Days 8 and 9: 12 Cheers!

Howdy!

It's been a couple of crazy days!  I've been so busy, what with work, the band, my volunteer work, and that quick stop in Vancouver...I just haven't found the time to write!

...

That's not true, I just didn't feel like blogging.

That means we have a couple of tacos to talk about.  Three cheers for tacos!

Friday night we had BLT(acos).  I feel like I may have mentioned them in the last post.  They turned out great.  We ran out of soft flour tortillas a few days ago, so I went and got some soft flour whole wheat ones.  They say something about being low carb on the package too, I think.  So presumeably they're the healthiest thing that anyone's ever eaten.  Like, I bet they're super negative calories, and they're probably made out of 100% whole grain vitamins and minerals or whatever.  They're also nice and soft, and they taste good.  Also, just to keep things simple, I used the precooked microwave bacon that comes in a box.  It's found in your grocers bacon section.  It's more expensive for less bacon, but I've never managed to use a full package of uncooked bacon before it goes bad, so this cooked thing works out great for me.  Plus, it's not messy and doesn't make your house stink. 

Three cheers for tacos and precooked bacon!

The salad on the side is just tomato, celery, cucumber, and marinated cherry-sized mozzarella.  It comes in a plastic tub, all pre-marinated, and the marinade is tasty, so i just pour a little extra over the veggies and then let it sit in the fridge for a little while.  It's served, as you can see, over more lettuce.  It was a crunchy meal, and I liked it.  I think Derek probably did, too.

Ya know, just off the top of my head, I can't really remember what I did on Friday other than eat BLT(aco)s.  I worked out, then I goofed off, showered, went to Target maybe?  Yeah, I must've gone to Target. 

It's all coming back to me now. 

After dinner, we went over to Sebastian Joe's for a scoop of creamy, delicious ice cream.  We weren't the only ones who thought of it.  Not suprising, I guess, on the first warmish night of the last 6 months.  After we got home from that, we walked over to Common Roots for a latte.  I love their Earl Gray Almond Latte. 

Yesterday I worked.  Then we went and ate an extremely late lunch at Soho Cafe in uptown.  I'd love to link it for you, but they don't seem to have a website.  Go there anyways.  Totally nice dudes, totally good food.  We eat there a lot.  Actually, this dude that works there, Mike, knows our names.  And we his (obviously).  After that we went shoe shopping and then grocery shopping.  I'd planned to make stir fry for dinner, but by the time we started to get hungry, I was totes not in the mood to cook anymore, so Derek suggested Snacks For Dinner.  (It's capitalized because it's the official name of a meal.)  It's one of my favorites.  I didn't take a picture (no tacos involved), but Snacks For Dinner last night included a pear, carrots, pea pods, Trader Joes Edamame Hummus (pick some up next time you're there restocking your Almond Butter), 5 kinds of cheese, crackers, and pizza rolls.  We watched Dinner For Schmucks on demand while we ate.  Some of the movie made me want to go do the dishes (one of my coping mechanisms when a movie or show makes me uncomfortable), but for the most part it was super funny.  I love movies where Paul Rudd is friends with weirdos. 

Three Cheers for tacos, bacon, and Role Models! 

So you're probably thinking, "OMG, Becky, seriously?  WTF are you even talking about?  I came here to read about tacos, and you're writing all this completely unrelated garbage about I don't even know what!  And what's with all the cheersings?!?"

Ouch, guys, that hurts.  Totally not cool.  Just.....ouch.

You know what?  It's ok.  You have a point.  I just scrolled back through what I've already written, and I have to admit that it's substantial.  I've no intention of erasing any of it, and what you've read is what I've written in it's entirety, but I'm at least willing to admit that you're right, even if you were just really harsh about it.

Shall we put this unpleasanteness behind us and continue?

DESSERT TACOS

I got the idea for the shell from this blog, who got the idea from over here.  They used tin foil in the oven to make their shells and I used my handy-dandy hard shell baker.  Basically, spray both sides of a tortilla with butter flavored cooking spray, sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar (I have a salt-shaker full of it in the spice cabinet for just such occasions) and bake until hard. 
I'm guessing we'll use this kind of shell again with different fillings.
That's not to say that these fillings weren't delicious.  Vanilla ice cream, apples sauteed in butter with cinnamon and brown sugar, drizzled with caramel sauce.  Good stuff.  I used some of the leftover apples this morning in my oatmeal. 

