cotija cheese

Breakfast Tacos Recipe

April 4, 2016

Shredded beef, sweet peppers and scrambled eggs make this Mexican recipe a family favorite for breakfast, brunch or brinner in under 30 minutes.

This recipe post is sponsored by the makers of HORMEL^® Taco Meats because we all have #TacoGoals, and this is one of the easiest ways to meet them.

If you’re a regular follower of the blog, you know I’m a fan of scratch cooking.

But sometimes reality takes over. Life gets in the way. And when my man and my Smudge decide in the afternoon that tacos sure would fit tonight’s meal-ticket-bill, making a whole roast to serve our shredded taco cravings is simply out of the question.

But it doesn’t have to be. In fact, when Hormel Foods asked me to create a recipe using their shredded beef taco meat, I discovered it can actually be quite simple to meet our taco goals.

My husband is a Mexican food fanatic. If Taco Bell had frequent flier miles, by now we’d probably have been able to fly to Europe and back. That’s a lot of burrito supremes with crispy beef taco(s) on the side.

So today we’re curing all of our cravings and making tacos for breakfast, or better yet, let’s make them for brinner. Olé!

continue to the recipe… about Breakfast Tacos Recipe

Spicy Fish Tacos

April 28, 2014

Family and food. They go together like butter and biscuits. It’s what every foundation of every civilization is built upon. To sit down to a meal, with forks in position and a wealth of new and old stories to tell.

I too often forget how much I love these simple dinners with the whole gaggle of extended family about. I have to remind myself it really isn’t that hard to send a text, give a call and have someone bring the salsa and chips, someone else grab a dessert.

Because we all want to be involved. It’s half the fun. Especially when everyone else digs in and starts doing the dishes. Best part ever.

So to prep for Cinco de Mayo and test out some new recipes on our loved ones aka guinea pigs, my man and I sent out the call and the flock arrived, ready to chow down on some scrumptious eats.

Basically I was just itching for an excuse to make these Spicy Fish Tacos.

Good news everyone! They received a table-full of hearty thumbs ups.

continue to the recipe… about Spicy Fish Tacos

Roasted Garlic and Pickled Jalapeño Guacamole

May 22, 2013

How many times have you heard it? You know the phrase, the not-so-very-much-original one we all say because it’s just so perfectly descriptive.

You know it. Come on, say it with me. Think it. Live it: “Hoooooooly Guacamole.”

Okay it’s a little trite, but so true. Guacamole is the ultimate dipper, topper, finger licker. Cinco de Mayo by now is in the holiday back seat but with summer’s festivities on the bright lights horizon, there’s so many more reasons to kick back and “dip-toe through the tortilla chips.” Okay, that was a stretch but let’s just roll with it.

photo via Garlic Girl’s Instagram

My recipe for Roasted Garlic and Jalapeño Guacamole is a riff on a recipe created at this spring’s Big Traveling Potluck by Jodi of Garlic Girl, Des of Life’s Ambrosia and Melba of Out a Thyme, the ladies who stole the show and won the Best Tasting Recipe award at the Guacamole Challenge we all competed in. It was a friendly competition. That said, there may have been some tears shed when the winner was announced and my team didn’t win.

We were CONVINCED we were shoe-ins with mango and bacon in our version of guacamole. We were wrong.continue to the recipe… about Roasted Garlic and Pickled Jalapeño Guacamole

Stewed Chicken Tacos

April 2, 2013

Going through my recipe archives I noticed the glaring omission of a recipe that has become a favorite around our house. I only had two taco recipes on the blog, one for Fried Avocado Tacos and one for Spaghetti Tacos, the first being a somewhat untraditional twist and the second suitable mainly for a gaggle of pre-teens or the indecisive Mexican Italian.

While I am a lover of beef tacos made with traditional beef—ground, shredded, it’s all good in my book—tacos made with shredded chicken have become a favorite at Casa del Larsen and an ode to the shredded chicken tostadas at Venice, CA’s El Tarasco. Their chicken tostadas were a Monday night staple after a weekend of play and an empty fridge yet to be restocked.

The stewed chicken atop a mound of shredded lettuce and doused in salsa made the beginning of the week that much more bearable.

I’ve tried to recreate El Tarasco’s chicken stewey, and while this is similar, it isn’t quite the same but is oh so tasty in its own incarnation thanks to its earthy flavor.

But what I really love about this recipe is that it’s a one pot wonder thanks to a little secret that makes it super easy to make no matter which day of the week.continue to the recipe… about Stewed Chicken Tacos

Fried Avocado Tacos Recipe

October 22, 2012

Creamy Avocados from Mexico might just be one of my favorite fruits.

I eat them for breakfast in my egg white omelets with a little feta cheese. I love them on turkey sandwiches with a little cranberry sauce and a thin slather of mayo on fluffy white bread. And I absolutely crave them as a base for tostadas topped with a ton of lettuce and spicy hot sauce.

I really don’t need much else.

continue to the recipe… about Fried Avocado Tacos Recipe

10 Great Corn Recipes plus Grilled Corn and Pasilla Pepper Salad

August 9, 2012

Corn. It’s the new black.

It’s on every corner (ehem, gas station farmer’s market) it comes with color blocking in its DNA (alternating white and yellow kernals) and it looks good on just about everyone.

It used to be that one had to wait anxiously for harvest season to roll around before noshing on the sweetest corn in town. Now that new corn genes have been developed, its a rare day in the sun when cooks have to make do with sub par kernals of sunshine. Have you had enough with the trite phrases already?

In preparing to make this recipe, I did the usual routine of filling my pasta stock pot with water and dumped my farmer’s market cobs into the pool, husks and all, with the intention of soaking them for 30 minutes to add a little extra moisture for roasting.

Five hours later I realized I had become completely distracted—I’m not going to admit or lay blame to anything that may or may not have been being surfed on the internet— and quickly pulled my soggy cobs to safety.continue to the recipe… about 10 Great Corn Recipes plus Grilled Corn and Pasilla Pepper Salad