Bacon Cheeseburger Casserole

   We've got a lot of ground beef....seriously, too much ground beef! we ordered food last year (in April) from a food company, and you "shop" and pick what you want, and then they deliver it in one fell-swoop! We had to emergency buy another deep freezer to accommodate the volume of meat that showed up at our house! The sales man (although super nice) had clearly not estimated properly when he told us the deep freeze we already had would be sufficient for all the meat we had coming. 
   Anywho.....all that to say we still (over a year later!) have  about 30-lbs of ground beef left! And that's with us eating at least 1-lb of it every week! 
  Needless to say, coming up with ground beef recipes that are different and worth eating was getting difficult! Then Caleb (who loves cheeseburgers!) mentioned something about this beloved food, but we had no gluten free hamburger buns, so I told him I wasn't going to make burgers. Then it hit me! I have the beef, eggs, bacon, pickles and onions I would normally add to a cheeseburger-I didn't see why making it into one huge casserole wouldn't work! Well, unless, of course, the kids wouldn't eat it because it looked like garbage....so, I included the best part of a burger-the cheese! 
   If you're strict paleo, omit the cheese, and this is still a fantastic recipe! If you eat primal (and can tolerate cheese)-then get your cheese on! Eww, that sounded way more gross than it was meant to.......
   The casserole is gluten free, full of bacon cheeseburger flavours, and the leftovers are the best! My husband loves it packed in his lunch. Thumbs up!    

Bacon Cheeseburger Casserole

Ingredients:

• Bacon, 6 or more slices (depending on how much you want!)
• 1Lb ground beef (or any ground meat could work)

• 4 eggs
• 3 Tbsp regular ground mustard (you could also use dijon to add some bite)
• 1/4 Cup diced pickles (about 2-3 pickles)
• 1 onion, diced
• 2-4 garlic cloves, crushed and diced
• 1/2 Cup shredded cheese
• 1 Jalepeno, diced (optional)

Method: 

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8x8 casserole dish, and set it aside
2. In a frying pan on medium heat, cook up the bacon (if you dice it up first, it cooks a lot faster). Once cooked, set it onto newspaper or paper towel to drain
3. In the same pan (with the bacon grease) cook up your ground beef until cooked through and no longer pink
4. While the beef is cooking, in a small bowl whisk up the eggs and mustard until well combined
5. Once the ground meat is cooked, drain if necessary, then place into the prepared casserole dish
6. Now add to the dish your cooked bacon, pickles, onion, garlic, and jalepeno (is using). Be sure to distribute these ingredients evenly, or feel free to use a spoon to stir everything up a bit
7. Now, evenly pour your egg & mustard mixture over the whole thing
8. Finish by adding the shredded cheese to the top
9. Place into the oven to bake for 30-35 minutes, until the egg has set, and the cheese on top is getting toasty at the edges. Yum! :)   

   My kids honest to goodness love this casserole! They think I'm brilliant for making such a fantastic mess of a cheeseburger! 
   Every part of it is so bacon cheeseburgery and delicious! I had wanted to add tomato too, but decided against it as I didn't want this to turn out too wet, so I added slices of it on top before I ate mine. The next time we had it I put it right on top of my salad, added tomato, avocado, and hot banana pepper rings and ate it with the salad (I like lettuce on my burgers, so I figured it would be ok)! It was really good, two thumbs up!

   Well folks, I'm signing off! I've got to get baking my usual Friday night rehearsal treats, and I want to get out and clean one of my gardens that I've been neglecting! 
   I hope everyone has a grand weekend (it's Victoria Day weekend {the early Queen's birthday celebration| here in Canada!), and I also hope that you come back here soon to see what else I've got cooked up! :)  

xo