A Quick Taco Soup Recipe

My good friend, Miss G. gave me this wonderful Taco Soup Recipe that is easy, healthy and family friendly.

My kids love this recipe so much that next time I make it I will double it up and have more leftovers.

We like to eat the soup the first night with Organic Corn Chips from Costco. On the second time around, we have drained the liquid and put it right on top of salad for a quick and nutritious Taco Salad. Miss G. says she like to use it the second night for tacos.

Don't be fooled by this simple recipe, it really tastes delicious.

Quick and Easy Taco Soup

1 lb of Ground Lean Turkey (you can use hamburger or shredded chicken, also)
1 Medium Onion
1 pkg Taco Mix
1 can Kidney beans (do not drain)
1 can Black Beans (do not drain)
1 can Corn (do not drain)
1 can Diced Tomatoes

Brown your meat and onions. Add the remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Then simmer until you are ready to eat.

For Garnishes:
Sliced Olives
Sour Cream
Corn Chips
Cilantro

I hope your family enjoys this as much as we do.

Cooking With Kids

During my daily web hunt for great recipes, new food products and gifts, I found this great website that outlines the benefits of cooking with your kids. Although, I do love to cook with my kids, I am almost always left with a big mess or finishing the batches of cookies as the children get bored and run off to do the next best thing. It could make any delightful gourmet not so delightful! This article helped me to remember how important cooking with your kids really is. Here are a few of the concepts cooking with kids teaches young ones:



Self confidence, healthy eating, preparedness, apppreciation for the cook, sanitation, time management, team work, creativity, cause and effect, measuring and fractions.

These are just a few of the great things you can teach your kids. What better way to teach a teen age boy how to respect his future wife than by making him know how much energy goes into cooking a meal himself? One of the hardest things I had to learn after I was married was how to cook a meal from start to finish. That meant starting certain dishes at different times to ensure the meal was completed at just the right time. Starting early helps kids learn how to do this so they won't have to stress about it in their young adulthood.

So I have decided to continue cooking with my kids even though there may be a disastrous mess afterward. Now, I just need an article to help me figure out how to get them to help me clean up!

The Delightful Gourmet Is Making A Change

It's official! I am tired of being unhealthy. I am a self proclaimed fast food junkie. Don't get me wrong, I love to try new recipes, explore the globe for the latest gourmet trends and bake up fabulous desserts but when it comes to day to day eating, I grab fast food before I start my next task. Being a mom, business owner, blogger, wife and running maintanence on many websites has made me put my health on the back burner.

To illustrate, I will give you my Mon-Fri. eating schedule:

• Breakfast-Coffee. Not sipped with enjoyment but swilled down like a tequila shot before I begin running my business and getting kids ready for school.
  
  
• Lunch-A piece of bread with peanut butter that I shove down my throat as I supervise the gift basket designers, blog, answer emails, phone calls and errands.



• Dinner-By 5:00 I fall into my chair and beg my husband to go pick up something so we can start our administrative work for the business and deal with kid's homework and bedtime.

There is my eating schedule for the week. Of course, on the weekends I am looking for fabulous recipes to prepare for my blog. SO I AM MAKING A CHANGE. I am going to make myself a priority and begin cooking dinner more often. I will admit, I will start with extremely easy recipes and even boxed sides. This still has to be better than fast food. So here goes. These are some pictures of my first meal under my new WAY OF LIFE. It was delicious and easy.

I printed this recipe from Better Recipes.com and adapted it for ease.

Pepper Jack Chicken:

4 bonelesss skinless chicken breast. (Have your butcher cut the breast in half making them thinner and faster to cook.)

Worchestershire Sauce

Soy Sauce

Half Onion Sliced

8 oz. Pepper Jack Cheese

1 tbsp Butter

1. Marinate chicken breasts in worchestershire sauce and soy sauce. I just dumped some into a plastic freezer bag. No measuring needed.


2. Coat pan with Extra Virgn Olive Oil and heat for a few minutes. Grill chicken and add your favorite spices. I just throw in a little Lawry's season salt and a pinch of garlic salt.


3. While chicken is cooking, add butter to another pan and let heat. Throw in sliced onions and sautee. Remove from heat when finished.


