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Taco Night Success

October 18, 2010

My kids do not tend to like typical children’s menu food. They would never touch a hot dog (though they’d eat the bun), can’t stand the meatball part of spaghetti and, and get mad at the idea of grilled cheese. So tacos are definitely not a guaranteed success in this house. I didn’t grow up eating tacos, and J. doesn’t like ground meat that much, so it was never really on my radar to try them with the boys. However, the taco shells are just before the Annie’s mac and cheese in my grocery store, so I have on occasion made a mental note to try them for dinner one night. I finally did, subbing sauteed chicken breasts, sliced after cooking, for the ground meat.

The boys were skeptical at first. In fact, 10 minutes worth of skeptical while I finished cooking and they whined about how they hate tacos. (Excuse me, but you have never eaten a freakin’ taco!) But they were also hungry. Surprisingly, G. was the first to say he’d try a bite of the shell, and then he announced to his brother that it was, in fact, just like a tortilla chip as I’d promised. (Do you see what I’m dealing with? They didn’t want to try a TACO SHELL.) OK, sold on the chip-like part, at least. I put several bowls on the table: refried beans, chicken (which I had seasoned with a little pepper, thus requiring me to convince G. it would not be spicy even though it had black dots on it), chopped cilantro, diced tomatoes, and red pepper rings. G. saw a plain-ish looking piece of chicken and felt comfortable adding that to his taco. From there, it was a lovefest from my youngest: “Mom, the chicken adds so much flavor!” and “I love tacos! Make this every night!” A. was more restrained with his praise, but as he piled chicken and cilantro into his taco he also acknowledged that he was now a big taco fan.

And so, I think once again to what a wise friend once said to me: “If you never serve it, you have a 100% chance of them not eating it.” I get shot down in my cooking life enough that it doesn’t take much to make me beam. While I’m not going to be making them every night, tacos will make another appearance in my menu plan soon.

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Filed under: Poultry,Who ate it?

Tags: cooking, dinner, food, menu, menu plan, OK, SHELL, spicy, TACO