Wednesday night was taco night! (aye! aye! aye! aye!) No packets of flavoring, or boxes of taco shells. This was the real deal. The special touches that make these the best tacos ever:
* low fat ground beef because you don't drain the fat
* making the meat seasoning yourself
* good chili powder
* fry your own taco shells from 6" corn tortillas
* and among the normal taco ingredients - add cilantro

Frying the shells take a little practice, but it's worth it. I knew there had to be a gadget for this. If I can imagine it - it has to be out there somewhere. Well it is. Cost Plus Imports carries an $8 taco frying tool. Looks like big scissor handles. The end has a "holder" that's baby-taco shaped and clamps around the tortilla, making it the right shape. Then it's fry baby!

Home Made Ground Beef Tacos
Cook's Illustrated magazine, May/June 2002
Rating: Excellent

Last night was our first attempt at chicken & sausage jambalaya. J.T. had this amazing chicken jambalaya on the first day of our honeymoon in the DisneyWorld hotel, and I suspect nothing will ever compare. But we tried it anyway. I was giddy to use my blue Le Crueset Dutch oven (a favorite pot of mine!). It doesn't come out of the closet much.

So what the heck is "bouquet garni" and "kitchen bouquet"??? These were ingredients on the list, but I'll be darned if we could find it in the store.

Of course now it's after the fact, but according to , "bouquet garni" is:
"a group of herbs tied in cheese-cloth which are used to flavor stocks and stews and removed before serving"

That's all very nice, but useless unless you know which herbs to use. I suppose I could rely on my so-called experience and guess it's all those normal "stock making" herbs...like, um, well... I guess I'll have to look that up. I'm more of a Swanson's chicken broth kind of girl - which is what we used. And "kitchen bouquet" was nowhere to be found in the online dictionaries, but the recipe called for a Tbsp of it. We used Schilling's "seafood seasoning" instead.

The end result was: great chicken and rice. I think it fell short of being jambalaya. Not nearly spicy enough. J.T. had to add extra hot sauce and chili powder. The other end result was a nicely cut finger from getting the pot out of the cupboard. It's difficult to come out unscathed...

Chicken Jambalaya
Heart & Soul
Rating: Great, despite it not being the jambalaya J.T. knows and loves