Brunswick Stew - Super Yums!

Ok, so last week when we had Gumbo, I realized as I was serving it, that what I really wanted was Brunswick Stew. And not just any Brunswick Stew, but my mother-in-law’s. She makes it a lot for Christmas Day, and we’ve had it other times throughout the year. It’s so good, that I just started craving it. So I turned to Jesse and said, “You know what I really need to do? I need to get Courtney’s recipe for Brunswick Stew.” Jesse immediately responded, “Oh, you mean this?” And whipped the recipe out of our recipe box. OMG, we had it all this time!!!!! I couldn’t believe it! (It was a totally awesome reaction, btw) So I immediately resolved that our next blog entry would be about the stew.

We decided to have the stew on Tuesday. Courtney makes it in the crock pot, so at first I was like, I can just do this in the morning before school. Well, I was subbing at Norcross that day, so that meant I was up at 5:30. The night before I was at a dinner and didn’t get home until 11:30. I require about 8-10 hours of sleep to be fully functional. So needless to say, I decided since I would be home by 2:30, I could just make the Brunswick Stew in the crock pot on high, take a nap, and still have everything ready to eat by about 7:00. Of course nothing ever goes that easy for me.

So obviously the first thing I had to do was get together the ingredients. I did that earlier in the week. Here’s the list of ingredients:

• 1 (2 to 3 lb chicken)
• 2 (28 oz) cans of regular crushed tomatoes
• 2 (16 oz) cans of kernel corn
• 1 (16 oz) can of creamed corn
• ¾ can tomato paste
• 1 cup ketchup
• ½ cup BBQ sauce
• 1 chopped onion
• 1 tablespoon liquid smoke
• 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
• 2 ½ tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
• ¼ teaspoon allspice
• ¼ teaspoon cumin
• ¼ teaspoon cayenne
• salt & pepper
• celery salt

Yum yums!

So when I went to the store, I didn’t put all of the quantities down that I needed. For the can of crushed tomatoes, I wasn’t sure what the normal size was. I could only find the 28 oz size. I wasn’t sure if that was the size I needed, or if it wasn’t, so I just bought one. I also didn’t know which size can of tomato paste to get, so I got the most common one. Last, I couldn’t remember how much vinegar, so I bought a huge jug of it. For one tablespoon. Oops. Haha. I also realized when I got home from the store, that I needed more ketchup. All of that meant more trips to the store. I stopped on my way home from school and picked up the ketchup, still not realized I needed more of the crushed tomatoes. It wasn’t until I was home and getting all of the ingredients out that I saw I needed 2 28 oz cans. Doh! Back to the store. I made a super quick trip back to the store (good thing Ingles is about 2 miles away and no stops through traffic lights). Finally, I was home, had all the ingredients, and was ready to go.

The first step Courtney has is to boil the chicken until it’s falling off the bone and then to reserve the stock. I had no time for that, so instead I bought chicken breasts. I cut the chicken breasts up a little until Jesse said I probably didn’t need to do that, so I stopped. In hindsight, it would have probably been easy to cube the chicken…more on that later. I then cut up the onion, which I’d had in the freezer since the day before, to help cut down on watery eyes. Once those were done, I dumped those into my crock pot.

Next, I emptied out one can of crushed tomatoes, took one look at the crock pot and thought, crap! This thing may be too small. Not a good thought, but I was holding out hope. The recipe says 6-10 servings, and I’ve made 6-10 servings of recipes in the crock pot before. Jesse told me it was too small. But I stubbornly refused to listen and poured in the other can of crushed tomatoes and one can of corn. Yeah, it almost overflowed. Now what do I do??? At this point it was all I could do not to tell Sarah “I told you so” but I think I did anyway…

I called my mom. J She has some crock pots and I couldn’t remember if they were bigger than mine or not, so I asked her if I could run to her house and check them out and maybe borrow one. She said sure. Jesse volunteered to go with me, but when we got there, we noticed they were the same size. But what she does have, are some huge stock pots, so we took one of those instead. When we got home, we transferred the food from the crock pot to the stock pot. I then poured in the rest of the ingredients, we put this on the stove and turned it on to a medium-low temperature.

