Taco Night!

Monday nights in our house have become unofficial (or possibly official, by now) roommate night.  Some weeks that means house meetings, and it often involves chores (last night we cleaned out the fridge), but last night it also involved a pretty awesome dinner - taco night!  At last count, our dinner required 11 bowls, 2 plates, and a tub of sour cream just to serve, and the meal was a constant chorus of "could you please pass the ___", but it was oh so totally worth it!  What was in all those containers?  Taco meat (for the non-vegetarians in the house), awesome bean filling, two kinds of guacamole, tex-mex cheese, salsa, lettuce, tomatoes+red peppers, cucumber, green onion, and cilantro, plus soft (flour) and hard (corn) tortillas.   I personally like to eat one or two hard tacos before getting fed up with how small they are or how easily they break, then I tend to switch to crumbling the taco shells over a salad.  So tasty!

Given that a traditional taco involves a lot of beef and cheese, and occasionally some guacamole which has been spiked with sour cream, I thought I'd talk about some of the recipes I use to make taco night equally enjoyable but all-the-more vegan.  (Although for the non-vegetarians, adding ketchup, garlic powder, chili powder, hot sauce, and a pinch of curry powder to browned beef makes for a pretty tasty alternative to pre-packaged taco seasoning packages).