Today was a long and busy one to say the least. Combine that with a poor night’s sleep (first time to try kombucha and, while it was delicious, it definitely kept me up) and, well, dinner just isn’t going to be as gourmet as I usually aim for it to be. It was still plenty good, mind you.

This past weekend, Sprouts had a great deal on grassfed ground beef, so of course I bought a value-size family pack. It’s so easy to break these family packs down into individual pounds to freeze for later. These are the times when a deep freeze comes in handy.

If you’re not keen on constantly buying plastic freezer baggies for portioning out meat, Life Without Plastic makes stainless steel containers that can go from freezer-to-oven-to-fridge seamlessly. You can even take them to your grocery store and they can package your meat in them (subtracting the tare weight) so you don’t even have to deal with the meat-market packaging!

Tonight we took some of the ground beef and cooked it in the Lodge cast iron with some of my homemade taco seasoning. Once it was about 3/4 fully cooked, I tossed in about a cup and a half of my InstantPot black beans (with about half of their juice) and finished cooking. You can find my method of InstantPot Black Beans here.

While the meat was cooking, we boiled a box of Banza cavatappi pasta and set it aside. Sometimes, it’s ok if your pasta gets cold while you’re still cooking. Depending on the type of sauce, it will reheat just fine without diminishing the integrity of the pasta.

After the meat and black beans were cooked, we scooped out some of the cavatappi into our bowls and topped it with the meat and beans mixture. We sprinkled the dish with Kraft Mexican cheese, dollops of Daisy, and sprinkles of classic Tabasco! It was Chili Mac’s south-of-the-border cousin and it. was. good! Easy doesn’t have to be lifeless.

What’s one of your favorite easy-but-still-wow dishes that comes in clutch when you’re just not feelin’ it?