Taco Salad

P is a big fan of Mexican food, so it makes a regular occurrence in our meals. One of our standard staple meals involves beans, veggie meat, and salsa; store-bought veggie meat isn't on the list of foods, but wasting food isn't very environmentally friendly either. We had one package of Lightlife's chik'n strips in our refrigerator to use up, and this meal accomplished that! In the future, I'll make seitan or some other homemade veggie protein -- or just use beans alone.

Tonight, we had the standard Mexican blend over arugula and a mixture of lettuces from our CSA -- forming delicious taco salads! (In the background, you can see the jar of delightful iced hibiscus tea that accompanied my dinner.)


We filled deep bowls with lettuce, then spooned the bean-n-chik'n mix over it, and topped with a bit of salsa. The mixture is so easy to make there's not even a need to write it out like a full recipe. Just drizzle a little olive oil in a pan and saute a few cloves of diced garlic, then add the veggie meat. Once the veggie meat has had a little time to get brown, add about two cups of black beans and cover with just enough salsa (we used green chile) to keep it all moist while cooking. If you add too much salsa, don't worry -- it'll get soaked up by the veggie meat and beans while it cooks.


There are infinite variations on this very simple meal; perhaps this is one of the reasons why we have it -- in one of its many instantiations! -- at least once a week.