I had to nap, so Jesse kindly agreed to stir the stew and reduce the heat to low. If you do this on a crock pot, you only need about 2-3 hours on high (if the chicken is not already cooked, less if it is) and 5-6 on low (once again, less if the chicken is cooked). Just cook until the chicken is done. If you feel like it is too thick, add some chicken stock. Pretty soon, it’s done. since it usually shreds better when cooking in the crockpot (since it cooks so long), we now had to worry about the giant pieces of chicken that we had. After it cooked for a while, I fished the chicken chunks/breasts out, manually shredded them with some forks, and put them back in the pot.

When I woke up from my nap, I noticed this very delicious smell. I was super excited. The stew looked yummy, and I couldn’t wait to eat it. So I promptly took a spoon and dipped it in the stew. I did not have the patience to wait for it to cool, and immediately burned my tongue. Oops. Finally Jesse and I served ourselves and sat down to eat. Here’s Jesse’s plate. He has to eat this with saltine crackers. I just had a few yeast rolls.

Note: Since this time we made this (first week of April) we have since made it two other times. Halfing the recipe fits perfectly into our crockpot. But it's just as good the other times around. Love it!!!!

Reviews:

Sarah:

Preparation: 5 out of 5. This was easy (once I had all of the ingredients). The hardest thing was chopping up the onion. It would have been even easier if I had been able to make this in the crock pot because then we wouldn’t really have had to stir it too much. Next time we may just make half a serving. Or, if anyone needs any gift ideas, a large crock pot would be awesome!

Taste: 5 out of 5. Seriously, this is soooooooo good. I could have had this for every meal last week. As it is, we had it for leftovers once, and have the rest frozen.

Pickiness Factor: 4 out of 5. I think this is a pretty good one for picky people. Unless your picky person doesn’t like the ingredients. J

Jesse:

Preparation: 5 out of 5. This was super easy….just put it all in the pot and you’re done! Just make sure your pot is large enough, haha—derp.

Taste: 5 out of 5. This dish has definitely evolved over the years. I started to realize how tasty it had gotten and noticed that I, along with Sarah, would look forward to Courtney (My Step-Mother) making it for special family events. She gave me the recipe a few Christmases ago and this was our first attempt at its recreation. I have to say it was amazing. I added Tabasco to mine for some more spice, and served it with a sleeve of saltine crackers. MmMmMmMmm GOOD!

Cost: 4 out of 5. If you don’t have all of the ingredients, it can kinda be a pain—but even so, it’s all still pretty cheap. After you make this, it stores great in the freezer for one of those rainy day meals when you just don’t feel like cooking.

TOTAL: 4.67

Whaddya mean Mardi Gras was a month ago??

So today I attempted Gumbo. First, I must make a HUGE disclaimer: I have never, EVER made Gumbo or Jambalaya, nor have I ever had it that I can remember. So this was a pretty big thing for me…

It all started out with some Cajun seasoning we got from Jesse’s mom from when she and her husband went to New Orleans for their one year anniversary. I looked at it and was like, we should make something Cajun. I figured jambalaya or gumbo could be made in a crock pot, so easy enough, right? I should have known better.

Jesse decided on gumbo, so I set around to searching for some easy-sounding recipes. And while I did that, I started wondering, “What is the difference between gumbo and jambalaya?” So I then decided to look that up. Here’s what I found: Apparently one difference is that gumbo is a soup made with okra and a roux, and jambalaya is not really a soup, and made with rice. I also found how they got their names, and being a French major, I kinda had to slap my hand to my forehead on jambalaya. So gumbo apparently means okra in one of the native African languages slaves spoke back in the day. Maybe Yoruba, I can’t remember. Jambalaya, is ham with rice. I.e. Jambon = ham + à la = of the + ya = rice (once again in a native African language). So Jambalaya actually used to be made with ham, although sausage is pork and ham is pork, so kinda the same (well, sausage usually has pork in it….who knows what else :P). Ok, there’s your linguistics lesson for the day. Sometimes I wish I had also majored in linguistics, but I didn’t realize that until my final semester of college, and I wasn’t going to stay any longer, no matter how much I loved Athens and UGA.

Anyways, back to the topic: Gumbo. I found a recipe for chicken and sausage gumbo that was in the crock pot. The only worrying thing about it was that I would have to make a roux ahead of time. I’ve never made one. I’ve watch both Jesse and my mother make one. I know the basics of making one (stirring nonstop really). But I’ve never made one… I was really hoping I could find some of this at the store. I saw it on a Cajun cooking site where some people from Louisiana said that it’s as good as their Grandma’s. Alas, Ingles doesn’t carry that, so I would have to face my fears.