Speaking of...

Wait, you know what?  I'm not going to talk about this mornings oatmeal now. I'm going to save it for a later blog.  Like that?  You were all mean about my getting off topic, so now you have to wait to hear about my oatmeal until next time.  Let that be a lesson.

Three Cheers for tacos, bacon, Role Models, and lessons!!

Although....

I'm not going to talk about my oatmeal, but I am going to leave you with a third picture.  I decided that this week, on the countdown to the DVD release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows pt 1, I'm going to post Harry Potter pictures.  They're ones I took when we were at the theme park last summer.  They are proof that I can take a decent cell phone picture from time to time, even if I rarely take a good looking taco picture.  ("Taco Pic" sort of sounds dirty, doesn't it?)

So here's the first in the OMG I <3 HP series:




Hogwarts, as viewed from Hogsmeade

There you have it.  Before you saw this picture, you were proabaly all, "Like I even care about Harry Potter, Becky, just tell me about the oatmeal already."
But now you're all, "OMG I <3 HP, too!"

That's all you get for now. 

Until next time...

Day 7: What is it with that bean?!

Hey, party people!

So day 7 has come and gone.  I'm really enjoying seeing pictures of everyone elses tacos on Twitter and such. 

Last night we had pretty standard tacos.  I sort of used the Eating Well Taco Salad recipe for the protien, although I used less onion, less garlic, and no sour cream.  Tomatoes, lettuce, cheese, and soft flour tortillas rounded out the tacos.  Chips, salsa, and Whole Foods bean salad finished off the meal. 

It was fine, so far as tacos go.  Basically a Regular Kind taco with turkey/kidney bean protien.  The Whole Foods bean salad stuff was vegan, and Derek pointed out that salt is apparently not vegan, as there didn't seem to be any in it at all.  We added some and it tasted ok.  There were some great-big-huge beans in the salad that (for some unknown reason) sort of creeped me out.  If I had a therapist, I'd totally explore why.

That's what it looks like.  I put it next to a dime (obviously, duh) for size comparison.  Does anyone know what kind of bean that is?  Derek says it's an heirloom bean.  I didn't know that was even a thing.  Then again, I'm no bean expert.  Next: Anyone know why I find them troubling?

Onward.

Magically Erased Hand Update:  Today it's scaly and peeling.  I suspect I'm almost healed.

Next on the taco calendar is the BLT(aco).  I'll probably make something super easy to go on the side, like a mozzarella/tomato salad thing.  The warm weather makes me feel like eating light stuff.  (In this scenario, lets pretend like cheese-based salad and bacon-based tacos count as "light stuff."  At least there's lettuce involved.)

I think I'll stop blogging now.  It's my day off, and I'd like to get my shopping out of the way so that I can properly laze later.  It's warm enough out that I think I'll wear a long sleeve shirt, jeans, and flip flops.  My "dressing appropriately for the weather" philosophy is that it's ok for only one part to be uncovered in order to stay warm enough.  For example, i could wear short sleeves with pants and shoes, or capris with long sleeves and shoes, or sandals with long pants and long sleeves.  I'm pretty sure I learned this philosophy from my mother, whom I become more and more like as time passes.

Ok, my flip flops and I are going to Target now. 

kthxbai

Day 6: Our waiter reminded me of Lance Armstrong

I'm just going to get this out of the way first: there's something I've  been meaning to tell you all week.  Remember the red back-of-hand that I showed you on Sunday from the Magic Eraser?  Yeah, well it's not exactly red anymore, but it's still bumpy and rough.  So PSA, folks, don't use those things on your skin. 

When I got home from the gym yesterday, lovely, wonderful, thoughtful Derek suggested that I might not feel like cooking and that we could explore going out for dinner.  I hadn't even realized that I didn't want to cook until he mentioned it.  What a great guy :)

We decided on Cocina Del Barrio at 50th and France.  Neither of us had been there before, so adventure time!

We passed Damon on his bike on the way down there, so we pulled over at his house to invite him (after whistling out the window at him, obviously.)  A short while later, we had Damon in the car with us and were off to the restaurant.

Like fate.

It's a neat place.  They do a tapas kind of thing.  There are four tacos on the menu.  I was originally thinking I'd do one taco and then, like, a salad or something, but all of us ended up eating just tacos. 

