What to cook this week: Taco night

I’m so tired this week. So. Tired. Part of it is that we have been slowly putting the house back together after the carpet installation last week, and schlepping stuff up and down the stairs ad nauseam is exhausting.

Despite my best efforts to clearly label boxes and bins and put them in a logical order in logical places for storage, towards the end there we just starting chunking stuff into boxes willy-nilly. So of course, for most of the week I didn’t know where anything was.

Even more delightfully, I got semi-told off by my teenager who 1) only did the absolute bare minimum to help with packing up the house, including his own stuff, and 2) then had the audacity to blame me when he couldn’t find something that he needed. IT IS IN A BOX SOMEWHERE, KID. If it was that important to you, it was YOUR responsibility to keep better track of where it got put.

Anyway. All that is tiring. I am also so tired from <gestures wildly at the entire United States political landscape>. See my previous posts, I cannot even, Monday Addams, Real Nazis aren’t bumbling fools, etc. etc. if you’d like details.

So, this week for dinners I am relying on the air fryer to do a lot of the work for me. Here’s the menu:

• Sunday: Taco night, berry crumble
• Monday: Black beans, rice, avocado, tomato, and air fryer tofu
• Tuesday: Air fryer chicken parm, green salad
• Wednesday: Air fryer salmon, steamed broccoli, garlic toast
• Thursday: Lemon hummus pasta, berries
• Friday: Ploughperson’s dinner (i.e. cheese and crackers, fruit, bits of leftovers, everyone fends for themselves)
• Saturday: We have been invited to a dinner party! We’re bringing a cherry pie.

Taco Night

Taco night is pretty versatile at our house. We put everything out on the counter like a buffet and we each make our own variation. I like a taco salad with all the veggies, some sour cream, some chips, and a sprinkling of meat. Doc likes soft tacos with a side salad. Jamie likes to make nachos and pile meat and salad on top of it.

Here’s the recipe portion of this post: To make the taco meat, I brown and finely crumble a pound of lean ground beef (88%), drain the fat off, add a generous heap of taco seasoning spice blend (like 3 or 4 tablespoons), and then a can of drained black beans. Voila.

Sometimes if I don’t want meat, I cook up a package of Trader Joe’s vegan chorizo, then add the black beans. Also delicious.

I had a little spare energy this afternoon so I threw together a very easy berry crumble and also made some fresh pico de Gallo. We already have a bowl of chopped romaine in our fridge (we pretty much have this at all times), and I diced some tomatoes and some onions, which in hindsight I probably didn’t need to do because I also made the pico de Gallo. We have sour cream, shredded cheese in a bag, and a bag of tortilla chips. Our avocados aren’t ripe so we aren’t having diced avocado with lime juice and salt, like we normally do.