Taco Night for Ten and $60
Shopping List. Recipes. And how we fill our voids of time and priorities.
I am starting with the menu and recipes and ending with the blog post. We did add chocolate brownies made from a box mix and vanilla ice cream to our meal for probably an additional $6-$8.
Menu, Shopping list, Everything bought at Aldi.
· Hard shell and/or soft-shell tacos, and/or burrito shells. Enough for guests to have 2-3 tacos or one large burrito
· Proteins: Variable depending on guest preferences but should have at least 3 to choose from. Plant based options will be the least expensive.
o 1# ground meat (beef, turkey, or chicken)
o 1 can chickpeas
o 1 can black beans
o 1 bag green or brown lentils (will use 1/3 bag)
· Vegetables
o One bag frozen sweet corn (thaw in fridge over several hours), or 2 cans plain canned sweet corn
o 2-3 ripe tomatoes
o 2-3 ripe avocados
o 1 red onion
o 1 can black olives, pitted
o 1-2 jalapenos
· Toppings
o 1 container sour cream
o 1 bunch cilantro
o 1 small block plain feta cheese
o Shredded cheddar cheese (Can buy pre-shredded, a Mexican blend, or a block of mild cheddar and shred at home)
o Hot sauce, salsa of choice, optional
· Other
o 2-3 packets taco seasoning, or build you own seasoning of choice
o 4-5 limes
o Chili and Lime seasoning (may or may not be found, but paprika and chili can be used instead)
o Olive oil
Recipes
1. Starting with the lentils, rinse 1/3rd bag (about 1-1.25 cups) in colander under cold water. Place in small soup pot and add one taco seasoning packet. Cover with water and bring to a boil. Let simmer for about 30-40 minutes until lentils are fully cooked.
2. Pre-heat oven to 400 F. Take two baking sheets and cover with parchment paper. Rinse the cans of black beans and chickpeas separately. Set aside the rinsed black beans but place the rinsed chickpeas in a bowl, add 1-2 tbsp of olive oil and 1 tbsp of chili and lime seasoning. Bake chickpeas in center rack for 30 minutes.
3. Heat skillet on stove over medium heat. Brown ground meat until done. Skim off fat if needed. Add taco seasoning packet and about 1/3 cup water if needed. Keep warm until serving but be careful not to burn.
4. Heat 1-2 tbsp of olive oil in another skillet under medium-high heat until warm (about 1-2 minutes). Add corn either from the bag or after draining from the cans. Cook for about 10 minutes tossing rarely as we are trying to get parts blackened. A few minutes prior to finishing, add 1 tbsp of Chili and Lime seasoning and mix thoroughly. Deglaze with the juice of one lime. Take off the heat and top with ½ block of feta, crumbled.
5. Dice the tomatoes. Cut red onion and jalapenos into thin strips. Cut black olives if needed. Dice or mince cilantro. Shred cheese if needed. Cut limes into wedges. Assemble toppings to make them easily servable.
6. Near the end of cooking the chickpeas, toss and assess crispiness. If you like them crunchy, bake for another 10 minutes or so. When the lentils are done, drain off excess water and spread them onto the second sheet pan with parchment paper. Place in oven to help make them crisp.
7. When all proteins are done cooking, turn off the oven but place the unwrapped shells on a baking sheet, and/or separate the soft shells/ burrito shells between parchment paper and let warm in the heated oven for a few minutes before serving.
8. Enjoy.
Thanks to Aldi, many are finding out how normal it can be and feel again to eat well, and healthy, on a budget, and even have a party. We are finding out that the frills we have come to expect are not needed to live. At the end of every day, we don’t need large displays that are advertisements of themselves. We need to get fed, be with others, find some health and wellness in each meal, and not fret about what we may need to sacrifice later for the now.
It was my son’s birthday recently, and he is not a kid who asks for a lot. We were having just the family close by over, on a weeknight, and needed a buffet-like meal that was easy, quick, likeable by all, and could fit within the weekly food budget. Finding celebrations exhausting, and usually disappointing, simplicity by way of our go-to grocery source led me to the taco bar and Aldi’s.
I in no way am affiliated with Aldi or any other brand, grocer, or food company. I did spend some time pursuing getting brands to help me make some money writing but found the practice towards that kind of unknown too stuffed with pro bono work and trying to make myself into someone I wasn’t. Nothing for sale should need a spokesperson or someone to feed us how wonderful a product is in order to get it sold. Just about everything should sell itself if it is any good at all. We shouldn’t be trying to create voids to fill so that someone can come along and tell a tall tale about how their void was filled using this product or that service. But void creation and filling, both very lucrative, are exactly how some people make a swell living while the rest of us find out that we just wasted our money. Social media helps obviously.
But don’t waste your money. Most of us have none to waste or have a future we know we will have to save it for. One part of healthy saving and spending is knowing what voids you have already, or will have, and planning on how to fill them by doing some thinking, research, and avoiding the quick fill. Quick fills can come out of desperation, and even in the best of times and the best of planning, sometimes have to be dealt with the emergency cash. But this should not happen often, only rarely.
However, many find themselves in pinches like these every day. The stress, or their limited choices, limited options, limited access, lead to more expensive buys. Dinner is bought out when time is limited, a surprise turn of events knocks out the plans had, and suddenly instead of spending $60 on a meal for ten one night, or a meal for five plus leftovers, $60 was spent on one meal for three plus or minus leftovers that aren’t as good the next day. The relatively more expensive meal for fewer people may have been something seen on social media or the TV recently. The set up for void filling was constructed. When it came time, the takeout ad was poised to fill it.
The concept of eating out, and even of having pre-made meals ready, didn’t have to be such the void filler it is now. We don’t need to feel like we deserve the kind of food we often consume anyway. If someone did dive deep into the history surrounding the synergism between the rise of convenience and restaurant food and the drop in home cooking knowledge, they may find that when women entered the workplace, or when most households with children needed two incomes, or when our basic standard of living went beyond standard, or when they stopped educating children in public school about home economics, or when we started saying that it was too expensive to buy and cook at home, or when our time to do such things was sucked up by entertainment and leisure, or a great combination of these things. Whatever the cause, it is digging in deeper and not looking to reverse course.
We are what we prioritize. If we prioritize our personal standard of living and creature comforts that are actually not needed, or time for entertainment and leisure that could be spent on earning more income or learning new ways to make better use of our resources, then we will reap what we sow. If we prioritize planning, efficiency, and some self-forgiveness as we learn new things, then we will also reap the benefits of that practice. It is possible to feed ourselves and our families healthy food for less money than buying it pre-made or settling for non-healthy. It is possible to also have the time affluence to learn and create ourselves. Priorities are the key.