It's Taco Tuesday!

Sorry Taco Time...it's Taco Tuesday at our house too!

I used to make my own taco shells quite often...I'm referring to something I wrote in the last blog when I say I didn't want to drag all the hungry yard apes to the store with me because I forgot to get shells for tacos during my last shopping trip.

Here's my recipe for these....it's super duper easy and they taste great...but can be a little time consuming so start supper early or have supper late....unless you've got some help or do these earlier in the day.

Home Tortillas
-2 cups all-purpose flour
-1/2 teaspoon salt
-1/4 cup margarine
-1/2 cup warm water

-Combine flour and salt in a bowl, cut in margarine, and then add the water into a well formed in the middle of the mixture. Combine into a dough and knead lightly.
-Divide into 12 equal parts. Lightly grease your hands with some margarine and roll each ball of dough with your hands to coat them with fat.
-Cover with a cloth and allow to rest for about 30 minutes.
-Roll each ball into a thin 8 inch circle on a lightly floured surface. Pull or stretch if necessary. Allow to rest by cooking the tortillas in the sequence they were rolled out.
-Cook on a hot ungreased griddle until brown speckles appear on the underside. Use spatula to squash down and flip to cook on both sides.
-Finished tortillas can be stacked between paper towels or the folds of clean tea towels.

Don't worry if they are not perfect circles because they just... won't.... be... but your family will love them anyway.

Now these tacos take some time to prepare and I usually enlist the help of somebody in the household to help me with these. OR I just buy taco shells when I do my weekly grocery shopping trip. (I'm much more organized than I used to be with shopping trips--when the kids were little I was such a scatter-brain!)
Our family likes the store bought shells in the different flavours like the spinach, cheese or tomato-flavoured shells.

BUT I always make my own taco seasoning...here's my recipe for this mixture and we love, love it! I double or triple this recipe, use about 3 heaping tablespoonfuls (we like it strong) to the meat and store the rest in a clean labeled canning jar with a tight lid. Keeps well for many months in the pantry.

Taco Seasoning
-6 teaspoons chili powder
-5 teaspoons paprika
-4 1/2 teaspoons cumin
-2 1/2 teaspoons onion powder
   or onion salt
-1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
-1 teaspoon garlic powder
-1/2 to 1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon oregano

-Combine all the ingredients in a bowl. Stir or whisk well and store in an airtight container in a cool dry place. Stays fresh for at least 6 months.
-When making chicken, beef or pork tacos--brown the meat in a frypan and drain. Add 1/2 cup water and enough taco seasoning to your preferred taste then simmer until most of the water has evaporated--about 10 minutes.

..and there we have it.
It only takes about 5 minutes of my time to mix up the seasoning and because we have tacos every month or two, it's well worth making a big batch of it and always having it on hand. It saves a few pennies and tastes much stronger than store-bought seasoning mix. We always had to buy two packages anyway to get what we wanted. I dislike bland food.

Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice....and Cheap

When the kids were small, I hated packing up everybody (and there was always a resistant baby to drag along) so I could just pick up a few things at the store just before supper time. I decided to make some of my own spices, syrups and mixes and with a little creativity could go a week without stopping at the grocery store except to quickly pick up milk, bread, and eggs. And those were often things I could ask Mike to pick up along the way from work.

I was raised by depression-era parents so I can get quite frugal when I want to. That is a skill in it's own.

Some of my favorite do-it-yourself mixes are things like seasoning salt (I have two such spice mixes that we enjoy), chocolate syrup, coffee creamer for my homemade iced coffee, sweet coffee mix, Italian seasoning, ranch dressing, and many many more. Some I've looked up on the internet and usually end up tweaking the recipe slightly. Some recipes I've found in old cookbooks like dog biscuits and chocolate pudding. It amazes me how we've forgotten how to make simple mixes instead of dishing out so much of our hard-earned money for something that doesn't taste that good.

Here's what I've been making a lot lately, since the weather has turned nice...finally....
It tastes a whole lot better than Timmy's iced coffee, in my opinion anyway, and you can make this as sweet or as strong as you'd like.

As you can see, the second batch I made this week is almost gone!

Iced Coffee:
     Put a heaping cupful of ground coffee in a clean 4 litre ice cream pail. Fill with cold tap water. Put the lid on the pail and let it sit on the counter overnight or at least 8 hours.
After the coffee and water has soaked, pour it through a few layers of cheesecloth. (I lay my cheesecloth in a strainer and set it on top of a pitcher.) Refrigerate.

Creamer:
     In a blender put one can of sweetened condensed milk, 1 3/4 cups of milk and 2 tablespoons of vanilla extract (I've tried rum extract and it tastes great too). Blend well and pour into container(s) and refrigerate. Lasts a week and a half at least (or until the milk expires). May have to shake before using.

Put a few ice cubes in a glass, fill with your cold coffee and top off with your homemade creamer. You can tweak it as you like by adding more coffee to make it stronger or you can use heavy cream instead of milk in the creamer to make it creamier.

We've been enjoying this home-brewed iced coffee for the last few years.....Mike and I seemed to have acquired a fetish for iced coffee but it was costing a bucket of money every week--something had to be done!!