Taco dip.  Sounds uber healthy, huh?  Well, it can be, depending on the base ingredients.  Honestly, even if you make it the standard, conventional way, it’s still not too bad.  Salsa and veggies… nothing wrong there; however, the fats (sour cream, cream cheese, & oil) are a large component here, so the better your ingredients, the better this item is for you.  If you choose to go with store-bought taco seasoning, be picky about that too — silly to add extra sugar & msg when you can avoid it.

So, let’s play.

Ingredients pictured above:
16-32 oz by volume Homemade salsa
8 oz Organic *pasture raised* cream cheese (see note below)
1 TBl Coconut cooking oil
2 TBl Taco Seasoning
1 C Sour Cream (see note below)
1 C Piima (Scandinavian yogurt)

Alternative ingredients:

16 oz jar salsa from store
8 oz cream cheese
1 TBl coconut or avocado oil
1 pkg taco seasoning
16 oz sour cream

Okay, so my notes as threatened.  On the cream cheese, as with all dairy products, organically raised and/or pasture raised is ALWAYS best.  First off, the cows are out there eating what cows are supposed to eat.  Which makes them happy cows, producing happy milk, not sick milk which is what happens when cows are fed GMO grains  in a CAFO (confined animal feeding operation) environment… and remember, you are what your food eats.  So if your food is eating GMOs, you are eating GMOs.  Which brings us to the sour cream.  You’ll notice it’s Daisy brand.  Not organic or pastured, which irritates me to no end; BUT, it has 1 ingredient.  If someone out there would bother making a good quality sour cream without all the extra thickeners and other crap, I would be SO on board.  So this is one of my compromise items and that’s why.  I really need to figure out how to make my own sour cream 😐  Which leads us to the Piima.  I opted to sneak some actual probiotics into this and only told my daughter (she loves the Piima).  That particular item is another of the creatures I grow in my home.  This version is the thicker sour cream variety that is made completely with heavy cream.

As for the oil, Do Not Under Any Circumstances use vegetable oil.  Any of them.  Corn, “vegetable” (which is just soy), canola, etc., ad naseum.  They are icky, rancid, GMO laden, hexane riddled crimes against nature.  You can use olive oil, but olive oil will give you a “taste.”  Olive oil has a very distinct “taste.”  Avocado oil is not the most neutral of oils, but with what we’re making here, it’ll work itself in.  I prefer the coconut cooking (MCT) oil as it is completely neutral and hexane-free.  But that’s just me.

Alrighty then, now that we’ve gotten the food preaching out of the way, let’s get on with the showing you the process.

 

Put everything in a bowl, plug in your hand mixer, and mix the snot out of it.  If you do not have a hand mixer, a whisk will work, but it’s a lot of work.  If you have a manual egg beater, those are almost as awesome as the electric hand mixer.  Anyway, you’re going for as few lumps in there as possible.

Spread evenly in the bottom of a 9″ x 13″ casserole or cake pan.

Spread a single layer of salsa over the top of your creamy mixture.  With store bought salsa, it takes one 16 oz jar.  With the homemade salsa it took about 4 cups and I used a slotted spoon to scoop it out of the bowl to ditch some of the liquid.
Cover with plastic wrap or the lid that goes with your pan/dish and refrigerate for a minimum of 2 hours or overnight as you need it.

Now the toppings:  after your refrigeration, you will need lettuce, cheese, green onions, tomatoes, black olives, and whatever other taco toppings you like.  These are the ones I like.  Chop the lettuce into shred-like pieces, either shred your own cheese or be lazy like me and buy it pre-shredded, dice your tomatoes, and slice your green onions.  Layer on top.

This is what you’ll end up with.

Serve with non-GMO tortilla chips 😀

Happy Eating!!

To recap:
1)  This is a recipe that was given to me by a family friend of a family I babysat for when I was 16.  I’ve been making some version or other of it for nearly 30 years.  Obviously, I’ve altered it to suit my purposes over the years.
2)  Better ingredients give better nutrition.  Even things that initially appear as “junk food” can be a powerhouse of nutritional yummy-ness.
3)  This dish will NOT last long.  If you want any, get it soon.
4)  I’m a serious food-nazi.  Apologies.

Quick instructions:

In a medium mixing bowl, place cream cheese, sour cream, piima (if using), taco seasoning and oil.  Using a hand mixer or egg beater, blend until smooth.   Layer in the bottom of a 9×13 pan or dish.  Top with salsa.  Refrigerate at least 2 hours.  Top with shredded lettuce, shredded cheese, sliced green onion, diced tomato, and sliced black olives.  Serve with tortilla chips.