Beef Tostadas

Well life has been crazy to say the least, good but crazy for sure! I used to have this idea of the "lazy days of summer" but that has definitely not been the reality for us so far. We are up and out early each morning for swim team and then the days haven't seemed to stop until bed time, play dates, dr. appts, birthday parties, etc. We did get to go on a last minute beach trip with some precious friends last week and that was super great, relaxing and made for a perfect weekend getaway! I have been cooking a lot lately but I have been making some of my favorites that have long been posted. I threw this together last night and when I say threw, I mean it! I had extra kids over at my house from 10am-4:45 so I had no time to shop, so I loaded up my kids in the car at 5pm for our weeks grocery shop, which any mom knows is NOT an ideal time to take two kids to the grocery store, wait... is there ever an ideal time to take two kids to the grocery store?? I knew I had set out ground beef and I had seen these precious little taco cupcakes on Pinterest, where you use a wonton in a cupcake pan and fill it with taco meat and top with cheese and salsa, and I thought my kids would love it and it would be fun. I don't really care for wontons so I wanted to try it with a corn tortilla but my daughter saw the tostadas and everything changed. We just  had to try those 'giant chips'! And so my taco cupcakes flew out the window and I made these instead.

Ingredients:
1lb lean ground beef (I usually buy Laura's Lean Meat)
1 cup sweet onion, diced
1 small green bell pepper, diced
1/2 cup fresh pico style salsa (I always use La Mexicana)
1 T fresh cilantro
1/2 t salt
1/2 t cumin
Fresh cracked black pepper to taste
1 Package Tostadas

Directions:
Brown the ground beef in a non-stick skillet for 2-3 minutes over medium-high heat. Add the salt, pepper, and cumin. Then once the meat is about 2/3 brown and 1/3 pink add the onion and bell pepper. Saute together until the the meat in cooked through and the onion and peppers begin to wilt. Next add the salsa and cilantro and cook for 1-2 minutes. Then just turn to low until you are ready to serve. To serve, plate a tostada then top with 1/3 cup of meat top with salsa and fresh cilantro and serve. Yum!! My kids put colby jack cheese on top and ate them like they were pieces of pizza. It was a fun dinner and super easy!

In this pic the meat was slightly pink but I don't think you can tell, it looks cooked here.

This is after you add the salsa and cilantro and it's ready to serve!

The finished Product, Yum!

I did try to put the meat mixture in a corn tortilla in a muffin tin to try the taco cups but they fell apart once I took them out of the pan, but they sure looked cute in the pan. I am going to work on this one!

Weight Watcher Friends: This could go a few ways, when I used the point builder on ww site, I got that 1/3 cup of the meat mixture had 2 points and each tostada has 1.5 points so each one made is 3.5 (without cheese, the meat mixture had enough flavor I didn't miss the cheese, and I love cheese). I had two of them. But if you divide the entire meat mixture into 4 portions each portion is 4 points and 3 tostadas have 4 points, so I think I actually could have had 3 for the same amount of points which makes no sense however I really don't think I could have eaten 3 I was perfectly happy with 2 :)