There's probably a recipe this time

Here's some stuff we ate:

A trio of hard shells from Pineda. They look the same, but they're steak,
bbq pork, and chicken with green sauce and potatoes. It's a great place.

Cuban tacos. Pork tenderloin, ham, swiss, pickles,
onions, and mustard. Baked in the oven.

Taqueria La Hacienda is 2legit2quit.

Buffalo chicken. I'm sure I've written the recipe here before. It is, in
my opinion, a fantastic way to fill a taco shell. Shred some chicken, stir in
some buffalo sauce, top with cheese and celery. Devour.

Okok, and here's one that I can give you a recipe for. This recipe is inspired by this one. To make me sound more cullinarily legitimate, we'll call it the Deconstructed Stuffed Zucchini Taco, or perhaps Unstuffed Zucchini Taco.

ingredients: 

1 lb chorizo

1/2 smallish onion, diced

1/2 cup spaghetti sauce

3 smallish zucchini (isn't it hard to find "small" vegetables in the midwest? The smallest I feel like I can ever expect to get is what other parts of the country might call "large." Wow...that may be the First Worldiest First World Problem ever.)

1/2 tomato, chopped

shredded cheddar cheese

feta cheese

8 tortillas, warmed.

Directions: 

Preheat oven to 425. Cut zucchini in half crosswise and then into sticks. Toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper (they aren't listed as ingredients because, as adults, I think we can all agree that olive oil, salt, and pepper can be assumed to be in every single recipe that is not desert.)

Roast zucchini on baking sheet for 10-15 minutes (I didn't 20-25 and ended up with mushy sticks, which was not was I was looking for. A little crunchy would certainly be better.)

Meanwhile, brown the chorizo and onion over medium high heat. when cooked through, add the spaghetti sauce, lower heat to medium, and cook for an additional 5 minutes, or until whatever side dish you're making is ready.

Also meanwhile, shred the cheddar, dice the tomato, and microwave the shells. I suggest wrapping them in a damp paper towel in the microwave, but whatever blows your skirt up is fine with me.

To assemble, stack a few sticks of zucchini and some chorizo mixture in a warmed tortilla. Sprinkle tomato and cheese. NOM.

Chorizo and zucchini tacos.

By the way, the Cuban tacos (along with a great number of other tacos I'll be making, phone photographing, Instagraming, Facebooking, Tweeting, explaining to the dog why she cannot have, and eventually eating (after I get up and go get the fork I forgot while I was in the kitchen) are recipes from this totally great book called 300 Best Taco Recipes, by Kelley Cleary Coffeen.  We got it as a gift, and it's turned out to be a totally fantastic resource. Everthing I've tried cooking out of it has been easy and tasty. The Steak Carnitas from the last blog post was a recipe from it, and they were something pretty special.

Here ends today's post. 

IT'S TACO TIME!

  

Hey, party people!

(Quick side bar: I'm typing on a little tiny laptop, and the shift key is, like, really close to the home key. Consequently, almost every time I try to capitalize a word by shifting with my right hand I end up with a cursor at the beginning of the line. Ugh. #firstworldproblems)

So I was thinking that this year I'd do something a little different (read easier) and use recipes from the fabulous taco books we've received over the last couple of years. Since I don't really know the rules about the internet and posting content from someone else's work (I know I wouldn't like it), I'm not going to write out the recipes for most of these. Sorry. In some cases I'll be really sorry because we're only on day 3 and already we've had some pretty great tacos.

Day 1:
LittleTijauana's

Go here. Get a Paloma to drink. My favorite thing to order is the fajita salad (although the tacos are all pretty rad) but I'm sure whatever you get will be fine, too. While you're there, take a moment to feel like the Hip Hipster from Hipsville that you are.

Day 2:
Thai Chicken Tacos

This recipe is actually from Pinterest. Find it here. Make it. Use store-bought Thai peanut sauce. It'll take MINUTES for you to make dinner, which is always sweet. Take the leftovers as a salad to work tomorrow. Use the store-bought Thai peanut sauce as salad dressing.

