Weekly Recipe Recommend – Taco Seasoning

Man! How is it I’m always so excited to get my stuff when we move somewhere new?? I must forget how overwhelming it is in the intervening months between moves. (Incidentally, I a always thrilled, too, when they take all our stuff away and the whole house is empty again when we move out of places.)  I feel like I have NO time right now to sit down on the computer or anything.  I’ve been up so late every night, and John and I have been working, working, working!  Within reason, of course.  Since I’m nursing Daniel, that’s a time every day when I get to sit to feed him, potty him, and change him.  Sometimes I cuddle him, too. 🙂  Today, I was so blessed to have our first visitors!!! It was a family I met through our homeschool co-op — one of the two families which responded positively to my “bagpipe lessons” advertisement through the homeschool support group emails.  The new friend came over with three daughters and a son (her older son stayed home to babysit the youngest) who were all there to help with the children and the unpacking for about three hours.  It was such a relief to have someone else spurring me on in the kitchen (John’s been working in the living room mostly, since the kitchen is “mine,” and I need to be the one to decide where things go) since I was feeling really bogged down by the lack of space (or was it the overabundance of stuff for the perfectly acceptable amount of space??)  They helped me get through about four or five more boxes.  Which is how many boxes I’ve unpacked since the people delivered the stuff in the last two evenings by myself. (So productivity from the last few days was doubled in just a few hours!!)

Daniel, pondering the mess

Now it’s ANOTHER day later (wrote this on Saturday).  My goodness, where does the time go!?!  Today I can tell you where a great amount of it went — garage sale shopping!! Fun!! I haven’t been to garage sales in years, and we were looking for a riding toy for Greer and possibly lawn furniture for our back patio, so I wrote down the addresses of about 8 yard sales near our house before I went to bed last night.  This morning I took everyone who was awake – which turned out to be all the kids except Claire – while John slept in.  I didn’t even feed Daniel til 8:45am, so it was a nice late morning for me as well, and we weren’t at the sales til after ten.  That’s okay, though, because all the kids had fun with the dollar I gave each of them, and I found a few neat buys.  Probably spent about $25 total.  We failed on our primary mission, though, so we stopped in to Wal Mart at the end for a little Radio Flyer Scooter for her and a few groceries.

The rest of the day was spent recovering from being out (with my feet up on the couch for a little while), then making tacos for dinner and continuing to organize the kitchen.  I had planned on an 8 mile run, but my legs and feet have been hurting since the movers brought our stuff (from standing on them until the wee hours each night doing the unpacking,) so I decided to rest my legs for one more day.  Yesterday I had a good run – 4.61 miles – before the unpacking help arrived, and then this 8 miles will be my last longer run before the marathon.  I’m not quite sure how to “taper,” but I’m planning on another two runs after the 8 miles – probably each around 3-4 miles.  In case you’re reading this and you know the answer:  The marathon is Sunday, October 28.  Obviously I shouldn’t run on Saturday the 27th.  Should my last run be on Thursday or on Friday?  Right now I’m planning on Thursday but am afraid to go from Thursday to Sunday without shaking out my legs a little, you know?  This marathon stuff is so confusing!! 🙂

I think this officially the longest I’ve gone without posting a blog since I started blogging!! Sunday night now, and at least I have some good status pictures to post!!  Last night I finally finished my kitchen cupboards — counters still to come, so we need to wait to share those pictures until they have been made cute enough for public consumption…You may wonder why this took so long, but I had drawn out a plan of where to put everything, and then of course way more stuff seems to come out of the boxes than I had accounted for in the plan!  Plus, I had just been throwing things in the pantry since we moved in last week, and it was full of boxes, bags, and cans, and then all my tupperwares showed up.  So here’s the finished product:

There’s actually another row which is two tupperware containers thick on the right behind the wall which didn’t make it into the picture.  So that is a lot of stuff crammed into the pantry! 🙂  Here are a few cupboards:

The “baking” cupboard, with spices, baking soda and powder, cocoa, regular flour, chocolate chips, random nut meals and flax seeds, and then all the vinegars and bottled sauces. I think I have about 10 types of vinegar. No joke.

Friday night I made my own taco seasoning for the first time – a huge batch to have it around for a while.  I was tired of having trouble finding taco seasoning without MSG (I’ve never found any, but I also haven’t looked past the regular store brands), and I also would like a seasoning that is less salty than normal.  This one should have more cayenne I think, but it calls for a pinch, so I didn’t know how to really measure it out in bulk.  I think in the future I’ll just add a sprinkle or two to my meat along with this premade mix.  Everyone loved it at dinner tonight! 🙂 I basically did 40 TIMES the recipe.  As a gauge for that, there are 2 Teaspoons of Chili Powder in one recipe.  So that’s 80 Teaspoons of just that one spice.  Here’s the recipe I used:

2 teaspoons hot chili powder

1 1/2 teaspoons paprika

1 teaspoon onion powder

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon oregano

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, or to taste

1 pinch cayenne pepper, or to taste (optional)

1 pinch red pepper flakes, or to taste (optional)

Looking down on the seasoning before I mixed it

I thought this looked too cool to not document it…

It was on Allrecipes here: taco seasoning recipe

Leaving you with Greer, playing at the mall Friday afternoon when we had to run out to pick up some pictures we had taken:

One last thought. I was watching “The Biggest Loser” Season 8 last night on my computer while I worked on the computer, and in the first episode the contestants went around and introduced themselves.  One woman had a 5 year old daughter and a 2 1/2 week old son.  Who were both killed, along with her husband, in a head-on collision in which the other vehicle was driving over 100mph.  Talk about heart-wrenching.  Yes there were a few tears shed during my cupboard organization as I reflected on how blessed I am to have such a wonderful family.  This post sounds like I was complaining about my “situation” – drowning in boxes, kids running around making messes while I’m trying to unpack, constantly needing to make meals and then clean up from them…so I don’t mean to sound that way at all. 🙂 My life is wonderful, every day, all the time.  Even the times that are more are trying than others.  Hope you had a restful Sunday full of joy!