Monday Mexican Fiesta Night!

Molcajete - Authentic Mexican Mortar and Pestle
by CHEFS

In an effort to extend the idea of Friday Pizza and Movie Night, we have adapted a couple of new ideas we hope to incorporate into our week. The first is Monday Mexican Fiesta Night! This concept helps to alleviate a few different areas of life that we are having issues balancing. By having a few nights a week that are themed we hope to start a tradition that our kids can really look forward too. In the future, I even hope to have a lovely chili pepper tablecloth and brightly colored bowls to hold the buffet style meal items. Mexican style food is a big hit with our 4 kids as well as one of our favorite meals and they love the MYO aspect of choosing which sides they will add to their taco, burritos, enchiladas or salad. I love the idea that it can be as simple and quick as throwing together some tacos or as challenging as experiementing with new flavor profiles and recipes.

The idea here is to also be making a restaurant-type atmosphere. All the fun of going out to eat, AT HOME. And of course when you eat at home, you save money! Even if you buy the most expensive meat and organic items, it will be cheaper than eating the dollar menu, it will be more than one meal and it will be cheaper in the long run on your health care bills. Don't believe me? I've heard constantly that getting a McBurger is so much cheaper to feed your family. Well take a pound of organic grass-fed beef at $5 per pound. How many ounces do you think Taco Bell puts into a soft taco? Well first off lets list what is IN the Seasoned Beef from Taco Bell available on their website

Beef, Water, Seasoning [Isolated Oat Product, Salt, Chili Pepper, Onion Powder, Tomato Powder, Oats (Wheat), Soy Lecithin, Sugar, Spices, Maltodextrin, Soybean Oil (Anti-dusting Agent), Garlic Powder, Autolyzed Yeast Extract, Citric Acid, Caramel Color, Cocoa Powder (Processed With Alkali), Silicon Dioxide, Natural Flavors, Yeast, Modified Corn Starch, Natural Smoke Flavor],Salt, Sodium Phosphates. CONTAINS SOYBEAN, WHEAT

Mmmmmm caramel color....sounds delicious! Okay so your beef and spices will be fresher and taste better. Wait...you like the cooked all day flavor and don't have time? Me neither! As a busy mom of 4 under 6 years old, I barely have time to sneeze but I can let you in on my time saving secret, the old fashioned fast food, a pressure cooker! No more worrying about images of exploding cookware and scalding red sauce splatters! You can cook frozen meat with an all day cooked flavor that is tender and juicy in about 30 minutes. I'll go more into pressure cooking concepts in another post.

Back to the original thought: the Beef Soft Taco at Taco Bell is 135 grams, which is less than 5 ounces for the beef, small tortilla, cheese and lettuce. Let's assume the beef makes up the bulk of the ounces, although having eaten many of these I would argue that the tortilla might make up at least half. For the sake of easy calculating, we'll say 4 of the less than 5 ounces is beef. That would be $1.25 for the grass-fed organic meat per taco. And I'm not even going to bother calculating the miniscule cost of iceburg lettuce, a tortilla and cheese. Of course we both know that Taco Bell has never put a 1/4 pound of beef in a taco, so I'm positive you are spending less than $1.50 to make a much healthier option at home. And the cost savings of the trip to your local fast food joint if you don't use organic grass-fed beef (and let's face it, most of the time we don't!) would be miniscule. But the point is really, that fast food isn't THAT much cheaper, it's just more convenient! But when I consider needing to either load 4 kids into carseats and drive the 5 minutes there, wait in line, hope that they get the order correct, listen to my newborn babe cry in the backseat, decide to not order the dollar menu items....is it really harder to toss some meat in a pan and shred some veggies? Sure it takes a bit of planning to have the items on hand, but we almost always have some meat, cheese, beans, lettuce and tomatoes. What more do you really need? I would spend another dollar per family member for healthier food. And when I spend $10 for some super yummy carnitas, plus incorporating a family tradition of eating at home with eachother vs. the old tradition of yelling at dad what they want to order at drive-thru and spending over $20....it all seems to logical and self-explainatory. So why then is it so hard to pass up the grease traps? I think I'll consider this further in another post.

So now that I've gone through our reasons why....here is the first Monday Mexican Fiesta Night recipe! We forgot to take a picture....it was eaten too quickly!

----Pork Carnitas----

Pork Loin ($6 on sale at Target --traditionally I believe they use Pork Shoulder)
Cumin, salt, pepper,
1/2 Onion
2 cloves of Garlic
Can Stewed Tomatoes
Can Green Chilis
2 cups Water or Stock

Toss in Pressure Cooker on high setting for 30 minutes and letting pressure release slowly. Take out pork and shred, drain liquid through sieve and put the chunks of veggies with pork on lightly oiled sheet pan covered in foil for easy cleanup. Put pan in oven under broiler for 15 mins, stopping once to drip leftover liquid over meat to keep from drying out. When meat has crispy tips, it is done!

In bowls, have cheese, lettuce, pico de gallo (premade by store, make your own or just tomatoes), sour cream, black olives, guacamole...whatever you desire! Warm tortillas and go to town on your fiesta party!