You're welcome.

I feel like this might be a good time to point out that I do realize that I'm posting Instagram pictures. It's just that my cell phone pictures look better with Instagram filters. Which reminds me, my Instagram handles are becky_lyle and nerdpoetry. Go like some pictures if you want me to feel good about myself in an internety kind of a way.

Day 3:
Sirloin Carnitas

There was a little confusion at our house, since one or more of us thought that "carnitas" meant "pork." Turns out it may or may not. I think we got bored before we got to the bottom of that one. Anyways, that's what it was called in the cookbook. It was awesome. Well seasoned steak cooked and tossed into a shell with pico de gallo, cheese, and cilantro. SO GOOD. Also good was the carrot fries that went with our tacos this evening. Carrots + cumin + salt + pepper + olive oil, 425 degrees, 30 minutes. Go make some.


Also, please be aware that I'm going to be even worse than years past at blogging in a timely fashion. In January, this (most) beautiful (ever) doggy came into our lives from Indiana.

 Her name is Ripley. She's the sweetest, and I spend as much time as I can snuggling with her. At the moment, she's crashed out in her chair (she called dibs) because she had a big day at daycare today. Playing with all the other pups is hard work!

Also please be aware that this is probably not the last time you'll see that face on this blog. You probably love that since it's such a cute face.

Again, you're welcome.

CSA 2: Imminent Herb Murder

I love our CSA.
I know it's a little early to say that. We've only just gotten our second box, after all. I'm just so enjoying having all these fresh vegetables that I've never cooked with/eaten/liked/heard of before. I even used all the asparagus from the last box, even though I didn't like asparagus.

Asparagus

Actually, I'm not really ready to officially "like" asparagus yet, but it's maybe growing on me. I cooked with it twice. Once I hid it in a stir fry, and once it was it's own side dish, roasted in olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then drizzled with balsamic vinegar and sprinkled with parmesan shavings. 

Just before roasting, all swimming in olive oil.

 As an aside, I should really look more closely at pictures I take with my phone before I eat the subject matter, just to make sure the pictures aren't as blurry as these. I wonder if the rest of the pictures will be this bad. Lets find out together!

A little balsamic vinegar goes a long way.
I also sprinkled some chives on them because
we got a lot.

Parsnips

Asparagus I'd never cooked because I knew ahead of time that I didn't like it. Parsnips, on the other hand, I'd never cooked with because I didn't grow up eating them, so I had no idea what to do with them.  Turns out they make a pretty rockin' soup. The recipe came from the Harmony Valley Farm website. It's called Spicy English Parsnip Soup. It's parsnips, potato, onion, ginger, curry powder, and a few other ingredients, cooked until soft and then pureed in a blender. It was spicy and creamy and filling. It did not, however, look very exciting. See?

Garnished with chives (lots of chives in the fridge) with
a side of rosemary roasted potatoes.

Sunchokes

I was excited to use sunchokes because our friends love them but we'd never even heard of them. They look kind of like enormous ginger roots. It was suggested that we make fries out of them in the oven, but since I sort of just did that with the potatoes in the last picture, I chose to make a salad with them. The salad (also a HVF recipe) used a bunch of the veggies from our box, which was a fun way to sample them. Garlicky Sunchoke Salad with Dill and Feta used the sunchokes, green garlic, chives, and french breakfast radishes (which are just weird-shaped regular radishes, as it turns out) along with dill, vinegar, oil, and feta.

Look, I started using Instagram!

 It was totally tasty, like a dilled potato salad. We let it marinade for a day, if I recall. It was crunchy and flavorful, and felt very adventurous since it was so full of things I'd never eaten before. Also, I hadn't worked with fresh dill for a long time, and I'd forgotten how tiny and delicate and so full of intense flavor and aroma it was. My hands smelled dilly for forever afterwards!

