Dinner
December seems to be the busiest time of year. Between holiday parties, family gatherings, and shorter days, this is the time of the year when a few extra hours in the day seems particularly useful.
Since I don’t see that actually happening, I have to find another way to scrounge up some extra time to get things done. For me, that usually means cooking dinner.
Fortunately, that doesn’t mean we can’t still eat good meals. 
Last week, before things got crazy, I made tacos for dinner. One of the reasons I never make tacos is because I’m only feeding two people at most- what the heck am I supposed to do with all the leftover taco toppings?
That’s where fast & easy dinners come in: taco salad!!
A few chops with the knife, and dinner essentially serves itself.
It’s literally everything I used to make tacos, just piled on top of lettuce instead of tucked inside a shell.
Iceberg, bell peppers (ok, those weren’t on the tacos 
), black beans, taco seasoning, tomatoes (husband only!), cheese, salsa, sour cream, and slightly crushed tortilla chips.
No dinner sacrificing here.
Dinner
I might be the only one that loved school lunch. I mean really loved- I couldn’t wait to get to the cafeteria to see what the meal of the day was. Chicken nuggets? Mexican pizza? Or my favorite, tacos?!
I don’t know why it was my favorite. Even back then I didn’t eat ground beef. I used to dump the taco filling out of the shell, leaving the taco flavoring, and filled it with the corn that was always served on taco day.
Now it’s even easier to have veggie-tacos, complete with toppings bar. The vegetarian version is so good I don’t even have to make a separate meat batch for the husband. Perfect. 
While I love lentil, tofu, and tvp fillings for tacos, the most traditional tasting tacos come from veggie crumbles & beans.
Saute a small onion and a clove of garlic in olive oil, then add in the veggie crumbles. [They usually come frozen.] I like to mix in some black beans too. As those start to cook, mix in a packet of low-sodium taco seasoning and about 1/2 cup of water. Let simmer while you get all the toppings dished up.
Obviously you can put anything you want on a taco, but I went for the traditional:
iceberg lettuce, diced tomato (eww), salsa, taco sauce + hot sauce, cheddar cheese, sour cream or Greek yogurt. I even managed to find whole grain taco shells…score!
These put school taco day to shame.
What’s your favorite taco filling?
Travel
After stopping for lunch at Berry Hill, the gang headed to our friend’s farmhouse in the country.
If you ever told me I’d post something about four wheelers, catching dinner, or anything with camo, I’d have been skeptical. But you have to try something at least once before you judge it, right?
The view of the land was amazing- I knew in an instant it would be a relaxing trip, even if it was super short.
As soon as we got there, we changed into fishing gear and headed down to the pond.
You know you’re on a farm when you have to drive to the pond. 😉
Wiley immediately jumped in the pond- he was ready for a swim. 🙂
The other pups stayed back at the house and had a field day running around the tennis court.
Our hooks kept getting stuck in the algae instead of catching fish, so we sent two of the boys off on a paddle boat to fish in the middle of the pond. They needed a little help getting started, but Katherine gave them a good push, and they were off!
You boys better get to fishing- we’re hungry for dinner!
Back on the shore, Katherine caught a fish- way to show up the boys!
This is when it started to rain. We just ignored it and got soaking wet. Fast forward a few hours later, and we had dinner!
Chris got to work cleaning the fish while I got the rest of dinner ready inside.
We made fish tacos! I sautéed the fish and added a little taco seasoning, then set out loads of taco toppings, with some Spanish rice on the side. I also made some traditional ground beef tacos in case there wasn’t enough fish (but I didn’t eat any of those.)
Since dinner was Mexican themed, I celebrated our catch with a margarita on the rocks. It was good, but boy that mix was sweet. It kind of burned my throat, although I suppose that could have been the tequila doing the burning….
After dinner Katherine and I went on a picture-taking extravaganza. It was just so beautiful- I loved being surrounded by nothing but nature. Being away from everything makes you realize how much “noise” you’re surrounded by in a city- even in a neighborhood there’s always background noise- cars, planes, people yelling, lawn mowers…. Here it was just quiet, except for the occasional barking dog and the croaking bull frogs. 🙂 Here are some of my pictures from the weekend.
Remember the puppy we found on the side of the road? We left her at the house with some food, water, and blankets, but she found us down at the pond fishing and decided to take a nap in the rain.
And then laid down under the table as we ate dinner. Think we found a new friend? 🙂
I have a feeling if no one claims her David & Ashley might have a new pet. Since she was hanging out with us we had to give her a name. So meet Sassy 🙂 [As in sweet sassy molassey, we found a dog!]
After dinner the husband took me on a ride on the four wheeler- it was my first time on a four wheeler and it was awesome!! I loved how fast we could zip through the woods- I’m glad I wasn’t driving though. 😉 We came back covered head to toe in mud. It was awesome.
The husband and his friends come up here all the time for “boys weekends”, and I’m never jealous that he gets to go and I don’t….but next time I might be. 😉
