I'm on this eating-better-but-still-enjoying-comfort-food kick. Tacos are mostly meat and can be as good or as bad as you make them. They're also very easy to throw together on a weeknight after a long day at work and a trip to the gym that can leave you feeling a little rundown and lazy, which was what I was feeling.
Now, if you've been following my blog, you may have caught on that my boyfriend is somewhat of a picky eater (and that we pretty much eat dinner together every night). It's tough to find meals that will make us both happy sometimes, even if he is good about picking out the things he doesn't like or I'm nice enough to leave them out.
Tacos aren't necessarily the plainest of foods, but they can be. When we get Mexican take-out (from Olecito or Anna's), he'll order a quesadilla with just cheese and chicken. I love Olecito's steak burrito, complete with rice, beans, guacamole, pico de gallo, and even the sour cream, which I would normally forgo.
Because tacos at home are a do-it-yourself affair, we could each make ours how we wanted. You can start with whatever taco meat, seasonings, and shells (soft or hard) you want. I chose to pick up a package of ground beef and a box by Old El Paso that came with the shells, taco seasoning, and some sauce. You could call this cheating, but I can't make from-scratch meals every night, and I think cutting some corners sometimes is okay.
I also bought a head of iceberg lettuce (no it's not the best kind for you, but it gives that crunch I want in a taco), some colored peppers, a red onion, cucumbers, and a bag of shredded Mexican cheese. The plan was for my boyfriend to have his plain tacos with a salad on the side and for me to jazz mine up by making a taco salad.
As I mentioned above, making tacos is easy. The most time-consuming part was just chopping up all the veggies. I preheated the oven for crisping up our shells and browned the beef while I prepped the veggies. Then I popped the shells in the oven, added the seasoning to the meat, scooped the veggies into various bowls, and had everything ready at relatively the same time.
Had I had more time and energy or a boyfriend who would eat it, I also would have made guacamole, which is my favorite taco topping. And why don't they make tiny cans of refried beans? Maybe next time. Dinner was still great!
So here's his version, your basic meat and cheese taco:
And here's mine, a fresh, crunchy taco salad, drizzled with taco sauce:
What do you put on your tacos?