My Mexican Feast

My sister called shortly after she got into town yesterday and she mentioned that non of her roommates were back from their vacations and she didn't want to be in the house alone so she was thinking about going to our brothers for the night. Since I had already planned on making Mexican food (some of Steph's favorite) I asked if she wanted to join us for dinner. Of course she said yes because I made my homemade salsa.

So the menu was as follows;

Corn on the Cob cooked on the grill served with a chili lime butter
Taco's with: Ground Beef, Black Beans, Mexican Rice, Salsa, Sour Cream, Cheese, and Lettuce

The taco's were going to be served as salad's in a bowl made from the shells, or the traditional soft shells.

So I started the meat, rice, and corn, then I put the Taco shells on the balls of aluminum foil and placed them in the over to brown. I set the timer for the appropriate amount of time according to the directions and went about my business.

Of course fro whatever reason Ian was in one of those moods where he wanted to be held while I cooked dinner and I wouldn't pick him up because I was too busy stirring this, chopping that, or running out to the grill to check on the corn. So Ian followed me around pulling at my shorts crying for the majority of the 20 minutes it took for everything to cook.

When about 5 minutes was left on the shells I decided to check on them to see how they were coming. I opened the oven door just an inch and all this smoke started pouring out. So much smoke that it burned my eyes and I couldn't see. I immediately closed the door and turned the kitchen fan on but the kitchen was already full of smoke and I new at any minute the smoke detectors were going to go off. So I ran around the house opening windows and turning on all the fans to clear the smoke out.

As I was coming back into the kitchen from the office I slipped on something and went flying across the kitchen floor slamming into the cabinets. It took me a minute to realize that there was something wet on the floor and then another minute to realize it was pee form Ginger (our 1 yr old Chiwawa).

Of course by this point I am completely freaking out because my legs and kitchen floor have dog pee all over them, my house is filled with smoke, and the shells are still int he oven with it on burning even more.

After I got up and wiped the pee up, I realized I hadn't opened the window int eh dinning room and I decided I should do that before I tried to get the shells out of the oven because more smoke would coming out. So I run into the dinning room, open the window, and turn around to go back to the kitchen when I almost step in dog poop! Now Ginger has not had this many accidents in months so I don't know what the heck was going on with her but she couldn't have picked a worse time. Now I couldn't leave the poop on the floor because god knows if I did that one of the kids would get into it, so off I went to pick that up while the shells are still burning.

Finally I get to the point where I can get the shells out. I turn the over off and slowly open the door. The smoke is so strong my eyes are burning and I can hardly breath, but somehow I manage to get them out and into the sink. What uses to be white soft taco shells are now black as cool and hard as rocks. Somehow in the midts of all of this I managed not to burn or ruin anythign else which I was sure was goign to happen.

Those that know me know I am a pretty darn good cook and I don't burn things or mess them up so this was a bit of a shock to me and I was not happy with myself. I decided that even though I had enough shells to try again I wouldn't because who knows what would have gone wrong a second time. We ate our tacos the normal way and they were really good. Everything else turned out great, and it was nice to have my sissy there with us.

If anyone has a good way of turning soft taco shells into bowls for Taco Salades please let me know because the recipe I got clearly didn't work.