All The Things

Wednesday night, the night before we got the next box, was taco night. Now don't get too excited, I'm not going to get into it about the tacos. I will say that I used the Trader Joe's brand taco seasoning, which it turns out is hotter than the surface of the sun. If you ever buy a packet of it, take its advice and only use half. Why do they give you twice as much as you need in a non-resealable container of powder when they know that you'll either use too much or throw away the extra, you ask? No idea. Seems crazy to me, too. It had a nice flavor, but seriously, only use half.

Anyways, I decided a side dish that used up a much leftover produce as possible was in order, since there was a whole box of new produce imminent.

Today's recipe: Let's-Use-This-Shit-Up Salad


Ingredients:
4 oz uncooked orzo (or whatever's leftover in the bag from last time you made orzo)
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 pint grape tomatoes, cut in half
1/2 green pepper, diced
1 green garlic, sliced thin
1 Egyptian walking onion, sliced thin
1 handful chives, chopped (seriously, though? There's STILL chives in the fridge!)
1-2 tbsp taco seasoning (left over from 30 Days Of Tacos, currently in a jar on the back of the stove)
2 tbsp olive oil
Juice of 1 lime
Salt
Pepper
Feta cheese for garnish

1. Cook orzo according to package directions. Drain.
2. Meanwhile; chop, dice, slice, drain, and cut all of the other ingredients. Put them all in a big bowl. 
3. Add the orzo to the bowl. Toss together.
4. Add taco seasoning, olive oil, lime juice, salt, and pepper. Toss again.
5. Serve, sprinkle each serving with feta cheese.
6. NOM.

It was suprisingly good. I think that I still sort of live under the assumption that any food that I invent rather than find a recipe for is going to automatically be bad. Apparently, that is not the case. In fact, I'll probably get some more orzo so we can make something like this again. Yum!

CHAPTER 2: THE NEW BOX

We have a flourescent light under the cabinets in the kitchen that seems to make greens POP.
Also, Derek is clearly better at taking not-blurry pictures with his phone than I.

This week's box includes:

• Overwintered Parsnips
• French Breakfast Radishes
• Asparagus
• Rhubarb
• Potato Onions
• Garlic Scapes
• Pea Vine
• Hon Tsai Tai
• Baby White Turnips
• Baby Bok Choi
• Spinach
• Garden Herb Packs (in the planter over there in the top right corner)

I still haven't used the rhubarb from last time, although I think it's still okay. Now I surely have enough for a pie or something....although I'm also thinking about trying rhubarb-cream cheese baked wontons. Again, since I thought it up, it'll proabably be terrible.
The Hon Tsai Tai and Pea Vine will undoubtedly end up as a salad. I'm going to try sauteing a baby white turnip today (another vegetable I don't cook with  because I didn't grow up eating it).

Can anyone tell me what those curly green things over to the right of the asparagus are? Are they the garlic scapes? I suppose I could go bite one of them to find out.

I should stop blogging with you now so I can go to Target and get some planting supplies for those herbs up there. I'm sort of excited about trying to plant and then not kill something. The "not kill" part will definitely be the challenge. It's not that I enjoy murdering plants, its just that they don't tell me when they're thirsty, and so I tend to let them...just...die.

Sad.


...Oooookay. So I guess I'll just go ahead and end with that bummer. Bye bye!

Days 29 and 30: Better Late Than Never

So, I realize that it's May 12th right now, and that I haven't told all ya'll about days 29 and 30 of 30 Days Of Tacos yet, but just hear me out.

Short version: I was really busy, and then I was really lazy. 

Long version: Turns out I'm still pretty lazy, so I'd rather not talk about it.

Instead, let's talk tacos, and then I'll tell you guys about what I'm gonna blog about next!

So day 29 was a Sunday.  We had a friend in town. She was working with Derek. Some of the folks over at the shop wanted to go out for dinner. We went to Brasa Rotisserie. That place roolz (provided you like meat). Unfortunately, that meant that we had a huge dinner and then still needed to eat a taco for the day.

So sad.

So we had to go to Chipotle after dinner, all super duper full from the great meal, and have an emergency taco.