Once I got home from the store, I then set up a playlist. I have a total of two Cajun songs à grâce de my French classes. I thought I would need at least two more, so I found two from iTunes that didn’t sound entirely the same and bought those. This brought my Cajun playlist to a grand total of 4 songs – one of which is a Christmas song.

• Michel Fugain, Les Acadiens
• Paul Daigle & Robert Elkins, La Veille de Noel
• The Cajun Playboys, T’en a Eu, T’en Au Vas
• Savoy-Ducet Cajun Band, Port Arthur Blues

So, with my playlist cued up, I was ready to go. Here is the recipe I used, mostly pulled from a mix of websites, but the majority from this one:

http://www.ehow.com/how_5211257_make-sausage-gumbo-crock-pot.html

Some of you who know me, may be wondering, “Wait a minute, Sarah doesn’t eat sausage. What is going on here?” And you would be correct. I am one of the pickiest eaters you will ever meet. A sales rep I used to work with called me Sally, as in When Harry Met Sally. I’m honestly not that bad, and I have improved over the years from when Mac & Cheese and Peanut Butter & Jelly were the only things I ate (I’ll take partial credit here ;)). But yeah, still picky over here… And sausage is one thing I really don’t like, and not even because it’s pork. I don’t like the flavor. So turkey or chicken sausage is out. Poor Jesse. I think he was really hoping I would cook it with sausage and just pick it out of my bowl. But no. So no Andouille sausage – which we even already have (incidentally, in reading different posts on different recipes, I learned that this is not always readily available up North. Weird.). So basically these are the ingredients I used:

· 1/3 Cup of All-Purpose flour

· 1/3 Vegetable Oil

· 2-1/2 Cups of Chicken Broth

· 1 Cup of Vegetable Broth

· 1 onion chopped up

· 2 packages of chicken, cut up

· 1 Green Pepper – de-seeded & chopped up

· a few stalks of celery chopped up

· 1 can of diced tomatoes (may try Ro-Tel next time)

· 2 teaspoons minced garlic

· Okra (lol @ Sarah for buying breaded Okra)

· 1 Tablespoon of Big Kevin’s Bayou Blend Seasoning

So the first thing I did was to cut up the green pepper, onion and celery. I put those in a bowl.

Next, I cut up the chicken into small pieces, then browned those in a pan with a little bit of oil. About a capful of oil. And it’s not like the chicken really browned. More like it just cooked a little on all side. I covered the chicken when I was done and prepared to make the roux.

Then, I tackled the roux, with Cajun music in the background. I followed the recipe from the link I provided above. I mixed 1/3 cup of oil and 1/3 cup of flour in a 2-quart saucepan. Once it was mixed, I turned it on medium-high heat and kept stirring for 4 minutes. Then I turned it down and started stirring, fully prepared to stir for the full 15 minutes. Let me tell you how freaking boring that is. When you have ADD, standing there and having to stir is akin to torture. Not physically painful torture, but mentally painful torture. So I kept stirring. Suddenly I noticed the pasty-white color was starting to change. Which was good because it needed to be a dark brown-reddish color. Then it started to smell like it was burning. And I was thinking, uh-oh, is this supposed to happen? But I kept stirring. Then it set off the smoke alarm and I decided it was dark enough. I threw the smoke alarm on the couch and covered it with a blanket, then opened the kitchen window. Good thing it’s so nice outside. Then I let the roux cool, hoping I hadn’t just destroyed dinner. To me, it seemed like it was the right color. But then Jesse came home and said he thought the color looked burned (it was totally burnt, lol). Too bad because I had already added it to the pot… But anyways, here’s what it looked like.

Remember, this is the first time I have EVER made a roux, so please be kind in your criticisms about how maybe it really was burned and too dark. Please?

Ok, so roux is made and cooling. I was a little impatient but stepped away from the kitchen for a few minutes. Then I decided, I can go on and add the chicken and veggie broth. So I did. Of course, by then, I was really ready to get this stuff in the crock pot and ready to cook since it was already past 2:30. So I added the roux. Maybe it should have cooled longer. In hindsight, it also shouldn’t be burnt, but oh well. Then I added the chicken, veggies, can of diced tomatoes, okra, Cajun seasoning and garlic. I stirred it all up and turned the crock pot on high. If you’re doing this in the morning, low should be good enough. Now I just get to sit and wait and find out if the burnt roux ruined the Gumbo or not.

