Tips for Taco Tuesday . . . but on a Friday, and other nonsense for your Monday

We've been meat-free on Fridays for a couple of years now, and it's been good for our family. It's a great way to make a sacrifice that we can share with each other and with other Catholics all over the world and through time. I think it's terrific. Except, of course, for the fact that it's kind of a pain (as sacrifices often are).

I've mostly gotten past the first hurdle of meat-free Fridays, which was remembering to do it at all. But now, the main issue I have, is that we like to try to do fun family activities on Friday, but I don't have many meat-free dinner recipes that are portable.

But look out, I'm about to go food blog on you.

Enter . . .


makes 15 tacos, feeds 5-6 adults

Ingredients
one package of 30 corn tortillas
one box large-size frozen fish sticks (30 sticks)
one tube prepared fresh cilantro (in fresh herb section)
one tub fresh pico de gallo type salsa
one bag fine shredded cabbage

Prep
at home, bake fish sticks according to package directions, wrap in foil and place in a plastic food storage container
pack fish sticks and tortillas in a warm cooler (oh, the irony)
pack cilantro, cabbage, and salsa in a cool cooler (that's better)

Directions
at destination: for each taco, take two tortillas in your hand, squeeze a line of cilantro down the center of the top one, place two fish sticks, a spoonful of salsa, and a handful of cabbage on top, fold, and enjoy




Seriously, they're great. Good at the beach, good at the park, probably even good camping, I'd just cook the fish sticks over the fire in a foil packet. My kids love them, if you just keep the fish stick box out of sight, your guests will be impressed, too.

So, the whole reason I had to come up with the fish sticks fish tacos thing was because, while it's been snowing on some bloggers, it's been hot here.

So when One Direction came to the Rose Bowl and cancelled our homeschool parkday (they should be ashamed of themselves), we headed to the beach.

"When we look at our contemporary health problems here in the West, we’re quick to focus narrowly on diet. And it’s certainly true that the average American today eats very differently than the average American did a century or two ago. But there are even more dramatic changes to the way we live. We’re no longer members of close-knit and active communities made up of strong families committed to each other and a common cause. We’re isolated individuals leading sedentary lives both at work and at home. We also consume massive amounts of entertainment and spend very little time with our families and communities. But these things aren’t easy to measure scientifically and the solutions are even harder to implement. It’d be great if the solution to all our health woes was simply “Eat this one special food” or “Throw away your cheese.” But, it appears the problem is not just WHAT we eat but HOW we get the food and WHO we eat it with."

I loved reading his research, and couldn't agree more with his conclusions. Ever since I slowly (and sometimes comically) have learned to cook food from scratch over the course of my marriage, that has been our focus. Not restricting our diets, but eating reasonable portions of from scratch foods, and avoiding processed food whenever possible. (I have a prescription for Dr. Pepper, so that doesn't count. Obviously.) In our family food is a social activity, something we do together, not alone. Food is not the enemy. I hope this way of eating will help my kids grow up with a positive relationship to food and eating, and keep them away from the crazy fad dieting culture.

And, speaking of the Stewarts, I also loved Haley's post about Instagram Envy, Being Authentic on the Internet, and When It’s Time to Break Up with a Blog.

I'm kind of the opposite of Haley here, I used to get stressed out reading a "Help! My life is chaos!" blog, because I always felt like I wanted to fix what was wrong for her, and felt powerless to actually do anything to help her. But over the past couple of years of blogging, I've come to learn that (surprise!) people are different and are inspired and motivated by different things. I love, love, love seeing beautiful pictures, and I like sharing beautiful or funny moments. But I don't assume that beautiful photos mean clean counter tops and accounted-for-shoes and no-yelling-ever. I like beautiful photos BECAUSE we have messy counter tops and lost shoes and some yelling. I tend not to write about things until I've finished processing them and feel like I have a resolution to share. But NOW, I understand that for some people the sharing of the chaos is PART of their resolution process, and that's okay. I don't have to be able to fix it. Just because someone chooses to share her crazy moments doesn't mean she doesn't have together moments, and just because someone chooses to share together moments, doesn't mean she doesn't have crazy moments. It doesn't mean that for me anyway!

And guess what? It turns out that the thing I needed to nudge me over the edge on whether or not to join Instagram was Haley saying that everyone's life was too pretty on Instagram. So, come see an incomplete sample of the pretty parts of my life. I'm @kendra_tierney.

Speaking of pictures, here are a couple you may have missed on Facebook:

Lulu was playing on the floor in the living room, while we were working on school in the dining room (aka the other side of the living room).
Gus: Mom, can Lulu stand up?
Me (with back to Lulu): No, not yet, but soon. Let's get back to work.
. . . a minute later . . .
Gus: Are you sure she can't? 'Cause she IS.
Lulu: (standing at ottoman, waving one arm, and gleefully shouting to get our attention)
Me: Oh. I guess she can.


This is what playing Mass looks like in SoCal. #cantconsecratecornchips


Finally, (whew!) it's the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows today. Here's what we'll be doing.


We're going to use sour skittles. Lemon drops are prettier, but they take forever to eat.

Keep cool/warm as applicable, everyone!