DIY Tacos

David is my friend's husband, and the second-least-active member of my cooking club. Todd's the least active. (David, no offense. You're dabbling a lot more.) Inspired by all of us cooking all the time (I like to think, although I bet it's mostly Julie), David made Julie tacos for dinner the other night. I love this, because he used the box and the seasoning packet, just like my parents used to do when we were kids. It sounds like David's formative food experiences were a lot like mine. Anyway, here's what he says:

I’ve never cooked. Before meeting Julie (a friend of Kim), pre-packaged and/or fast foods were what I ate, punctuated by bowls of cereal for breakfasts and the occasional “dinner out” at nights. Sure, I’ve boiled water for pasta, scrambled eggs here & there, blended a few smoothies, made mashed-potato paste and even botched a stir-fry, but seriously I’ve never cooked. Growing up, our family foraged in a similar way – eating out, ordering in or grazing on pre-packaged foods. My step-mom made lasagna twice yearly or so, and my dad would roast chickens sporadically. He also made tacos when friends slept over, whereupon we’d engage in taco-eating contests. I loved tacos as a kid; it was fun to build them, to mix and match the various ingredients. Each ingredient would be so neatly compartmentalized – a bowl of grated cheese, of lettuce, of salsa – it all made sense. It may have been the empowerment I learned from such “taco-nstruction” that had me believing I could easily prepare tacos. So I got some ground meat and followed the directions on the seasoning packet. The store-bought shells weren’t crispy and the canned refried beans needed softening, so I heated the beans in a pan and crisped the shells in the oven. Surely this qualifies as cooking since both the oven and range were used simultaneously. The other ingredients, which included grated cheese, shredded lettuce, sliced olives, diced tomatoes and salsa were prepared and placed in bowls beforehand (mise-en-place, I’m told). Unfortunately, I used store-bought pre-grated cheese, which gave the tacos a junky edge. Additional ingredients could have included chopped onions, sour cream, guacamole and maybe tilapia instead of beef, but I kept it simple this first try. The bowls were arranged on the table, and we sat down to begin construction. Though they weren’t as tasty as dad's, they were just as fun.