So now everything’s cooking. Jesse came home from work to check on it and see if the burned roux had done any damage. He tasted it and decided it wasn’t spicy enough and that the roux probably hadn’t damaged it yet. So he started adding a little bit of this and a little bit of that, as seen below.

Finally, it had a kick. So we sat back and let it simmer in the crock pot a few more hours…

And this is what it looked like:

So, the big question is, did I ruin dinner or not?

Sarah Review:

Preparation: 3 out of 5. The roux sucked to make. The rest of it was easy, but the roux is why I gave it a 3. I mean, if we do this again, I may just need to order some of that ready-made roux (or have me make it!). Also, as far as crock pot recipes go, this one is definitely not an easy one. I like the ones where you just dump everything in, turn it on, and go to work, then come home to a yummy smell. This could definitely not have been made in the morning. I am not a morning person and would never get up in time to not only make a roux, but brown chicken…

Taste: 4 out of 5. I thought it was pretty good. It’s not my favorite meal and I won’t be dying to have it again, but it was good enough.

Pickiness Factor: 3 out of 5. Ok, this could turn off picky people on several levels. First, the spicyness. I love spicy foods so this was a good part of the meal. Another thing is the way it looks. It’s so dark brown and kind of an unappealing color. I know, that’s superficial, but sometimes, those kinds of things matter to me. But in this case, it was good, because it disguised what I was eating. I’ve never had okra, and I’m not a big fan on eating onions or green peppers (love the flavoring, not the texture), but the sauce color hid all of that, so I ate it an enjoyed it, without thinking, “ew, that was okra and I don’t know how I feel about okra.” I still don’t know how I feel, but I ate it. And those things also add to the pickiness – green peppers, onions and okra – they’re not the plain veggies picky people usually eat. If this had had sausage, the pickiness factor would have gone to a 1… J

Jesse:

Preparation: 5 out of 5. It was easy for me b/c I didn’t have to do anything! Ha! However if I as the one making it, I’d probably give it a 3/5 or a 4/5….it’s all pretty simple unless you’re not too well versed in roux creation—it just takes a lot of prep time….but that than that you can just set it and forget it!

Taste: 4 out of 5. This wasn’t the best gumbo that I’ve had, but it was definitely a wonderful first shot (like Mexican food, even bad gumbo is good gumbo, haha). I think more spices would be needed to be added in the beginning. I would also opt for fresh okra that’s not already cut up or breaded…I think the breading dissolved and make the dish a little thicker than it needed to be. Ultimately the dish still felt like it was still missing something…and I’m pretty sure that’s attributed to the lack of Andouille sausage and shrimp. Perhaps next time, it might be better to make this on a weekend in a stockpot instead of a crockpot…and when there’s about an hour left to go, split it into two separate pots and add sausage and shrimp to my portion =D

Cost: 4 out of 5. Fairly average expenses…the bulk of the cost will come from the sausage/chicken/shrimp…so if you want to skimp on any of this, your price will definitely go down. This also keeps extremely well…and would probably even taste better after being able to marry in the fridge/freezer for a few days. Just make some more rice and you’re good to go!

Average Rating: 3.83

That Was Easy as Pie!

This is a day late, but who cares, it’s our blog and we can do whatever we want so :P.

Monday night we were out of food and didn’t have much in the house. We already needed to go to the grocery store so it was either pick up something quick and easy to make at the grocery store, or settle for one of our old favorites – Mac ‘n Cheese! Despite what many of you might think, we actually did not have macaroni and cheese. I know, weird for me, right?

But, one of our favorite, super easy meals is one of those frozen skillet things. We really love the Asian ones, because, let’s face it, Jesse and I LOVE Asian foods. So super yummy! So we stood in the frozen aisle to check it out and see which ones looked good. One brand that we’ve found we really like is Wanchai Ferry. They also have boxed meals – just buy the chicken and they provide you with the sauces and mixes and stuff. It’s pretty awesome – but really only enough for maybe 3 people.

Anyways, we almost went for a Wanchai Ferry frozen skillet, but then saw that Ingles now carries PF Changs, so we thought, “Why not try something new?” So we bought PF Chang’s General Chang’s Chicken. It said it was spicy, which we like.

Picture of the bag:

Jesse was in charge of the chicken, and I was in charge of the rice.

