Tacos - A favourite, What no SEASONING ??

Tacos are a favorite in our house, i like them because its a quick easy and tasty dinner. The boys like it cause they get to make their own.

We have to have the soft tortillas (wraps) as well as the hard ones, as one child likes hard the other likes soft (its easy enough to keep the left overs for next time or cook the tortillas on the fry pan with left over meat the next day).

What do you do when you are cooking Tacos but you don't have the seasoning ?
Quite often i forget to by taco seasoning when i make tacos, i have experimented over the years and i have come up with a combination of spices that brings you taco mince very close to the packet stuff, in fact i like it better as i know exactly whats going into it :).

Ingredients:
Onions, Celery, Beef Mince, Red Kidney Beans, Tomato Paste

Spices include:
Garlic, Ground Cumin, Turmeric, Sugar, Paprikaa (the mild kind).

You could include chilli, maybe a few other spices but this is the basics.

Generally I add the spices after the onions and meet have browned, i don't measure just give a good few shakes of the dry spices out of the jar, generally you need a bit more in quantity of cumin and tumeric than the other stuff. Sugar maybe about a tablespoon. I sometimes add a squirt of tomatoe sauce for good measure.

Taste as you go, if you feel its lacking add a bit more. You will get to know what you need to add to bring up the flavour.

Normally i do some guacamole but i didn't have avocados so i missed out on that this time.

Now you know what to do if you don't have taco seasoning. Probably save you a bit of money as well those taco shells etc all add up :)

Spaghetti Reworked and Chicken Kiev

This is a belated post but i took the photos so i thought i would still post them for you all.
This was Friday nights dinner, which was comprised of the left over spaghetti from the other nights dinner.

I did the boys dinner in the microwave, my oldest was helping with the cheese which he loves to do, all i did was whack some chopped up ham, and olives in a bowl along with the spaghetti and heated it in the microwave for a couple of minutes. Once done we stirred through the cheese along with some tomatoes (at his request) and some rocket and avocado.
My youngest doesn't like tomatoes rocket or avocado so i just left that out for his bowl.


Easy done in about 10 mins. I didn't have enough spaghetti left for my meal so ended up using the salad ingredients for a salad, and cooked a pre done chicken kiev in the oven.
Lovely for a friday night easy dinner :)

Quick and Easy Peasy Spagetti

I love these sort of dinners, they are quick no fuss, the boys love them and best of all they use up all those bits and pieces that you have in the fridge and cupboard. I often make various combinations of this spagetti dish depending on whats in the fridge.

Tonight i had some left over ham (could use bacon or proscuitto), salami, tomotatoes and frozen peas. In the past i have thrown in mushrooms, olives, baby spinach, bit of cooken chiken, tin of tomatoes, prawns. The key to this dish is lots of garlic, i am talking 4-5 cloves finely chopped. If you have it parmazen cheese at the end sets it all off but i only had normal cheese today.

Thought i would take some photos as i go so you can see how easy this is.

1. Cook some spagetti :) (you dont need a photo of that do you ?)


2. Put the ham and salami in the frypan leave it to cook and brown and crisp up a bit.








3. Throw in the tomatoes, garlic and whatever else you like leave that to cook a bit. A good idea whenever having tomatoes like this is to put it a bit of sugar, say maybe around a tablespoon or so i dont measure i just chuck it in :)

4. Add the frozen peas. The frozen peas add a bit of water so makes a slight sauce, let cook just for a couple of mins.

Variation is to add in a tin of tomatoes just prior to this step so its more saucey if you like it that way, but takes a bit longer cooking time as you need that sauce to cook down a bit.




5. Next add in the cooked spagetti, use some tongs mix it all together, if its a bit dry use a bit of olive oil (extra virgin if you have it) cook for a min or so more and then serve it up. If you add in baby spinach just add it in here it will cook with the heat of the spagetti.








You can see my bowl in the top photo has a big dollop of chilli in it. mmmmmmm .
This is also why i love this dish, its easy for me "adulterise it" (if that is even a word) for me and I dont have to cook separately for the boys who wont eat chilli obviously.


As i said above paramazen would have been perfect here but i didnt have any, still tasted good without it.

5.0 ate 3 bowls of it, so i think it was a winner :) I good one for the whole family.

A quick dinner 14-5-09 - Bacon and Eggs

So, First cab off the ranks so to speak, here is tonight's dinner, a quick and easy one requested by my oldest "bacon and eggs".



The ingredients: The sausages were left over from a dinner earlier in the week, and my youngest wont eat egg so i had to give him something other than just "bacon", I had the spinach which needed to be eaten rather than thrown out and the mushrooms where from the tin, so this is my dinner, the boys receiving a selection of what they will and wouldn't eat :) I have always had beans with eggs ever since i was a young child, to me eggs just don't seem the same without them.


Tonight we also had dessert, we don't every night but felt like a bit of icecream for the boys (ok and me). I had a couple of honey jumbles (the cookies) left over so popped them in along with the strawberry topping.
Next few dinners will be using up whats in the cupboard so abit of creative cooking ahead.