They were mighty good.  The picture I took of them isn't, really.  It was dark in there.  The light is coming from Derek's phone, just like professionals use.

Pictured here are the three that I had.  Clockwise from the top,  Skirt Steak Taco Al Carbon, Fried Mahi-Mahi Taco, and Grilled Shrimp Taco.  I think the shrimp one was my favorite, although they all had their own distinct flavor. 

Oh, no!  I'm looking at the time, and I kind of need to go get ready for the gym now!  That means I can't write down every little detail of my day or every little thing I'm thinking about.  I'm quite sure that I'm the only one bummed about that, nevertheless, I'm very sorry, kids.  I'm sure there'll be a much longer blog again in the near future.


Til next time!

Day 5: There will be a quiz at the end

Howdy, folks!

I hope everyone had some delicious day 5 tacos...we sure did!  Maybe ya'll could use this recipe some other time.  It was much tastier than you'd think just by looking at the ingredients.  Here's a picture of our Ricotta Spinach Tacos:

 A vegetarian treat, I added mushrooms to the recipe to give it a little more meaty substance.  It's basically spinach, mushrooms, onions and garlic with a dollop of ricotta mixed with cilantro and raw garlic.  Then it's drizzled with salsa verde.  We used soft corn tortillas.  I highly recommend it!

I haven't used my hard shell maker in a few days.  Owning it sort of makes eating soft shells feel like cheating.

We had roasted garlic and rosemary potatoes, recipe courtesy of the Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook.  I know it's nerdy, so back off.  Actually, I almost got 3 copies for Christmas last year.  Bre gave me it first as a secret santa present.  Then Derek and my mom both had to find something to do with the copies they'd bought me.  I think Derek gave his to a friend.  I believe my mom kept hers for herself.  I love it.  I've tried several of the recipes, and mostly they've been super tasty.  This roasted potato recipe has become a go-to side dish at our house.  Last night they ended up a little overcooked, which has never happened before.  Apparently I should look in on them a little more often.

Overdone potatoes notwithstanding, I managed to finish cooking everything all at once.  It was a rare and amazing thing.  Usually most of the meal is ready and then I have to wait 20 minutes for something to come out of the oven. 

Wow, lookit all that stuff I just wrote about food!  I managed to stay on topic for, like, paragraphs. 

Before I go get ready for work, I'd like to share with you some new vocabulary today.

Pain Shorts:  noun.  Stiff or sore glutes, thighs, and lower abs.  When the muscles where shorts usually cover are all sore. 

I've been wearing pain shorts for a couple of days.  Last nights yoga class was especially difficult at certain points because of them.  I was just thinking this morning that I haven't been completely not stiff anywhere for atleast a couple of weeks.  I'm not especially fond of being sore, but it's not worth it to stop exercising until I feel unstiff again, because it would be so much worse when I started again.

Ok, I'm off.  And now that we've all acknowledged that I have a thing for Harry Potter, lets take a moment to be excited that HP 7.1 comes out on DVD in 9 days!  Yay!!

Days 3 and 4: Gressing

I got to drive home from the gym with my window down tonight, and it was still light out at 7:15.  I found a great deal of pleasure in both of those things.  After an hour of profuse sweating, putting a hoodie on feels very gross.  It's nice to have a breeze blowing past your sweaty neck and semi-wet hair on the way home to shower.

Also bringing me pleasure are the tacos we've been eating.

I'm sorry I didn't post about yesterday's tacos yesterday, but I didn't really do much with my Sunday after the morning post.  Seemed silly to try to squeeze out more words when I was so busy being so lazy. 

So ok:  Sunday, we enjoyed what we've named Brunch Tacos.  Scrambled eggs with onions and cheese in a soft flour tortilla with crispy bacon.  On the side, hashbrown bites (erm, tater tots) and lemon poppy seed muffins.  (I love lemon poppy seed muffins so much that I just had to backspace to uncapitalized them.  Apparently, I love them so much I think they should be proper nouns.)

Here they is:

They were quite tasty. 

Sunday night we went and had dinner with some friends from out of town and some other friends from around the corner at the 112 Eatery downtown.  They have the most crazy-insano delicious dessert there called Nancy Silverton's Butterscotch Budino.  It's so good that I feel compelled to eat it really slowly so that I can savor every moment of the experience.  Go there.  Get one two. 

