Sunday: Costco Restock, Six Pounds of Taco Meat & Thermos Taco Bowls

We got up this morning and used some of the bacon I made yesterday. My husband had an eye doctor appointment yesterday and made a last-minute donut stop on his way home, so Sunday breakfast was basically bacon, donuts and some fruit.

A perfectly respectable Sunday breakfast, if you ask me.

Then I headed to Costco.

The Costco Restock

We did some major damage today.

It had been a couple of weeks since our lake trip, and there were quite a few things we’d worked through that needed to be restocked. And you guys always want to know what meat I bought, so here’s this week’s haul:

• One six-pound package of ground beef
• Organic boneless, skinless chicken thighs
• Mild Italian sausage
• Chuck roast

I actually planned to buy brats, but when I looked at the dates, they were expiring in about two days.

Nope.

To me, that means they’ve probably been sitting there for a while, and I’m not buying a big Costco package of brats that immediately needs to be dealt with.

So I pivoted to mild Italian sausage instead. Hopefully my family doesn’t revolt.

And I grabbed a chuck roast that I’m hoping to cook tomorrow. I’d really like to get that going early and have another big batch of cooked protein in the fridge for the beginning of the week.

TBD. We’ll see what Monday brings.

Are we all buying salad again??? I decided to get a box of the spring mix at Costco….hope we don’t regret it!

Lunch: Beef Stew and the Hot Dog Bun Rotation

When I got home, lunch was almost entirely leftovers.

I personally ate the very last of my chicken from Silver Spring House on Friday night.

My mom always sends us home with lots of leftovers…in addition to the beef stew, we also had some fresh fruit and veggies.

For everyone else, I reheated the beef stew my mom sent home with us last night and made some side salads.

Two of my kids weren’t interested in beef stew, so they had hot dogs instead.

This reminds me of another very unscientific system I have: almost every week at Costco, I buy either hamburger buns or hot dog buns.

We alternate.

I know we’re going to use them. They’re an easy lunch, an easy snack, and a hot dog bun can become a delivery system for basically any protein if necessary.

This was hot dog bun week.

I also made a little peach oat nut skillet for a quick Sunday lunch dessert.

Six Pounds of Ground Beef

This afternoon, I dealt with the entire six-pound package of ground beef from Costco.

I cooked all of it and turned the whole thing into taco meat.

We were getting low on taco meat in the freezer, and this is one of those proteins that I know will get eaten. Taco bowls, nachos, quesadillas, salads, quick lunches—it disappears.

And I had an immediate plan for some of it tonight.

Our homeschool co-op had a family picnic at a park, and instead of trying to make everyone sit down and eat at exactly the same time, I decided to make individual thermos taco bowls.

This worked so well.

Thermos Taco Bowls

I cooked two cups of rice and got the taco meat blazing hot.

Then I preheated each thermos by filling it with boiling water and letting it sit while I got everything else ready.

When it was time to pack them, I dumped out the water and immediately filled each thermos with hot rice and taco meat.

And this time I customized them.

That’s one of the benefits of having individual thermoses. I can give everyone the amount and combination they’ll actually eat instead of making one giant container and hoping it works for everybody.

Then I packed all the cold toppings separately:

Lettuce, avocado, salsa, cheese, chips—whatever everyone wanted to add once we got to the park.

I also brought a bunch of sliced fruit and veggies and, because we’re not animals, Oreos.

It was such a solid picnic dinner because nobody had to stop what they were doing at the exact same time. When someone was hungry, their hot dinner was already sitting there waiting for them.

Going Into Monday

And now I have a LOT of taco meat.

Tonight I’m letting all the extra meat cool completely in the refrigerator. Tomorrow I’ll portion it out, keep some in the fridge for lunches over the next couple of days and put the rest into the freezer.

So going into the week, we’ve got taco meat handled, fresh chicken thighs and Italian sausage waiting to be cooked, and hopefully tomorrow I’ll get that chuck roast going.

Not a bad way to start the week.