4. When chicken is finished (no longer pink) remove from pan and place in microwavable dish.
   
5. Place pepper jack cheese slices over chicken and top with sauteed onions.


6. Put in microwave long enough to melt cheese.

I paired the chicken with bagged salad and boxed rice from the grocery store and we had a fabulous chicken dinner that took me less than 30 minutes. I will try to post my fast dinners often and let you know my progress.

If anyone else suffers from FAST FOOD ADDICTION, please join me in the fight to make our family's healthier, stronger and happier. Please comment on any struggles, successes and set backs you have encountered. Join me today. We can do this together.

Triple Layer Chocolate Bars

Here is my latest weekend baking project. Triple Layer Chocolate Bars! Yummy! I am usually not a big fan of coconut but these bars turned out delicious. Two weekends out of the month, I try to do a cooking project with my kids (my fifteen-year-old has outgrown the tradition). I let them pick out the recipe and we go shopping for the ingredients and we come home and bake or cook it. My seven-year-old loves to carry the list at the grocery store and find all the ingredients. This recipe was pretty simple. It was practically dumping one layer ontop of the previous. If you are looking for a quick baking recipe for kids, this is a good one.
You will need:

• 1/2 cup margarine or butter


• 1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs


• 7 ounces packaged flaked coconut


• 1 14 ounce can of sweetened condensed milk


• 1 12 ounce package of semi sweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
  

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and melt butter in a 13x9 baking pan. Sprinkle evenly graham cracker crumbs over butter. Top with coconut then evaporated milk. Bake for 25 minutes. In a small sauce pan melt peanut butter and chocolate and spread over coconut layer. Cool 30 minutes. Chill and cut into bars. Here is a helpful hint. Don't crush the graham crackers by hand. It was a big mess and I actually had to give my dog a bath from all of the flying crumbs!

The Cookie Market

I picked up my latest edition of Specialty Food Magazine and found this article on the specialty cookie market. The cookie and cookie bar industry is a 5.2 billion dollar market. Of course, the most popular types of cookies are sandwich such as Oreos and soft chocolate chip. Most surprising is the love for vanilla wafers. They make up 47% of cookies eaten in any given household. More and more exotic, organic and ethnic cookies are becoming more popular as people are finding less expensive indulgences. We love cookies! We feature many brands and flavors in our gift baskets. Our top selling cookies include Golden Walnut, Brent & Sams & Euro Kitchens. My favorite has to be the Euro Kitchens Gourmet Selections. Let us know if you have a favorite cookie not mentioned here. We may feature them in our baskets. I found this recipe under the Easiest Cookie recipe:

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 1/8 cups flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 1/4 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350* Cream the butter and both sugars. Add the beaten egg and vanilla. Sift flour, baking soda and salt and add tothe creamed mixture. Mix thoroughly and add chocolate chips. Drop by spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets and bake for 7-10 minutes or until lightly golden brown on the edges.

A Vacation Of Culinary Proportions

Of course, most of us took some time off this Memorial Day Holiday. Many people stayed close to home and rediscovered the beauty and unfamiliar in their own home towns. We took a short vacation to La Jolla, CA. It is a beautiful beach city known as the "Beverly Hills" on the beach. The houses were gorgeous, the restaraunts divine and way out of our price range.

We found a way around our economically challenged situation by using Restaraunt.com. I typed in the zip code of our vacation destination and the site presented me with restaurants in that area that would accept their coupon certificates. We chose a few that gave us 80% off of the regular bill!! We drove around and found these quaint little restaraunts. Some were fancy, some inside hotels and some were mom and pop establishments. We really had a good time eating foods we wouldn't normally eat and trying restaurants we would normally pass by.

These great dishes were from Elijah's In San Diego. Our bill before our coupon was aprox. $55.20. Our cost after using a coupon from restaurant.com was $30.20 including tip! Minus the $2.00 I spent on the coupon, this leaves a total savings of aprox. $22.00! Why not take the family on a restaurant vacation for half the cost? It's a great way to rediscover a town near you!

Comment On Barbie Post

Cindy Shea left this comment on Barbie's Bash. I thought it was hilarious so I will share it with you.

"Your post on Barbie's turning 50 was not really indicative of the aging process that we all experience in life. Now granted, I know she has had some work done but I just so happen to have gotten my hands on some current photos of her before she goes into hair and makeup for her public appearances. Please keep this under wraps as I bought these illegally from her agent and I plan to sell them to TMZ when the time is right."