In review: Butterscotch Budino > Any other dessert ever

I digress.

Or progress.
Regress?

Whichever.  I'm getting gressed.

Today was a pretty average day for me.  Work early, gym after, dinner last.  Monday's are one of my toughest nights at the gym.  I take a 25 minute cardio kick-boxing class followed by 25 minutes of jumping rope.  It  doesn't sound that hard, but it's redick.  Consequently, Monday's are one of the days when I tend to make easier dinners since I'm so worn out and it gets pretty late before we can eat.  Tonight we had Cowboy Steak Tacos.  I really liked them.  There were few ingredients, and using coffee as the base for a sauce was flavorful. 

Straight out of the pan, they sort of looked like fajitas (minus the smoking platter), but since everything was cooked in the same coffee, ketchup, chili power sauce they didn't taste grilled at all.  I thought I bought a Lipton Side at Kowalski's yesterday, but I couldn't find it for dinner.  It's probably in my trunk or behind the microwave or something.  I looked all over.  Stupid thing.  It's probably burning in hell, the bastard.

OMG, I totally forgot to tell you guys something!  When I was leaving work, I texted Derek to tell him as much (awww, so cute!) and I forget why now, but I tried to type "yessir," but my phone autocorrected it to "yessiree."  How much better is that??!?!  It's like it didn't think I was typing whimsically enough.  I love you, iPhone. *sigh*

Sorry, what were we talking about?

Oh right, eating.

So I made a wild rice side from Target that was really tasty.  Plus it was a 90 seconds in the microwave one rather than the 15 minutes on the stove that Lipton would have required of me, so it's best that I couldn't find the other one. 

Anyways, here's the Cowboy Steak Tacos:

the picture that comes with the recipe is better looking, but I'm not here to show you "professional" pictures. (in this case, the use of italics is to signify that a snotty tone was used in pronunciation, and that the misuse of quotations was to signify the use of finger-air quotes. Thank you.) 

That should do it for this episode of Everything Becky Does With Her Time In Blog Form.  Thanks for tuning in.  Hopefully I'll improve at this blogging thing and stop feeling the need to relay every little thing.

And so I bid you adieu, gentle reader. 

Adieu.

Day 2: Pefect Harmony

Hey-ya, Friends.  How're we all on this fine 43 degree morning? 
Sorry I didn't post Day 2's tacos yesterday, but we got home awfully late last night and it was straight to bed for me.

Derek, Damon and I went to ARTCRANK yesterday.  It's a cycling/art kind of a thing where you can go and buy prints of a number of very cool cycling-related posters.  Derek bought a couple of great ones.  They had ARTCRANK glasses and free beer (we bought glasses, but didn't stay late enough to drink any beer), and I understand there was a DJ, but we missed him.  We met up with a couple of friends of D&D (omg, totally calling Derek and Damon D&D from now on, because it makes me feel like they're really big nerds and is also easier to type) whom I'd never met.  Josh and Aleisha are very fantastic, and also very on board with 30 Days of Tacos. 

Earlier in the day, the 3 of us had all been trying to figure out where to eat tacos on that side of town, but were having terrible luck.  We'd sort of vaguely decided that between ARTCRANK and the 4 On The Floor show at the Triple Rock we went to later in the evening we would just have to figure something out.  This idea made me uncomfortable, but I try sometimes to "just go with it," as less uptight people sometimes do.

Wait.  Back up for a second...
At an ARTCRANK show, they give you an order form when you walk in, and you write down which posters you want.  Then, once you've figured it all out and spent some time standing around with people wearing hats with tiny bills, messenger bags, and capris, you go and buy your prints.

The print-purchasing room was down a little hall from the rest of the party.  As we walked back there, we passed a girl carrying a plate of....

no, it can't be...
that would just be too perfect....
are those......
tacos?!???!??!

Yes, tacos.  They had 30 Days of Tacos food for sale at an event that was presumeably full of 30 Days of Biking participants.

Tasty Fate

I had one chicken and one pork taco, made by Chowgirl Killer Catering.  Good work, Chowgirls!  I didn't get a chance to try the salsa or guacamole, but based on the delicious tacos, I think it's a safe bet that the extras were also good.  That's a big pile of cilantro on top of the lettuce and cheese, which made me so very happy.

