I hope it doesn't embarrass my mom if I say that she didn't do much cooking from scratch when I was growing up (neither did my dad, although he could make a mean Bisquick breakfast). One thing we often had was tacos, made with ground beef, preshredded cheese, store-bought shells and one of those taco seasoning packets.

I'm not saying I went out and bought a tortilla press or anything, but I decided to reproduce the seasoning packet experience from the spices I have in my kitchen. I also substituted store-bought flour tortillas for the hard taco shells we used to have. If I had felt more ambitious last night I could have fried my own corn tortillas (which I've seen Cooks Illustrated do) and made my own pico de gallo, but I was trying to work with what I had on hand.

Simple meal, really. I used ground chuck, sauteed it, salted it, then transferred it to a paper towel lined bowl to drain the fat. I wiped the skillet out and toasted my preground cumin, cayenne and ancho chili pepper. Then I added the ground beef and some water (like you do with the seasoning packet), then simmered it for a while to meld the spices and get a saucy but thick texture. Served on flour tortillas with shredded cheese and lettuce and some salsa (we used Muir Glenn Organic, which has a nice little punch of lime juice). Not sophisticated, but Todd was pleased (it had beef in it).

Next I want to try to recreate my mom's lemon cheesecake bars with a crumble topping, which uses a lemon cake mix as the base, without the cake mix. (I made a batch with the original recipe last week when I first ran across it again and found that they're addictive to me in some sort of pre-formative sense. I crave them in a way I can feel bodily.)