody starts Thursday at six in the morning. Sweeping the bays. Cleaning the floors. Keeping his head down. Eight dollars an hour, $320 a week before taxes. The boss told Cody he can pick the GED back up after the sentencing, when the schedule shakes out.

Mama is on autopilot. I want to be honest about that. She has not cried where I can see her since the Thursday Cody came home. She has gone to her shifts at Dollar General. She has come home. She has eaten what I have put in front of her. She has slept. She has not said very much. I have started leaving the radio on quietly in the kitchen at dinner because the silences in the house this week are the kind of silences that settle into the wallpaper if you let them, and the radio is somewhere for the silences to go.

What I have been doing is cooking. The cooking is the place my mind has been resting this week. The cooking has been the kitchen, and the cast iron, and the running water, and the chop chop chop on the cutting board, and the smell of garlic in oil, and all the small motions of feeding people that I have learned to do in the last year and a half without having to think very hard about them. The cooking has been the thing that has worked when the rest of the house has not.

So I want to tell you about the recipe I made Sunday, because it is the kind of recipe that fits a week like this. Easy One-Dish Tex-Mex Beef with Rice, from A Family Feast. The whole thing happens in one cast iron skillet. The whole thing takes forty minutes from start to plate. The whole thing costs $5.10 for a pan that feeds three people for two dinners. And the whole thing is the kind of recipe you cook with your hands while your mind is somewhere else, which is the only kind of recipe I had any business cooking on a Sunday afternoon a week and one day after my brother came home from jail.

The math first. One pound of ground beef on the markdown rack at Walmart, $1.99. A packet of taco seasoning from the Aldi house brand, forty-nine cents. One can of black beans, drained and rinsed, sixty-nine cents. One can of corn, drained, fifty-nine cents. One can of diced tomatoes with green chilies (Rotel-style; I used the Aldi version), eighty-nine cents. One cup of long-grain rice from the bag, about thirty cents’ worth. Two cups of water. A handful of mexican blend cheese on top at the end, about thirty cents’ worth from the bag. Salt, pepper, garlic powder from the rack. Total: $5.24, which I will round to $5.10 because the cheese was probably less than I estimated. The pan made nine generous servings, which works out to fifty-eight cents a serving. Below the dollar mark for the first time in three weeks.

The technique is the part that fits the week. You brown the ground beef in the cast iron over medium-high heat, breaking it up with a wooden spoon, until it is no longer pink. You drain off the excess fat. You add the taco seasoning packet and stir to coat. You add the black beans, the corn, the can of tomatoes with the juice, and the rice and the water. You stir once. You bring it to a simmer. You put the lid on and turn the heat to low and you walk away for twenty-five minutes. The rice cooks itself in the seasoned tomato liquid. The flavors develop while you do anything else. After twenty-five minutes you take the lid off, sprinkle the cheese over the top, put the lid back on for two minutes off the heat, and dinner is done.

The recipe is the kind of recipe where the pan has done all the work for you. There is no last-minute timing. There is no plating from multiple components. There is no stirring at the right moment to keep something from breaking. You stand at the stove for fifteen minutes at the front end and then the recipe takes over and lets you have your mind back for a half hour. That is what I needed Sunday. I needed a recipe that did not need me. I needed to not have to think.

I stood in front of the cast iron Sunday afternoon and I browned the ground beef, and I dumped in the cans, and I stirred once, and I put the lid on, and I sat down at the kitchen table with my history textbook and I read about the New Deal for twenty-five minutes while the rice cooked and the kitchen filled with the smell of cumin and tomato and beef. Mama was at her shift. Cody was in his room with the door closed, sleeping the way he has been sleeping during the day this week, the kind of sleeping that I think might be the body trying to recover from things the mind cannot yet face. The radio in the kitchen was on quiet, tuned to the country station because Mama has it on country and we have not changed it. A Lee Ann Womack song was playing.

The pan came out at five-thirty. I took the lid off, sprinkled the cheese on top, put the lid back on for two minutes. I called down the hall to Cody’s door. He came out. He sat at the kitchen table. Mama got home at six and walked into the kitchen and the smell of the dinner was filling the whole back of the house, and she stopped in the doorway, and she said, very quietly, oh, Kaylee. Just that. Oh, Kaylee. Not a sentence with anything else attached to it. She sat down. The three of us ate.

The radio was on quiet. The cast iron was in the middle of the table on a folded dish towel. The cheese on top had crisped at the edges where it touched the iron. We did not say very much. Cody asked Mama how her shift had gone. Mama said it had been okay. Cody said he was starting at the auto-body shop Thursday. Mama said she was glad. I said the dinner was just from a magazine recipe and Mama said it was the kind of magazine recipe that does the job, and Cody said it was real good, and we cleared our plates, and Mama did the dishes, and I dried.

The pan in the fridge has tonight’s and tomorrow’s dinner in it. Cody starts at the auto-body shop tomorrow morning at six. Mama is at work. I have school and a Sonic shift. The arraignment hearing is in three weeks. The savings envelope is empty. The wallet has $54 in it. The composition book is on the counter, the cover slightly bent at the corner now. The radio is still on quiet in the kitchen as I write this. We are still here.

I am writing this and I want to put one more thing on the page before I close the entry. Some weeks the recipe is not really about the recipe. Some weeks the recipe is the structure that holds the week together. Some weeks the cooking is the kindness you give yourself, and the dinner is the kindness you give the people at the table, and the cleanup is the small ritual that says tomorrow is coming and we are going to be in it. This is one of those weeks. The recipe was the recipe. The pan was the structure. The dinner was the kindness. We are still here.

The recipe is below, the way A Family Feast wrote it. Brown the beef. Add the cans. Add the rice and the water. Lid on, low heat, twenty-five minutes, walk away. Sprinkle cheese on top. Eat. The pan does the cooking. You do whatever else you needed to do that day. Make this on the weeks where thinking is the thing you can least afford to do. The recipe will hold the week together while you handle the rest of it.

Easy One-Bowl Pumpkin Bread

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 60 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour 10 minutes | Servings: 10 slices

Ingredients

• 1 can (15 oz) pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 large eggs
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves (optional)

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven. Heat your oven to 350°F. Grease a standard 9x5-inch loaf pan with oil or non-stick spray and set aside.
2. Mix the wet ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk together the pumpkin puree, oil, eggs, granulated sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla until smooth and fully combined.
3. Add the dry ingredients. Add the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves directly into the same bowl. Stir until just combined — do not overmix. A few small lumps are fine.
4. Pour and bake. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and smooth the top. Bake for 55–65 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean or with just a few moist crumbs.
5. Cool before slicing. Let the bread cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn it out onto a wire rack. Wait at least 20 more minutes before slicing — it firms up as it cools and slices much cleaner.
6. Store or freeze. Wrap cooled slices individually in plastic wrap and freeze in a zip-lock bag for up to 3 months. Thaw at room temperature or microwave for 30 seconds.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 248 | Protein: 3g | Fat: 11g | Carbs: 35g | Fiber: 2g | Sodium: 218mg