Me (all seductive-like): "Cilantro, mmm, fancy meeting you here."
Cilantro (in my head, because herbs can't talk): "Oooh, hey, baby.  Why don't you take a bite of this."
Me: "I musn't.  My boyfriend is here, and I think he's onto our secret affair."
.....dramatic pause.....
Still Me:Om nom nom nom nom!

With the taco eating out of the way, we headed out to Donny Dirk's Zombie Den for a few drinks before the show.  Good company, good ambience, good margaritas. 

After that, we original 3 parted ways with Josh and Aleisha and headed to the Triple Rock to see 4 On The Floor, where we met up with Becky (not me, the other one) and a couple of her friends. 

So to recap, I was surrounded by really great people all evening. 

Now, if you had run into me between the kitchen and bedroom after I got home last night and asked me how to get the bike hand-stamp off of your hand, i would have suggested the use of a Magic Eraser.  They are, after all, magic.  I used one, and it did a fantastic job of removing my stamp.

Then, when I woke up this morning...

Redness

So as it turns out, Magic Erasers can totally get the ink off the back of your hand by gently removing each inked layer of skin.  It's a little sore, but mostly it's just very stupid.  Lesson learned, I guess.

Or maybe I can't put a checkmark in the "learned" column of that peticular lesson until next time I need to get something off my skin and think "That's not what Magic Erasers are for.  I should explore other options."

I've just glanced back through this blog entry and noticed that I've written much more than I originally intended.  If I hope to write more than a few words about todays taco, I should really stop typing now.  Hopefully something blogworthy happens between now and a little later when we eat tacos again.



Ready, Set, TACO!

Happy Day 1, everyone!  I've been amazed to see all the taco pictures posted with #30daysoftacos hashtags on Twitter today.  It's fun to see real evidence of how everybody wants to be just like me! :)

Kidding.

Ok, but seriously, folks...
I was excited to leave my helluva-work-day behind and head home tonight for a beer and some tacos tonight.  Today we had Chicken and Goat Cheese Tacos with brown rice and black beans on the side (a new favorite side-dish of mine.  How did it take me this long to discover pre-cooked rice in a bag?) and a glass of Delirium Tremens.  Delirium is super tasty beer, and totally worth the hella-mad dollaz it costs at the liquor store.  Seriously, go buy some. 

I'll wait.....

......

Welcome back!

Now that you have a tasty beer to sip on, lets continue.

So yeah, Chicken and Goat Cheese Tacos.  I made some baked hard shells with the hard shell baker thingy, too.  It works pretty well!  Tonight I used corn tortillas.  The shells weren't quite as good as the store-bought hard kind, but I'll make them again.  I'm sure over the next month I'll have an opportunity or 2 to try out a few different methods.  Maybe I'll spray some cooking spray or something to make them crispier.  Unless, of course, spraying them makes them softer.  Do you guys know what'll happen?  Any ideas?

And here it is!  The recipe made a kind of a mayo-free chicken salad.  It was very tasty in tacos, and I'd make it again for sure, either for tacos or just to have as salad.  Goat cheese is good in everything, and this also has a healthy dose of cilantro. 

I love Cilantro.  If it was legal, I'd totally marry Cilantro.  But it'd have to ask me, first.  Me asking Cilantro to get married would just seem desperate.


You may have noticed that I linked todays recipe a couple of paragraphs ago.  I'm not totally sure what I want this blog to be, so for the time being I'm linking recipes.  I don't know if this is going to be a "cooking blog," or a "trying new things  the same things 30 times" blog, or maybe I'll just write whatever about whatever...or whatever.  I guess we'll all grow together.  Whichever way it ends up going, I don't really want to write out recipes.  Mostly because they aren't mine and I'm pretty sure plagiarism is frowned-upon, even on the internet.

That's only partially true.  Really, nothing is frowned-upon on the internet. 
Nothing other than things with 'comments' sections at the bottom, which are frowned-upon by weirdo jerk stranger with nothing better to do than comment mean frowny things when all you want to do is tell the world how much you like whatever.
Nothing and everything is frowned upon on the internet.
Deep Thoughts.
If you're still reading this, congratulations!  Your reward is for this post to end so you can go crack open another Delirium and plan tomorrows taco.

G'nite
B