Taco Craving

Lately I've been kind of craving tacos. So last night Stef went and got Taco Bell tacos for us for supper. It's been a very long time since I've eaten at Taco Bell and the last time was at the Coliseum movie theatre in Brittania. That was actually the very first time I ever ate at Taco Bell and quite frankly I thought it was fine but I was also in a hurry...and it was dark! 

So when Stef came home with Taco Bell take away food and I got a chance to take a good look at it, I was extremely disappointed. First of all, the most important thing you need to know about Taco Bell is that they do not use pure beef in their tacos. That's right. They actually have less than half beef in their taco meat filling. Yes, you read that right. In fact, I believe it's substantially less than half beef...something in the range of 36%-40% from what I've read...but of course I don't know their recipe so I can't speak to what the other ingredients are. I'm guessing some kind of soy blend or something. It's all edible, but it's not all beef. So the meat in Taco Bell tacos is just not as yummy as homemade tacos because they don't use as much beef. It kind of goes downhill from there. There's some shreds of lettuce, a few shavings of cheddar cheese and the Taco Bell mystery meat filling. There's some sauce and a taco shell and all in all, it tastes like a taco. Sort of.

All of that to say that eating my Taco Bell tacos did not alleviate my craving for tacos. Mainly because when I think of tacos, I think of fresh ingredients. Like these...

 So that's why today Steffan went out and bought all kinds of wonderful fresh ingredients so we could make proper tacos!

 He cut up all the veggies, which included fresh tomatoes, red and yellow sweet peppers, a red onion and fresh cilantro. I ran the sharp cheddar cheese through the food processor while he was tending to the veggies. I also took care of browning and seasoning the beef with taco seasoning mix.

We had some jar salsa and some refried beans too so we put them as toppings too.

 I whipped up some guacamole in the food processor as well. My recipe includes avocadoes, fresh cilantro, ground cumin, red onion, fresh lemon juice and salt. The food processor is a life saver for making stuff like this (thanks Mom!) and saves a lot of energy. It also makes the guacamole really smooth.

 Here's the beef browning and seasoned with taco seasoning mix. Mmmmm...

 Some of the toppings were jar salsa, refried beans, sour cream, grated cheese, homemade guacamole and fresh salsa made with tomatoes, corn niblets, red and yellow sweet peppers and fresh cilantro.

 Here's the final product shots...I had hard taco shells and Stef...

 ...he had a soft tortilla shell, making his more like a fajita than a taco. Though I think they still call it a softshell taco in that case!

Well that was our excitement for today. It was a lot of work making all that stuff up and now I'm pretty tired. Good thing we have leftovers so we can have tacos tomorrow too!