Homemade Tacos

This is such an easy supper to make! It's one of Aaron's favorite and he would, literally, eat it every night if I would cook it for him.

We have a "tradition" of sorts in our house. Whenever we go to the grocery store, we have homemade tacos that night. It's something we do then, and usually only then, because we don't keep shredded lettuce and taco blend shredded cheese in the house at all times....

All you need is:

• a pound of hamburger meat
• a taco seasoning packet
• 2/3 cup of water
• shredded lettuce
• shredded cheese
• tomatoes (we omit. I hate tomatoes.)
• taco sauce 
• sour cream

Gosh this pic is so old. We'd only be married a little over a month at this point! No more canisters on the kitchen counter! :) Do you see the ancient coffee pot there in the corner??

 And then you can use either

• tortilla chips
• soft tortilla shells
• crunchy taco shells
•  gordita shells (my favorite)

Ok, let's get started. Now, as a disclaimer, we had this tonight for supper, and had I thought about it before hand, I would have taken pictures (I turned mine into a salad tonight, actually) but I was so hungry I completely forgot. These photos were taken years ago, but the process remains the same!


Brown your burger and drain off all the grease.

 

 Then stir in your taco seasoning and 2/3 cup of water.

Let that boil for about 4 minutes. (You can stick your crunchy taco shells in the oven to bake at this point. They usually take about 3 minutes.)

After that you're done! I know right? So super easy!

Here's the way my Aaron likes to make his.

 

That is one gigantic dollop of Daisy on top!  He likes to crunch up his tortilla chips and then layer his toppings on top. I usually spoon mine into gordita shells. Sometimes I'll put some cheese on my shell and stick it in the still hot oven for a bit until the cheese melts, then put my crunchy shell on top of that, like a Taco Bell Cheesy Gordita Crunch (my favorite)! The possibilities are pretty much endless.

It takes 15 minutes to do, at most, and you are good to go. This is so super filling and so yummy. Aaron always looks so forward to me making this supper that he's like a kid when he comes home from work. "Are they done yet? Are they done yet??" He always goes back for seconds!

Give this meal a shot. We love it!

Homemade Sourdough Bread

Sourdough bread is my absolute favorite type of bread. I don't know why but there is nothing quite like the zing of sourdough bread to push the yum factor of whatever I'm eating plum over (ya like that? Plum over?) the edge. My favorite way to eat sourdough is to cut a hole in the middle of a slice and fry an egg inside the hole. You wanna talk about yummy? That's yummy. (You can get this at Cracker Barrel, it's called "Eggs in a Basket.")

Buuuut it's an expensive bread to buy, so I never, and I mean, NEVER, buy it. Plus, it's hard to find in my local grocery stores. I'm not driving 30 minutes away to the next big town so that I can buy one loaf of bread. That's not money saving at all.


My sweet hubby got me a bread maker for Christmas. It's what I wanted, even though he tried to push jewelry off on me. I wasn't having any of that. Ever since I started staying home and not working, I've become super practical.... in a lot of ways (I'm not gonna lie, I've still got a ways to go.) and so after I drug him into Bed, Bath & Beyond and pointed out the bread machine and handed him a coupon for 20% off, he got the point.

Up to this point though, I've only been making white bread. Just whenever we needed it , either to tide us over until we can buy a loaf of "sandwich" bread or to have with a meal (that homemade white bread turns into amazing garlic bread-- just spread a little butter on top, sprinkle some Italian Seasoning and Parmesan Cheese and broil it until it's toasted. Boom! Insta-Garlic Bread!) But about a week ago I got a craving for eggs in a basket and frankly wheat toast just didn't taste the same.

So I went in search of a recipe that I could use in my bread machine. (Sourdough Bread is completely omitted in my little recipe booklet that came with my machine.) And I found it on unsophisticatedcook.com.


First things first, you've gotta have a "starter." Be sure you put your starter in a medium/large bowl to allow the starter to rise and fall. Don't be like the UnsphisticatedCook and try and put it in a mason jar. Or like me, in the beginning, and try to put it in a 2 cup measuring cup. Take our words for it, go with a medium/large bowl. This recipe made about 2 cups of starter, which made 2 loaves of bread. (Below is also the do's and don't's of maintaining your starter, so you could potentially keep it going, or keep it "fed" for months to come, but I was in a hurry when making both loaves of bread so I used all my starter.)

Ingredients:

• 1 package active dry yeast
• 2 c. warm water (105-115 degrees)
• 2 c. all-purpose flour
• 1 T. sugar or honey (I used honey because I love honey.)

Instructions:

1. Gather your ingredients. You'll need yeast, flour, water, and either sugar or honey to feed the starter.
2. Dissolve the yeast in 1/2 cup of the warm water. (I gave mine a little stir just to be sure it was all mixed together.)
3. Whisk together the remaining warm water, flour, sugar or honey, and dissolved yeast mixture.
4. Cover the sourdough starter (I used a thin drying towel, but you could use plastic wrap or cheesecloth) and let stand at room temperature for 3-5 days, stirring three times daily. The starter is ready for use when it smells fermented and the vigorous bubbling ceases. (And it will smell fermented.)
5. When your sourdough starter is done fermenting, you may store it in the refrigerator in a covered plastic container.
Maintenance and Use of Sourdough Starter:
6. To use your starter, first stir it up. Then measure out the amount of cold starter that you need, and then let it stand at room temperature for 30 minutes before proceeding with your recipe.
7. Replenish your starter by adding 3/4 c. all-purpose flour, 3/4 c. water, and 1 t. sugar or honey to remaining starter. Let stand at room temperature for a day, and then you can cover and place it back in the refrigerator.
8. If you don't use your starter within 10 days, remove one cup of starter and add 1 cup of flour and 1/2 cup lukewarm water and stir well. You can then refrigerate it again immediately.

