Easy Cauliflower Tots Hotdish

Hear ye,
Hear ye!

All because you despised cauliflower as a booger-eating kid does not necessarily mean you will hate it now as an adult.  Please don't try to feed me a line about not liking the taste or the texture, because I simply won't open my mouth.  After all, I didn't just fall off the turnip truck yesterday.  Plus, if you ate boogers then let's just not pretend to have such a sophisticated palate, mmmmmkaaay?  

Now that that's out of the way, let's get on with it, shall we?  

Many of today's recipes have been adapted to be as healthy and as carb-conscious as possible, facilitating the creative use of vegetables you'd have gladly, back then anyhoo, sent to the starving kids in China just so you wouldn't be expected to eat it.  Ever.

If, like my friend Terri, you are reluctant to even the inkling of this unfair and ill-gotten association of the word nasty to this cruciferous thing, cauliflower, please allow me to invite you to try this recipe with regular potato "tater" tots, which is actually the variety this recipe originally called for.  I simply had cauli-tots in the freezer and thought now was just as good a time as any to stick my toe into this alternative eating lifestyle of choosing trendy vegetable preparations in an effort to fool ourselves into thinking we're doing the right thing when it comes to food.  

Yes, I DID just go there.  This is NOT a diet-friendly recipe by any stretch of the imagination, but swapping the cauliflower puffs with the perfect, Lincoln Log -looking potato firstborns just offers a favorable skew in the numbers -- but don't expect to eat this every day and lower your cholesterol, sodium, and fat intake when lab test time rolls around.  Probably the biggest benefit is the reduction in carbs.  Again, I just did the substitution in a bold attempt to throw caution to the wind.  I'm really gettin' the hang of that, too, by the way.  

1 lb ground beef
1/4 to 1/2 c beef broth or beef stock
1 bag cauliflower tots (or just tater tots!)
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 can green beans, drained (I didn't have beans of green, so I used a can of drained corn)
1-1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese (I used a both sharp cheddar and mozzarella shreds)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper

1.  Preheat oven to 350*F.
2.  Brown beef.  Drain.  Duuuuuhhh.
3.  Mix browned beef, salt, pepper, soup, and green beans.  Add your beef stock slowly until the mixture reaches desired consistency.  Pour into some kind of casserole dish, whatever size you feel like, and whatever you have clean.  To me, it matters not!
4.  Place cauli-tots (*sigh--or tater tots, jeeze!   (((8->}   and insert exhasperated eyeroll riiiight thar) on top of yummy beef mixture.  Now, top off wildly and to your heart's content all the cheese you can muster, remembering to throw caution to the wind here!
5.  Cover with foil and bake 45 minutes.  Remove foil and bake 15 minutes.  It should be all bubbly and fattening-looking, but...so?!
6.  Do not pass 'go,' and do not eeeven try to collect $200.  Just do me a favor already and serve immediately.  

Now.  Pat yourself on the back for making this one small change and trying something different!  I'm proud of you!  Actually, I am super-CAULI-fragilistic-expialidocious proud of you!  We can win this diet modification thing together.  <3