It was an uncomfortable pain in the ass, however it was also our first Emergency Taco, so I was fully willing to have the experience, even though I felt like barfing afterwards.  We each just ordered one hard shell taco. Mine had steak. It looked like this.

And I ate the whole thing.

For the final day of the month, we had a little palaver and decided that traditional, original recipe tacos were the way to go. It was a whole taco-bar situation, with homemade guacamole (I didn't realize that I didn't know how to make guacamole until I started making it and realized that I had very little idea what was supposed to be in it. So i mashed up a avocado or two and then threw in tomatoes, onions, lime juice, and some other stuff and then mixed it all around until it looked legit.)

What goes better with hard shelled, Ortega
seasoned tacos than tater tots?
 Nothing, I say!

On the side are tots (side note: we had a gluten free friend with us for the glorious conclusion of the month, so I got to learn that tater tots and hard taco shells are both gluten free foods. So that's something) and spanish rice from one of those bags of premade rice that you microwave for 90 seconds. I wish I could remember what brand it was so I could tell you to not EVER buy it.

So these tacos had Ortega seasoned ground beef, lettuce, tomato, shredded cheese, guacamole, pickled jalapeno, and green onion. Traditional. Delicious. A fitting way to wrap up 30 Days Of Tacos.



Ok, so now that we're past Taco Month (or the "Most Magical Time of the Year" depending on who you ask) I was thinking that I'd like to try blogging about something else.  Last year, I didn't have a plan, and even though I had the best of intentions (or at least some mediocre ones) I coudn't manage to do much actual writing to you guys. This year, however, Derek and I are trying a new food thing, and I was thinking I could tell you about it as we go.

In an effort to be more like our friends Aleisha and Josh, we joined the Harmony Valley Farm CSA. It's a thing where you pay them some money, and then every week or 2 (we're on an every-other-week plan) you (in this case "Derek") go to a site in your neighborhood to pick up a box of produce. They send whatever's in season. Along with the box is a newsletter that lists all of the stuff you're getting and has a few recipe ideas. We just got our first box on Thursday, and the newsletter is already very helpful, as I was unfamiliar with many of the varietals we recieved.  They also have meat, fruit, cheese, and coffee shares. Part of me regrets not getting a cheese share, but I don't think I could have eaten all that cheese. I would have had fun trying, though.

I stole this picture from Derek's
facebook page because I'm a
picture thief and bad planner.

This week the box included:

• Overwintered Parsnips
• Sunchokes
• Baby Arugula
• Salad Mix
• Nettles
• Green Garlic
• Chives
• Egyptian Walking Onions
• French Breakfast Radishes
• Rhubarb
• Asparagus

I had to have Josh explain the difference between the green garlic and Egyptian walking onions to me since they look almost identical. Also, we're glad they told us about sunchokes and stinging nettles. We look forward to eating those sunchokes, and the nettles went straight into the trash.

Every 2 weeks we'll get a new box with some different stuff in it. I was thinking I'd try cooking some of this crazy stuff and then tell you guys about it. I'll probably use a lot of the farms recipes (the website I linked to up there has lots of great looking recipes for it's produce) until my confidence grows.
So far, I've only used the chives from the box (good lord, we have a lot of chives), adding them to everything I've cooked since Thursday (so...one meal). Tonight I was thinking of trying some Spicy English Parsnip Soup and Garlicky Sunchoke Salad with Dill and Feta.


Ok, so I'm pretty excited about this new culinary adventure, and I'm pretty excited about sharing it with the internets. Sadly, I don't have anything else to share right now, and the tire on my car currently leaking air isn't going to patch itself, so I should split. See you cats later!

Day 26-28

Busy, busy, busy.

We have a friend in town, and she's down for whatever, culinarily speaking (or too nice to tell us she's not), so she's been letting me feed her tacos! 

But the night before she got here, we had these Turkey Tacos (I finally figured out what I meant by "Turkey" earlier in the month!)

