Fixings for Tacos
The key to a healthy but tasty meal is to load up on the vegetable fixings. That’s just what we did last night for our tacos and taco salads. This has become a favorite dinner for all around here. For some it’s about the meat (ahem, Louisa that means you); for Annie, that means the cheese and sour cream topping; for me, all of the salad ingredients piled up with the meat and the cheese and the sour cream. I like the combo texture thing, creamy, chewy, crunchy from the taco shells. Joe, I’m not sure how you feel about this – you were too busy eating for me to get a read on you.
Its also an incredibly easy dinner to fix, no shortcuts required. Chop an onion and saute with a little olive oil. Add ground beef, saute some more. Add seasonings such as chile powder, cumin, salt, pepper – I did use a pre-blended taco spice mix from Penzey’s, but it simply saved me the time of pulling out a few extra spice jars from my drawer. While the meat is sauteing you can chop up all of the fixings such as lettuce, tomato, cilantro, avocado (dice them last to keep the green bright), and grate the cheese. For all of you gourmet readers, I used iceberg lettuce. Yes, after years of eschewing the salad for darker greens for the higher nutrients and lower water volume, I now choose iceberg here and there. Why? Because I like the crunch. Like popcorn. And taco shells. And all other crunchy things. Perhaps I was a t-rex in a former life, enjoying the crunch of my dinner between my massive jaws. You can keep the chewy – give me crunchy any day.
Don’t forget to serve with sour cream and salsa (I didn’t make my own but used the Whole Foods jarred version instead). Oh, and then you need taco shells or tortillas. Joe prefers the tortillas because it’s neater to eat them. But the girls like the taco shells and, as I said, I like the crunch, so that’s what we go with. After our first very messy taco, both Joe and I switched to taco salad so we didn’t need to pretend to eat it like a sandwich. By doing that, we were able to load up on even more salad greens.
Best of all, I was able to fix it, eat it, and clean it all in under an hour so we could run out after dinner (again!) to soccer awards. I just love tasty efficiency.
Baking Beats Studying for Midterms
Poor Annie. While Joe, Louisa and I attended a friend’s bat mitzvah over the weekend, she was stuck at home studying for midterms. Ugh. The pressure. The cramming. The pressure. The cramming. I feel stressed out just thinking about what she’s going through this week.
We left her early in the morning and she had a full day of work mapped out. Geometry, chemistry, English, Latin, history, she knew just what to do. At lunchtime, when I checked in, she reported that she had done a few other useful things like clean her room (!) and hung up her clothes. Well, now we know where those tasks rank among the possible torturous things I could ask her to do. Studying drops way to the bottom. But she was ready to tackle the work all afternoon.
So, a few hours of raucous partying passed and though I checked my phone for any emergency calls from Annie, I didn’t call to check in with her because she had a plan. A solid study plan for midterms. Finally, after a long afternoon of dancing and partying, we staggered outside into the daylight like a group of groggy mole rats, and I called Annie from the car. Guess what? She announced that she had a surprise for us. I couldn’t imagine exactly what that would be, but I suspected it had to do with cooking something.
We arrived home to a very busy kitchen with cookbooks, pots, pans, and mixers everywhere. Things were whirring, good smells were happening and Annie announced that she had decided to make a cake without any help from me. And she did. And it was delicious. And studying happened later. And I really can’t blame her for the procrastination. In fact, I can’t think of a better (or tastier) way she could have procrastinated.
Italian Wedding Soup aka the Battle for the Meatballs
Sometimes you might think I deprived my family of food for days if you watched the race to the stove for seconds after dinner. Oh, my poor starving babies, mama has been so mean, you need to fight for every scrap, every morsel of meat to make up for weeks of famine. NOT!
Last night’s dinner was Italian Wedding Soup from the current “Food Network Magazine”. The broth, pasta, and vegetables didn’t excite anyone enough to fight for seconds. But, as you probably guessed, the meatballs didn’t pass unnoticed. In fact, as soon as Louisa finished her pork meatballs, she was on her way to the stove for more. As was Joe who followed right on her heels. Who will get more meatballs? Luckily there was enough to satisfy them both without soup bowls sloshing all over the kitchen. But for me, today, leftovers? Only broth, vegetables and pasta were left for me. Cue the violins.