Cooking Class via Real Life

On Friday night the kids made dinner- all by themselves! That included 'dessert'.

Since it was National Taco Day (according to some calendar that Lee had found long ago and marked up her current calendar with) they insisted that we had to have tacos- not burritos like I make on occasion, no- TACOS. So we went to the store and bought a taco making "kit", tomatoes, and ground beef *we usually eat ground turkey but they thought it should be beef this time.*

Before dinner was started however, they wanted to make fruit salad for dessert. It was to be made simply out of apples and whipped topping because that's all we had I thought but I found some frozen peaches and strawberries in the freezer. They cut the apples, cut the seeds out, rinsed them and put them in a bowl. Next they each cut some frozen peaches and strawberries to put in with the apples. They kept asking me, "Is that enough?" but I would say, "You're doing fine, you be the judge." After all was sliced and mixed in the bowl, they added a few scoopfuls of whipped topping. (Again, "Is that enough?" lol) The fruit salad was covered and put in the refrigerator to chill until after dinner.

For dinner, Jeff opened the 'kit' and took out all the contents. He read the instructions out loud and decided, "The meat has to be cooked before anything." That was Lee's job. For some reason she loves to brown meat. So while she was working on that, Jeff again read the instructions. After the meat was browned it said to drain it but because we bought 90% lean meat there was next to nothing to drain so I suggested skipping that step. Jeff dumped in the seasoning packet contents that came with the kit into the meat and also measured out 2/3 cup of water and poured that into the frying pan. Lee mixed it all and let it set on med/low heat for a few minutes until most of the liquid was 'absorbed' (I think it just evaporated!). Meanwhile, Lee 'shredded' (aka, cut into small pieces) the lettuce and Jeff cut up a tomato into small pieces for the topping. Lee transferred the taco sauce from the pouch to a small dish so that it could be used easier.

When the meat was done she took it off the burner (and turned off the burner ;), took the taco shells out of the packaging and heated the soft shells in the microwave on a small plate for about 30 seconds. The hard shells were just set on top of the soft shells. Most of us do not like hard shells for 'tacos'. Lee wanted to try a double taco this time (soft shell on the outside of the hard shell, with the fillings inside the hard shell) so she got out some left over burrito filling to use as 'glue' for the soft shell to stick to the hard shell. In case anyone else wanted to try it as well, she heated it up in the microwave and set it out with the other toppings.

It was great. They found dishes for each of the toppings- all in the perfect sized dish for better serving. And when dinner was all done, Jeff put everything away. He found containers for each item, based on how much was left and put them all away in the fridge.

It was great. I love when they do that :)