But I will not be sad to see it end for this reason -- evening practice time wreaks total havoc on dinner.
There are mountains of articles, studies, and books on the importance of family dinner. And, personally, our family's struggle has always focused on whether we wait for Mike to get home to eat or go ahead and start without him. Even on his earliest days, he's home around 7:00 p.m. and I'd love to be starting baths at that point rather than dinner. BUT ... the kids are dying to see him and he loves it and so I've tried to work around it so that everything is done but dinner when he gets home. It's a work in progress.
And then soccer practice started in August and it threw me for a total loop. Oh man, I totally get why people go through a drive-thru on the way back home. It's not very plausible to eat at 5:00 p.m. And who can start dinner at 7:15 when they get home?
I ended up in a carpool and I don't have to do the drive every week. THANKFULLY! But tonight was my night and all I can say is thank goodness for crockpot tacos.
We have an abundance of deer burger from Mike's yearly outdoor "retreats" and I have historically struggled with what to do with it. Our deep freeze is stuffed with deer steak, deer burger, deer loin, deer jerky and deer sausage.
Try not to be too jealous. I know you're just thinking of all those amazing culinary creations you would have if you owned all this meat. Oh wait - what's that? You don't know what to do with deer [fill in the blank]? Well, that makes two of us.
Enter deer tacos.
This summer, on a total whim, I started making tacos with deer burger in the crockpot. I could start it before we left for the pool and dinner would be ready when we got back home. It was... how do you say.... AWESOME! And Anna raved about these tacos.
I would hazard to say we eat these tacos once a week. And it's so freakin' simple.
1) Defrost 1 lb of deer burger (or hamburger) the day before in the fridge
2) Spray your crockpot
3) Dump some beef broth in the bottom of the crock pot (not much, just a little liquid)
4) Drop the entire chunk of meat in the crockpot
5) Sprinkle 3/4 of a taco seasoning packet on top of meat - don't even break it up
6) Low for 4 hrs
7) Break it up with a fork and throw in a spoonful of salsa, if you like
We just put it on top of tortilla chips because the tacos were getting messy and frustrating for the kids to eat. So it's really more like nachos. Add your toppings and voila! Dinner.
Plus there's hardly any clean up.
I know that we will end up in this situation again at some point. I hear baseball nudges into dinner for most folks around here. And this is my coping mechanism: Tacos.
Any other crockpot recipes you'd like to send my way?
I'm all ears...
2 comments:
Thanks for the idea. I need to buy a new crockpot and get going for winter!
I hear ya on the soccer. But we are lucky in that ours is from 5-6 and Joe is the coach. 6-7 seems hard, especially for kids that age!
Our practices are on Tuesday nights and I have gotten into a thing of doing breakfast for dinner on Tuesday nights. Bacon in the oven on a cookie sheet for about 15 minutes, scrambled eggs with cheese and spinach (thawed frozen chopped spinach), and then either homemade biscuits (faster and easier than you'd think) or homemade pancakes (likewise). It's fast, but probably still not fast enough to work in after that 6-7 time slot!
My veggie enchilada recipe doubles well and you could freeze half and then put it in the oven when you leave for practice? That is, if you're okay with leaving the house with the oven on, which I kind of am. I guess b/c my mom used to always do that. : ) Is that a bad thing?
You know, the other thought I had tonight was - what about doing a super quickie early dinner (like pb&j's) at 5:30 before you go. And then you and Mike can eat alone that night!
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