gearing up

So… somehow our “small family gathering” for Easter has ended up at… 39 people. Hahahaha. Because the Orthodox and Western churches are on different calendars, our Easter is often later than y’alls (David Sedaris claims it's a conspiracy by the cheapo Greeks to get their Peeps on sale, hahahahaha) but this year it’s the same. So the more the merrier!

We’ve been (and will likely continue to spend the next 5 days) running around semi-maniacally. Buying groceries (Costco and Safeway down; the Greek store, farmer’s market, and HMart yet to go), taking apart and putting together furniture (not directly related to Easter but difficult!), organizing recipes, making lists, cleaning, cooking, etc!

I’m stoked for the lovely weather predicted. My dear grandmother always said (somewhat blasphemously?) God is Greek!

Now that I’m a convert to the green monster, I COMPLETELY understand its appeals. Quick, convenient, easy to eat; a nutritional missile delivered to your belly in a simple, tasty, complete form.

Today’s had 1 cup milk, 1 cup thawed frozen spinach, 1 frozen banana, 1 T peanut butter, and ice. SO delicious! You really honest and truly don’t taste the spinach! So weird!

I know the usual topper is granola, but I really don’t like granola that much and we rarely have it. So I went for my puffs!

 

With a chaser of roughly a gazillion of my old friends:

We restocked at Costco :D It is seriously mind boggling how delicious these are. Especially when you consider that you are ingesting vegetables. Like, it’s just dried vegetables. And a teensy bit of heart-healthy canola oil, but they’re not even fried. Man oh man I love these things.

That break having ended, I then polished silver for an hour, including this awesome coffee/tea set.

 

What a wonderful, soothing task. I love mindless work sometimes.

I have taken the occasional break for a quality indulgence.

 

Holy goodness! Another winner. A very balanced dark chocolate- I know the chocolate snobs say you need like 99.99% dark chocolate but I still like my chocolate to be sweet! This did the bitter/sweet line beautifully.

Dinner was nice because my leetle seester is now home for Spring Break! My mama went to get her at the airport (the distance to BWI and traffic sitch meant the round-trip journey went from 5:30 to 9:15, oi) and I welcomed them home with taco fixins hot and ready to go.

I was eyeing Melinda's yummy looking black beans and decided to use her recipe for inspiration for a taco filling.

Into the pan went a can, mostly drained, of black beans (Goya low sodium, you know it), the remains of a jalapeno (part of party prep is also cleaning out the fridge!), tomato paste (also trying to use up what was in the fridge!) and spices- garlic powder, onion powder, and cumin.

Meanwhile I got some tortillas.

 

My mom apparently REALLY WANTED us to have enough tortillas the last time she bought them.

This kind is good, though. Being lucky enough to live in a neighborhood with a lot of nationalities, including a hefty Latin American population, we can get our hands on good tortillas. The Salvadoran ones- super thick!- are my faves, but it is sooo nice being able to get good corn tortillas. No me gusta flour tortillas.

Also chopped up the last of the napa cabbage (more fridge space!)

And some cado

 

And all that went on the table with the finished taco filling

 

Tacos uno y dos:

The deliciousness of dos was greatly enhanced by my  new friend here:

Wonderfully smoky. And a nice, short, natural ingredient list (but still annoyingly vague about what gives it its deliciousness- “peppers”? “spices?” Give me more to go on!). Anyway, I ended up taking the last crunchy cabbage bits and dipping them in it. Weird but oh so good.

Final order of business:

MICHAL- comment number 19 on this post. You won my giveaway! Please email me your address at leleinthesky@gmail.com if you wanna get your goodies!