EVERYONE WINS ON TACO NIGHT
A Mix-and-Match Taco Guide, starring: Magic Pork Shoulder, short-cut Carne Asada, quick Chicken Tinga, pickled onions, and the fastest grated salsa (+ more!)
Hello!
Happy May—and, Cinco De Mayo. The first weekend in May is always a big one around here—many important birthdays, shop openings, and this weekend, a Bat Mitzvah for a very special friend. Sometimes this delicious day goes uncelebrated, but on the heels of another amazing trip to Mexico with my parents (in late March), we have been hitting the taco train pretty hard for weeks now.
Back in February, I made a promise to you (and myself) to be more focused on LOVING THE FOODS THAT LOVE YOU BACK. I’ve been keeping to my promise at home—-cooking a lot of bean soups, serving vegetable-heavy green or chopped salads every evening, keeping low-fat proteins at the ready, and focusing on fiber and flavor, to slow down our craving for sweets.
What struck me was how easy this felt to pull off in Mexico, not just because it was vacation (hello resort life—someone else was preparing and cleaning up all the meals!) but because regional Mexican food is loaded with vegetables and flavor. Sans the cheese, sour cream, and other creamy dollops we’re accustomed to here in North America—tacos are just about the perfect meal.
Everyone wins on taco night because —without the dairy-rich garnish—tacos can be healthy, or at least healthy-ish, with a satisfying portion of protein and little more than shredded slaws or salsa on top.
Further, how about the taco’s wild flexibility? My mom is a type-two diabetic and a two-time cancer survivor with specific dietary needs. Meanwhile, two of my immediate family members are pescatarian/flexitarian. I eat mostly gluten-free and my son loves and craves red meat. Yet, every single night in Mexico, we could all order tacos and make out like a bandit with flavor and satisfaction.
Greta, Andras, my Mom, and I would get fish (grilled, a la plancha) or shrimp (battered and fried) tacos. Mátyás would inevitably order steak tacos (which always came with tender, juicy little morsels of steak that were just right every single time!) and my dad played heavily into the main course mains like Chicken Tinga and Mole, plus oodles of delicious soups—and of course, Pozole.
We ate a serious amount of Pozole in Puerto Vallarta, for breakfast (yes—followed by heaping plates of papaya and guava), lunches, and dinners—a story for another time. But mostly, we ate tacos, which were abundant, and delicious.
Even basic tacos in PV hit the mark.
In that spirit, we’ve been leaning hard into our taco game: Making our tortillas (it’s not difficult, I promise. Here’s a solid recipe—but you do need a tortilla press!), rotating our proteins, and making sure we always have the magic mixture of toppings to spoon over the top.
Below, I’m including our foolproof Taco Protein Matrix, the recipe for my Magic Pork Shoulder (a juicy protein splurge that serves you for many meals to come)—plus our four best taco toppers to mix and match that make tacos good, better, best.
Bookmark for all of spring and summer. This playbook never gets old.
xx
Sarah
[RECIPES, BELOW]
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A FOOL-PROOF TACO PROTEIN MATRIX: stuff your tacos with……