It's a Rachel Ray recipe (I think?) for turkey taco salad that I changed a little.  It was really tasty (like, one of those recipes that you eat one time, and then forever have a copy of but never make again. But then, like a hundred years later, when you do make it again, you wonder why the hell you haven't had it in your rotation!)

Anyways, I'm not going to post the recipe right now, because I don't feel like it to leave room for a couple of other recipes, but it'll post it at some point, because it certainly is tasty as hell.


Day 27 was BBQ Chicken Tacos with Jicama/Carrot/Radish Slaw and Joshed-Up Mashed Cauliflower on the side.

Am I finally getting the hang of extreme-close-
up photography of food with a phone?

This was pretty simple to put together, and I finally got to try putting diced pickle on my tacos, which I've been thinking about since we ate at Pepitos. It was worth it. I put diced pickle on tacos now. It's my new thing.

It's zingy.

It goes like this:

1. Poach and shred chicken breast (or OMG, rotisserie chicken would have been amazeballs)
2. Dice pickles
3. Shred cheese
4. Shred lettuce (or spinach)
5. Make tortillas
6. Crack open a bottle of your favorite BBQ sauce
7. BOOM

The slaw was basically julienned jicama, carrots, and radish mixed with lime juice, lemon zest, salt, and cilantro. It was fine, nothing outstanding.

Mashed cauliflower tastes almost the same as mashed potatoes, but I'm pretty sure it's better for you (although I added 4 chopped slices of bacon and some cheese to mine, so it may be better for you, but probably wasn't especially healthy).  I Joshed up this recipe with thyme and bacon, and removed the cream cheese (mistake).

Day 28

ZOMG this was one of my best-ever ideas to date.

Maybe even better than that time I said, "hey, I'mma have a beer now." (20 minutes ago)

So, we've done a few dessert tacos this month. Mostly they've had fruit in them and the shell has been a doctored version of a traditional shell. This one is a little different. The only fruit was a few slices of banana (just enough to add banana-split flavor and to be able to call it a health food), and the shell is like a traditional hard shell... other than that it's made out of cookie dough.

As good as it looks.

So I took a package of gluten free chocolate chunk cookie dough (it comes separated into 12 dough balls), smashed together 2 dough balls for each shell, flattened them out, baked as directed, and then right when they came out of the oven I draped them over something triangular (in this case fashioned out of tin foil) to harden. When they were cool they kept their shape but never hardened completely (bless them). 

In them I put sliced banana, small scoops of vanilla ice cream, and then drizzles of caramel and chocolate sauces on top. Since the cookies stayed a little soft (bless them) they didn't break quite as easily as a regular hard shell, and so they were a little easier to eat.

You guys? Go get some cookie dough.  Bake it, shape it, fill it with terrible/delicious things and eat the everloving hell out of it. You're welcome.

We're very near the end of 30 Days Of Tacos. Have you all enjoyed eating with your hands every day this month? I know I have!

Days 22-25

You know, I used to think of this blog as something that I had to either do every day, or feel guilty about not doing every day. I feel so much better about it now that I've given myself permission to write every 3 or so days. Way easier. Ahhhh.


Day 22: Breakfast Tacos

I've been looking forward to these things since some time in March.  Something about scrambed eggs, bacon, cheese, salsa, and jalapeno is so satisfying.  Instead of failing at hashbrowns (I've been known to throw tater tots in the oven and call them "hashbrown bites," which I totally agree is cheating), I decided to try making strawberry pancakes. 
There's a cafe around the corner called Common Roots with great food and super coffee.  It's menu changes monthly.  This month, strawberry pancakes with lemon curd has been on the breakfast menu.  I've had them a few times. They are quite tasty.  I wanted to recreate them so that I could eat them whenever I wanted, including after this month when the menu changes again.  Mine weren't nearly as good, but they were still pancakes with strawberries in them and lemon curd on top, which is still pretty darn good.

I got a little fancy with the eggs (we call it "Joshing them up," because it's what Josh would do.)  I'm glad I did.