Jesse got the skillet out – shout out to the Zrolka’s who gave it to us as a wedding gift – and put the mix in. Like I said, we wanted something easy, fast, but yummy! Jesse did an awesome job of getting that ready, and soon it was all cooked and smelling delicious.

Here’s a picture of how awesome it looked:

So what happened next you ask? I all of sudden realize I had failed! I FORGOT TO MAKE THE RICE!!!! And it’s not like rice is something quick. We looked at each other for a moment and shared the same thought, “What do we do now???” I quickly grabbed our rice cooker and hurriedly searched for the instructions (we’ve only used it a few times, but enough for me to remember it’s a lot faster than cooking rice on the stove). I measured the rice and put it into the cooker and added the water.

Our rice cooker helping correct my mistake:

Jesse and I decided that while it cooked, we could go on and eat our salads as an appetizer. We found a great bagged salad mix – I’m not a huge fan of iceberg lettuce (to which Jesse would respond, “Maybe iceberg’s not a huge fan of you!”) so I liked the bagged mixes. We then found a great dressing – Asian with Sesame & Ginger Vinaigrette. We also like to add chow mein noodles to add a bit of a crunch. That’s something I learned from my big sister – thanks Mary Scott!

And add all of these together:

PLUS

PLUS

EQUALS: Voilà, a yummy salad:

Well, we had barely finished our salads when we heard the rice cooker go off indicating the rice was ready – far faster than the 20 minutes to cook plus time to boil on the stovetop. Why don’t we use the rice cooker more often? I digress. Once the rice was finished, we were able to plate our food, or in this case, bowl it. And that led to another delicious meal – this one quick and easy – for the Wades.

Here’s the finished product:

And our ratings for this meal:

Sarah:

Preparation: I give this a 5 out of 5. Really, it’s pre-packaged food so this is a no brainer. And rice in the rice cooker is really easy, too, so there’s no excuse for anyone to ever be afraid to cook rice again!

Taste for whole thing: 4 out of 5. It was really good, but I would have liked more crunch in the stir-fry section. I think next time we may buy water chestnuts to add to it. I also really like bamboo, so we may have to check it out. I did like the kick this had. I’ve started really liking spicy foods, and sometimes even crave them, so this was perfect. Not so hot that it actually burned my mouth (spicy Korean skewers at the karaoke place – but still good), just enough to make my nose run a little.

Pickiness Factor: I give this a 4 out of 5. Some people don’t like spicy foods, so they may not like this. Also, it had red peppers added in. Sometimes I eat those now, sometimes I don’t. This happened to be one of those times that I picked them out and put them to the side.

Jesse:

Preparation: I give this a 5 out of 5 – you have to be ‘tarded to screw this up (don’t worry if you are, there are plenty of ‘tards out there livin’ kick ass lives)

Taste: I give this a 4 out of 5 – it was pretty awesome, but like Sarah, I think adding some water chestnuts for some crunch is an awesome idea. I think having this with Lo mein too might be pretty awesome

Cost: 3 out of 5 - This is about the same as other frozen skillet meals, but you don’t get rice…which means, MORE FOOD (24oz skillet bag w/rice vs 22oz skillet bag w/o rice)! You might have to buy rice separately, but still you end up with more bang for your buck. Still, this gets a 3 out of 5 b/c you would definitely save more money by making all of this from scratch (if you had more time)

Average Rating: 4.17

Inaugural Post - Mexican for Dummies!

So Jesse and I are going to try to start a new blog. This blog is about all the foods we cook and enjoy, will include recipes and reviews about the food, and show pictures of our successes and failures.

We will review out meals based off of the following:

Easiness to prepare (considering I’m not really that great at cooking)

Tastiness

The Special Sarah Rating – made just for those picky eaters like me :)

We will start with last night’s meal: Taco Tuesday!!!!!!

Jesse started by making the guacamole:

Ingredients needed:

2 avocados

Guacamole seasoning (1 packet)

He used Concord Foods Authentic Guacamole Mix which conveniently had the recipe on the back in two languages – English and Spanish. After following the recipe (very easily mashing 2 avocados and mixing with the seasoning), he put it into the fridge to chill for 30 minutes.

