The month leading up to our wedding and then the six weeks after, Paul and I were without a permanent place to live. It was a crazy and exciting time but we were so relieved to finally, after ten weeks, find an apartment in San Diego and have a kitchen again (and all our wedding gifts to cook with). To celebrate, we decided to eat only home cooked meals for one month.
I tell this story because, almost two years later, we are right in the middle of another "eat only at home for a month" experiment. This is because Paul is back and excited to be cooking again. And also because with someone else in the house, I feel like meals are worth effort again. And mostly because we ate a lot of meals out on our trip down the coast and were ready for a change. I love this challenge and kind of want it to continue forever.
On Tuesday, we made tacos for the first time. And they were awesome.
Paul grilled chicken (we LOVE our grill and the plan from here on out is to once a week grill enough chicken to last for three different meals) and made up a simple salsa.
The base is just frozen corn (heated in the microwave so it's "cooked"), chopped tomatoes (with seeds and extra juices discarded) & diced onion. Paul mixed those together in a bowl and then added a squeeze of lime, salt & pepper to taste and a bit of cayenne pepper. The measurements are all relaxed, just be sure to taste test throughout to make sure it's shaping up into something you'd like on your tacos.
We also added sour cream, queso (the key to making tacos taste legit - I picked some up at Target and then just crumbled it with my hands) and homemade guacamole. I would hardly call our simple guac mix a recipe, but if you're curious, for ours we just chop up a ripe avocado and add a bit of lime, garlic salt and pepper. That's it. No tomato, onion, cilantro or anything fancy.
Our finishing touch, which we both agree added to the flavor, was grilling the white corn tortillas for about 10 seconds a side once the chicken was done. The grill warmed & stiffened them so they didn't break apart while we were eating.
Seriously - a win of a dinner. We both agreed that tacos will be added to our short list of meal stand-bys. And like I told Paul, the whole prep and cooking process will go a lot faster when I am not trying to make things look cute for photos.
p.s. our yellow tablecloth is Williams Sonoma. The white dishes are Crate & Barrel and the blue plates were bought at Target in the dollar spot for $2.50 five years ago.