Joshed-Up Eggs:

ingredients:
6 eggs
1/2 onion, diced
1/2 green pepper, diced
2 cloves garlic, sliced
dash of milk
shredded cheese (I used monterey jack, but whatever you want. Also, I didn't measure, so I'm just going to guess that it was 1/2 cup)
sprinkle of taco seasoning
salt and pepper to taste


Heat a pan over medium heat. Add a little oil.  Sautee the shit out of the vegetables. Like, they should be really soft and much smaller than they started and it should smell awesome.  In the middle of sauteeing, sprinkle a little taco seasoning over them.  Continue to sautee for even longer.  Take your time.  Enjoy the sautee.

Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs and milk, season with salt and pepper. 

When they vegetables have been thoroughly sauteed, pour the eggs over the top. Let it sit, undisturbed, until you can see the edges starting to cook.  Then, using a wooden spoon (or whatever utensil you were using to sautee, I don't care), start pulling the edges of the egg mixture towards the center, allowing the uncooked egg to run to the outside. Keep stirring like that.  While you stir those bad boys, and there is still some liquid egg in the pan, add the cheese to the mix.  Keep stirring until it looks like cooked scrambled egg.

Remove from heat.  Put in taco with bacon, jalapeno, salsa, whatever else you want.

OMG, that reminds me! I should give you another recipe. One that has changed my life (admittedly very slightly) since I learned it.

Baked Bacon

or;

Bakedon

Preaheat oven to 400 degrees
Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.
Put raw bacon on the parchment, make sure its not touching, but fit as much on there as you can.
Bake bacon for 15-18 minutes, turning once during cooking.  Take it out. If it's not crispy enough yet, put it back in there for a couple minutes until it's just how you like it.

I prefer this method of bacon cooking because it's tidier, requires less of my attention, and the bacon smell clears out of the house quite a bit faster (Look, I love bacon smell as much as the next guy, but it's a little old by dinner time).


Day 23: Thai Beef Tacos

This is another Pinterest recipe. It was good.  There were a lot of ingredients, and you have to marinade the beef for a really long time, so it takes a little planning, but it was worth the hassle.

That's fried rice on the side.  Turns out I
don't know how to make fried rice, so I
had to improvise. It went better than I
expected.

That said, I'm not convinced that mangos are worth the hassle. I like them (if they're ripe) well enough, they're just such a pain in the ass to cut up.  Maybe I'm missing something? Well, anyways, there was a mango salsa on the beef, along with cilantro, crushed peanuts, and sweet chili sauce.

Day 24: Fish Tacos

I don't really want to talk about these. I don't really like cooking with fish because I don't like living in a home that smells like a rancid garbage can. On the other hand, I sure do enjoy fish tacos occasionally. So I tried this recipe from the Feed Zone Cookbook.  It was a simple recipe, mostly just fish chunks covered in flour, taco seasoning, and pepper, then fried for a few minutes.  The result wasn't especially flavorful.  The tacos were filled with fish, rice, black beans, and cilantro.  On the side, marinated mozarella, grape tomatoes, and fresh basil salad on baby spinach.

I am REALLY sorry about how blurry this
picture is. I only took the one picture, and I
didn't notice until I uploaded it how totally
 out of focus it is.

I thought they were totally underwhelming. Derek liked them better than I did, which I think is unusual.

Day 25: RUSTY TACO

GO TO THE RUSTY TACO. It has excellent tacos. There's one in Saint Paul, and (according to the website) a few in Texas. It's one of my favorite places to get tacos. There are, like, 15 or so different tacos to choose from. We had chips and salsa on the side. We sat at the taco bar. We lined our tacos up for the picture.

They cater. I wonder if they will cater our
hypothetical wedding.

I had a roasted pork taco, black bean taco, bbq brisket taco (on the completely correct recommendation of the guy behind the counter) and a fried chicken taco (a personal favorite).  The bbq sauce on the brisket one was suprisingly good.




Seriously, though? Go to Rusty Taco.

Days 18-21

Hi!

