A new twist on an old favorite

A favorite comfort food for our family is Crusty Mexican Bean Bake which comes from the More-With-Less Cookbook. It is essentially sloppy joes baked in a casserole on a simple crust. We typically make it with ground turkey and kidney beans, but we had some unused sausage so I browned that in lieu of the turkey. As would be expected it made for a much spicier dinner. It was good, but I prefer the old way. The other change I made was in place of the 6 oz. can of tomato paste called for in the recipe I used some jarred tomato sauce from Johnny Macaroni's restaurant. We almost never buy pre-made jarred sauce. We typically buy canned tomato sauce in bulk at Costco and add our own ingredients if we want to make pasta sauce or pizza. James found the sauce on his most recent grocery run though, and since Johnny Macaroni's (a local Italian joint where James and I occasionally eat) is closed except for carry out during the pandemic he decided it was a way to give a local business some business.

The original recipe, from our well used cookbook, is shown below.