Here are the avocados:

Here is the completed guacamole:

Next, I started on the Mexican Rice:

Ingredients needed:

Rice (1 cup uncooked)

Vegetable Oil (3 tablespoons)

Onion powder (1/2 teaspoon)

Garlic powder (1/2 teaspoon)

Salt (1/2 teaspoon)

Taco Seasoning (1 teaspoon)

Tomato Sauce (1/2 cup)

Chicken Broth (2 cups)

I had never made Mexican Rice before, so this was totally new for me. I found what looked to be an easy recipe from my favorite go-to site: www.AllRecipes.com

Here is the link: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Mexican-Rice-II/Detail.aspx

After reading reviews, I made some changes. I didn’t use an actual onion or cumin. We don’t have garlic salt, so I used half garlic powder and half salt. I also added in taco seasoning. Taco Bell taco seasoning is the best. After making these alterations, I pumped myself up by putting on some music.

Music choices of the kitchen:

“Caledonia” by Dougie Maclean

“I Was a Teenage Anarchist” by Against Me!

“Somebody to Love” by Justin Bieber

“You Can Call Me Al” by Paul Simon

Beverage of choice:

Coke

Once I was prepared and in the mood, I began to cook and follow the recipe. There were a few issues. For instance, what on earth is puffed rice? I just kept stirring the rice in the oil and hoped I would figure it out. I did. Puffed rice turns a different color of white and indeed, looks puffed out.

Another issue I encountered: when I added the tomato sauce to the pan, some of it hit the burner and created beaucoup de smoke. Our smoke alarm started beeping and warning of smoke in the kitchen and to evacuate immediately. I had to keep mixing everything in before it actually DID burn in the pan, so I had to put up with the beeping until Jesse ran out of the Star Wars room to see what was going on. Once we had that settled, the rice was left to simmer and Jesse moved on to the ground beef and refried beans.

Below is a picture of the completed Mexican Rice:

Taco Meat!

Ingredients:

Ground beef (approx 3 lbs for us, might have been too much)

Taco seasoning (1 packet)

This is pretty basic. Jesse turned the burner on and let the beef brown. He then added in the taco seasoning and drained the fat.

And a picture of the meat. Sorry to any vegetarians. :)

Refried Beans:

Ingredients:

Refried beans (1 can)

Onion (half of one)

Another easy one. Jesse cut up the onion and let it favor a skillet. He then added in the can of beans and stirred while it heat up. He did this while he browned the meat, the guacamole chilled and the rice simmered. I just kept playing music and helped stir the beef.

Refried Beans:

Finally the food was cooked and we pulled the remaining details out of the fridge:

Pace Picante Salsa (Hot and Medium)

Shredded Cheese (Ingles Mexican mix)

Queso Dip

Flour Tortillas

Chilled Guacamole

Yummy extras:

Voila! A meal to last for days. It was easy and didn’t take too much time.

Below are pictures of our tacos/burritos. Jesse made his more burrito-like with queso on top.

And now it is time for the ratings:

Sarah:

Preparation for Mexican Rice: I give this a 4 out of 5. It was pretty easy, and the only reason it didn’t get a 5 out of 5 is because at the start, I had to keep stirring the rice in the oil and I didn’t know how long that would take. One suggestion I would make to simplify this is something I still haven’t been able to get through my head: measure out the spices and such in little bowls so it takes less time to add to the mixture and you don’t have to worry about screwing anything up…

Taste for whole thing: I give my taco/burrito a 4 out of 5. It was super yummy and nice ad spicy. The only thing I didn’t like was that my tortilla fell apart, so I ate this with a fork and knife.

Pickiness Factor: I give this a 5 out of 5!!! It’s because tacos are so easy to enjoy even when being picky. I don’t like refried beans or guacamole, so I didn’t have to add it to my taco. And my taco was still super yummy! I also could add as much or as little of the other foods to my taco. Maybe that’s why the tortilla fell apart…

Jesse:

Prep: 4 out of 5 – easy

Taste: 3 out of 5 – nothing too special. Everything was good, but perhaps a bit too mushy—none of the flavors were anything to write home about. It could definitely use some crunch, be it lettuce or some other greens/onions/peppers or even just using hard-shell tacos. All in all a good dish, and good for leftovers, but it was pretty much just your typical taco/burrito. As my friend Nathan says, “it’s hard to mess up Mexican food…even so so tacos are still awesome.” – and to that I agree

Cost: 4 out of 5 – materials are cheap and expense limited only by the amount of topping you want

Other notes: This is a wonderful dish for leftovers. Little flavor/consistency is lost when stored in the fridge.

Overall score for Taco Tuesday: 4.0