5 days later....
Ok, so your starter is ready!  Pull out your bread machine and let's get started!

Ingredients:

• 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast (use the whole little paper packet)
• 3/4 cup milk, warmed
• 1 1/2 tablespoons butter, softened
• 1 cup sourdough starter

Instructions:

Bread Machine Directions - dark crust, 2 lb. loaf
1. Add 1 cup flour, sugar, salt, and yeast to your bread pan. If your bread machine has a warming cycle, turn it off and start a basic bread cycle to stir these ingredients together.
2. Slowly add warm milk and softened butter to dry mixture while the bread machine is still stirring. Then do the same with the sourdough starter. The mixture will be extremely liquidy, but don't worry. Step 3 will solve that problem.
3. Add the remaining 2-1/2 cups of flour slowly to the wet mixture. It may seem like too much flour, the dough will get very crumbly, but it will all get kneaded into the bread. I've found that it helps to press down on the dough as the machine is still kneading to get it to pick up all of the bits of dough, or use a rubber spatula (a "scraper" some people call them) and encourage the mixing along.
4. Close the top of the bread machine and let it finish out its cycle. When the bread is done baking, remove it from the pan immediately and let it cool on a rack to prevent it from getting soggy.
 But Missy, I don't have a bread machine, and I want to try this recipe. NEVER FEAR! For I have included the directions for baking this scrumptious loaf of bread in a regular oven!
Oven Directions
5. Add 1 cup flour, sugar, salt, and yeast to a mixing bowl.
6. Slowly stir in warm milk and softened butter to dry mixture. Then do the same with the sourdough starter.
7. Mix remaining 2-1/2 cups of flour slowly into the wet mixture. Then turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 8-10 minutes.
8. Place dough in an oiled bowl, turning to make sure it's coated, and let rise for one hour.
9. Punch down and let rest for 15 minutes. Then shape into a loaf and place in a greased 2-lb. loaf pan. Allow to rise for another hour.
10. Bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes or until done.

And there ya have it! I would have included photos in this post but we basically inhaled that bread, there's not even a crumb left. It's so beyond good. You've got to give this recipe a try. It's heavenly, and on top of it all, it makes your house smell amazing when it's baking!

Hope you guys like this as much as we did! Let me know in the comments below if you do!

Easy Parmesean Chicken

Hello faithful readers! I know I've been M.I.A. for a while. And someone was kind enough to bring my attention to it, shout out to my cousin Belinda! *waving* Thanks for keeping me on my toes and laying the guilt trip on me!

So to tide everyone over until I can get back in the real swing of blogging after such a extended hiatus, I thought I'd share my most recent addition to my recipe book. It was a huge hit tonight at suppertime and my husband loooooved it.



Here's what you're gonna need:

• 4 (I used 5) chicken breasts - I also pounded mine out flat with a kitchen mallet
• Bread Crumbs - I toasted 4 pieces of wheat bread and chopped them up in the food processor
• Mrs. Dash Garlic Seasoning 
• 1 jar of your favorite tomato-based pasta sauce
• Shredded Mozzarella Cheese (I actually only had colby-jack on hand, so that's what I used)
• Grated Parmesan Cheese
• 1 egg, beaten with some milk
• vegetable oil

1. Start by preheating your oven to 375 degrees.
2. Heat up your oil in a large skillet (I used my huge saute pan by Cuisinart, it's my go-to pan, I love it.)
3. Take your Mrs. Dash Garlic Seasoning (not the original, the garlic specifically) and eyeball however much you want into your food processor. Rip up your toast into pieces small enough to fit into the processor. 
4. Dump your breadcrumbs into a bowl or dish and mix with a spoon, just to make sure everything is mixed properly.
5. Beat your egg with a few tablespoons of milk (I eyeballed this too. I added as much milk as I normally do when I'm beating eggs)
6. Dip your chicken breast into the egg and milk, and then into your breadcrumbs. Coat each side well.
7. Fry your chicken until it's golden brown on each side. Don't worry about whether it's cooked through or not, it really doesn't matter, you're just going to bake it anyway.
8. Put your chicken in a lightly greased casserole dish and top it with your pasta sauce. 
9. Top the sauce with your cheeses, the more the better in my opinion.
10. Bake for 30-40 minutes. Watch it and pull it out whenever the cheese is is melted and it and the sauce are bubbling.

And, of course, you serve this over spaghetti or linguine noodles. Oh, and Mama's Sweet Tea, of course!


I found this recipe on Pinterest, after Aaron said he wanted something different for supper. We tend to get in a real rut when it comes to our meals, the same things over and over and over again, this was a welcome change. He took the first bite and his eyes, literally, rolled back in his head. 10 points for the wifey! :)

You can find the original recipe for this on the Working Mom's Against Guilt blog HERE. Thank you, Sara, for sharing this wonderful recipe with us! My husband thanks you, too!


Thanks for stopping by The Simple Life today! I will try to do better about posting now that life has calmed down just a little bit. I've got a couple of What I'm Watching's ready to go and then the ever elusive Kitchen Evolution post that I am still working on. Plus I have a DIY I'm wanting to try, and I'll share it with you when I get it done! Thank you so much for hanging in here with me!