It's been a few days, so there's a few tacos to share, so let's get to it!

First, I was just looking at my last post, and I noticed that I referenced 3 days in it, but only told you about 2 of them. I am barely profoundly sorry.

Tuesday I got my ass handed to me by my kickboxing class. Like, a "red faced, stinky, sweaty, hard to walk up a flight of stairs afterwards" workout. Consequently, I didn't much feel like cooking when I got out of the shower, so we went to French Meadow to try their fish tacos.

they like putting sauce on things

They tasted okay.  There were so many ingredients that it was kind of hard to taste the fish, and the tacos themselves were stuffed a little full to make tidy-eating possible, but French Meadow always has great, fresh ingredients.  There were 2 girls sitting at the next table who were too loud and didn't know very much about The Hunger Games, so I didn't care for them particularly.

On Wednesday, I took a chance on an idea I'd had for a Mexico/Philadelphia fusion food with Philly Cheese Steak Tacos. They were, in my opinon, a triumph.

...Triumphant enough to deserve their own recipe.

ingredients:
2 tbsp olive or vegetable oil
1 lb sirloin steak, partially frozen
1 small onion, diced
1 green pepper, diced
6 mushrooms, sliced
Your Favorite Seasoning (I like Lawry's)
4+ slices provolone cheese
sliced tomato
shredded lettuce (or spinach)
taco shells

1. In a large pan, sautee onion, green pepper, and mushroom over medium high heat with 1 tbsp olive oil until soft.  During sautee, season with seasoning salt (I assumed we had some at home but was wrong, so I ended up using the taco seasoning I'd made for the beef and sweet potato tacos a few days before.)
2. Meanwhile, slice the partially frozen beef into thin strips
3. After the vegetables are soft, remove from pan and set aside. Heat remaining oil over medium-high heat and brown beef until cooked through.  During cooking, season with more Lawry's.
4. Add the vegetables back to the pan with meat, taste and adjust seasoning.
5. Lay slices of cheese over beef mixture and wait for the cheese to melt (if your pan has a lid, covering it will help the cheese melt faster)
6. Once cheese is melted, stir everything together.
7. Serve meat mixture in taco shells with shredded lettuce and sliced tomato.

Philly Cheese Steaks are one of my specialties, as I spent about 3 years working for Steak Express, a restaurant in Valley West Mall. Seriously, if you ever meet anyone who worked there (I bet there's under 20 of us worldwide) beg them to make you a Philly Cheese Steak.  We're awesome at it.


Thursday:
Back out to a restaurant.  This time, Taqueria La Hacienda.  It's on Lake Street.  It's kind of like Los Ocompo, but slightly closer to our house.  The chorizo was great (turns out I love chorizo).

Mine are the nearest tacos.  If memory serves,
2 carne asada, 1 bbq pork, and 1 chorizo.

It's one of those places that I would never have gone on my own (I fear change), but I'm happy we went.  Everything was flavorful, all the salsa was spicy, and it was very reasonably priced.  Added bonus: Coke in glass bottles.

Friday:
I went out on a culinary limb again.  This time, Martha Stewart provided me with a recipe for turkey meatballs in marinara that I adapted slightly for taco-eating.

I just took this recipe here, added some red pepper to both the meat mixture and the sauce, substituted taco shells for spaghetti (the decision to not have spaghetti on the side was a wrenching one), and put some mozarella on top.  They were tremendously satisfying. Like, even if you want to put these things on spaghetti or in a sub or directly from the pan into your face, I strongly suggest making them at some point.

And finally, today.

Derek, Damon and I went to Pineda in Plymouth.  They don't seem to have a website, so the link is to it's Urbanspoon page. I had 4 hardshell tacos.  In ascending order of deliciousness: Grilled chicken, steak, barbacoa, and pork in green sauce.

Downside: it was hard to tell which was which just by looking at them. Upside, surprise is half the fun!

Ok, I better go, or I won't have time to drink a beer before bed.

Goodnight, Tacoistas!