Taco Time

ETA:: Did you know that October 4 is "National Taco Day"? Neither did I. How nice of them to make a holiday to celebrate my blog post!

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Taco night was always fun food night. You get to eat with your hands, you get to build your own with as much or as little of each topping as you want, and making them is so fast and easy they're a perfect weeknight dinner.

I know most of us grew up with, and are probably still using, those packets of seasoning mix that come in the yellow box. No more! There's no reason to add thickeners, colours, or msg to your dinner when you can make it yourself with no more work or time than the packet.

Okay, yeah, the taco shells came in a yellow box, but I don't like deep frying, and baking the tortillas in the oven just doesn't work. You could of course have soft tacos instead and do away with the yellow box entirely, but there's just something about the crunch. And the satisfaction of making it to the other end without losing your fillings onto your plate.

Beef Tacos

What you need:

• 1/2 lb ground beef
• 1/2 onion
• 1/2 red pepper
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 tsp oregano
• 1/4 tsp cumin
• 1/4 tsp corriander
• 1/4 tsp chili powder
• cayenne, if you want it spicier
• 1 c tomato sauce, or crushed tomatoes

 

Oh yeah, and taco shells, cheese, lettuce, and whatever salsa you like best.

What you gotta do:

Put the olive oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. (preheating the oven to 350 right now is probably a good idea too)

Dice up your pepper, onion and garlic.

Measure out your spices.

Dump in the ground beef and the stuff that's on your cutting board into the hot pan. Yes, all of it, all at the same time. Go!

I told you this was fast. I'll bet you were even able to do all the chopping and measuring in the time it took to warm the pan.

Sautee everything together, breaking up the meat as you do. Add the tomato.

This step won't add too much of a tomato flavour, but it will add the reddish hue most people are used to thanks to the yellow packets. Veggies for colour, who knew!

Mix in the tomato and let this cook while you grate the cheese and shred the lettuce. If it starts looking a little dry while you're preppign your toppings, add a couple tablespoons of water. This stops it from drying out completely, and can end up being nicely saucy.

If you've got a few extra minutes, you could even do a bit of fresh guacamole, or a pico de gallo (recipe to follow eventually).

Crisp up your taco shells in the oven for a few minutes at 350. (*goes back to top of post to remind you to preheat the oven*)

If your cookie sheet is bigger than the oven, they are not going to stand up nicely.

Now the fun part! Divvy out the shells onto plates, and then put everything into bowls (yes, dishes-intensive, I'm afraid) and start building!

Me, I'm a fan of sour cream with my Tex-Mex, but this is a DIY dinner so have fun! Try something new! I even got The Boy to try a bit of hot sauce!

What's your favourite weeknight fast dinner?

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And this is where Taneasha lets out a sigh of relief that I made it through the whole post without some kind of innuendo about tacos.

Next time I'm in LA, I'm totally going to the Pink Taco. (had to link to the wiki page because the restaurant page auto-plays music and that should be illegal)

Puffy Muffins

After eating granola bars every day for breakfast for two weeks, I decided I needed to actually cook.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for granola, particularly in bar form which is so easy to just toss in my backpack as I run out the door to math class. Can't be late for math class. No, really, can't. Freaking class is packed and the rows are closer together than movie theatre rows, and they fill up from the edges inward. If I want to actually find a place for my ass (without having to first drag it in front of the faces of 8 people) I need to get there early.

Muffins are quick and easy (can mix and bake in the time it takes to do a load of laundry) and freeze really well. Perfect for eating in the car on the way to school or work. And these ones use yogurt for the liquid component because I forgot I already had yogurt and bought more.

Blueberry Muffins:

What you need:

• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp lemon zest
• 1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup yogurt
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten
• 1 cup fresh blueberries (use fresh, if you can)

What you gotta do:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. (totally remembered to this time)

Zest your lemon. If you don't have a lemon zester (and I don't), you've got a couple options. A vegetable peeler can work, but a small sharp knife is my preference. Mostly because I find that when I use the peeler, I take of more than just the zest. With a knife, I've got enough control that I don't end up with any of the white pith, which is extremely bitter.

And since my brain is totally broken by math, I realized as I was zesting with my paring knife that optimal zesting occurs when the knife is coplanar to the plane tangent to the lemon's surface. That is, the slope of the plane on which the knife is cutting is the derivative of the curve of the lemon.

See? Broken.

For those of you whose brains don't think in terms of calculus: Hold the lemon in one hand and with the other, keep the knife flat on the lemon and do small amounts at a time.

Chop the zest as finely as you have the patience for.

Juice the lemon.

Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and lemon zest in a large bowl and then make a well in the middle.

In another bowl whisk together the lemon juice, oil, vanilla, yogurt and egg.

Pour the wet mixture into that well in the dry mixture. Mix the mixtures. But don’t do it with a whisk. Why not? Well, because this is more of a dough than a batter and your whisk will end up looking like this.

Use a wooden spoon or a spatula, and you'll eventually end up with a very squishy, sticky dough-like batter.

Gently fold in 1 cup of blueberries with either the spatula or your hand.

The strong acids in your yogurt and lemon juice start reacting pretty much instantly with the bases in your baking powder and soda, and these things start rising as you’re spooning the batter into the muffin tins.

If you’ve got more than a cup of berries, sprinkle the last few on top of the muffins.

And if you’re feeling totally wacky, sprinkle a forkful of sugar over top of each, too.

Seriously, puffy. After only a few minutes.

Bake these for 17-19 minutes or until a piece of spaghetti stuck into the biggest one comes out clean.

Remove muffins from the pan as soon as you're done folding the laundry, and put them on a wire rack to cool. I didn't use muffin papers, so they do need to sit in the pan for a bit after they come out of the oven. If you use the papers, you can move them to the rack right away.

Wrap them individually and put them all in a large freezer bag until you need breakfast on the go. Like tomorrow.

What do you eat for breakfast when you have to eat in the car?