Wednesday: Six Pounds of Taco Meat Gone, Packing Cold Lunches & Barbacoa Beef

Got up this morning and finished off the last of the bacon in the fridge, plus some bagels.

Once we’re into the regular school year, breakfast around here gets pretty basic most mornings. Bacon, bagels, toast, cereal, fruit—whatever gets everyone fed so we can get to work.

And then we got straight into school….and Daphne had some ‘fancy’ cereal for a mid morning snack…heavy cream and sprinkles!

Apparently Six Pounds of Taco Meat Wasn’t Too Much

Remember on Sunday when I cooked the entire six-pound package of ground beef from Costco and turned it into taco meat?

I fully intended to freeze some of it.

Then I thought, you know what? We haven’t had taco meat in a couple weeks. Everyone is still excited about it. I’ll just leave it in the fridge.

Well.

We finished all six pounds today.

Three days.

Granted, there are seven of us, and we used it for multiple meals/snacks. I had it for lunch a couple times, we had our thermos taco bowls Sunday night, and today we finished it off at lunch.

But still. Six pounds of taco meat. Gone.

I think that also means we’ve reached our taco-meat limit for the moment. I probably won’t make it again for another week or so because even foods you love need a break.

For lunch, everyone used the last of it however they wanted. We had quesadillas, nachos and I made myself a taco salad.

Packing Tomorrow’s Lunch While Making Today’s

Tomorrow is our first full day of homeschool co-op with all the kids, which means I also needed to get everyone’s lunches packed.

And this is one of those tiny efficiencies that makes a difference:

If I’m already cutting food for today’s lunch, I’m cutting food for tomorrow too.

One of my kids loves a cold meat-and-cheese quesadilla. I was already making one for her lunch today, so I made two.

She ate one.

I cut up the second one, put it in the refrigerator and later added it to her PlanetBox with salsa and all her other sides.

Lunch for tomorrow: done.

Don’t Overlook Weird Cold Lunches

I actually asked everyone on Instagram today for their more unusual cold-lunch ideas because, as much as I love a hot thermos lunch, sometimes you just need more options.

And I think we sometimes get too stuck on what a “cold lunch” is supposed to look like.

Two of my kids love cold pizza.

Perfect.

I actually baked a pizza today specifically so we’d have it for tomorrow. Cold cheese pizza, pepperoni or salami, some fruit and vegetables—that’s a completely solid lunch.

Cold quesadilla? Also works.

Someone suggested cold cheese tortellini with marinara for dipping, and I thought that was brilliant. You’ve basically got a little cheese-filled bite you can pick up and dip.

I got so many good suggestions that I’m going to pull them together into a post, because sometimes you just need somebody else to remind you that lunch doesn’t have to be a sandwich.

And Yes, We Brought Home More Library Books

This afternoon we went to the library.

Last week I showed the giant pile of books we returned, and some people were impressed and some people were giving me grief about the sheer volume.

But this is why.

Look at how many books we bring home in ONE WEEK.

Multiply this by several weeks, and yes, we’re going to walk into the library at the end of the month with an enormous return pile.

My kids will read them.

I’m not buying all these books.

So we’re going to keep hauling home our ridiculous piles from the library.

When we got home from the library, my husband also arrived home from a work trip. We got to chat while I cooked dinner and he ate a quick snack that we call a ‘calorie bomb’. lol!

Finally: Barbacoa Night

For dinner tonight, it was finally time for the chuck roast I cooked on Monday.

This is one of my favorite ways to make barbacoa because the hard part was already done two days ago.

On Monday, I seasoned that chuck roast simply with salt, pepper and garlic powder, covered it tightly and cooked it at 275°F for about seven hours until it was completely fall-apart tender.

Then I saved the meat AND all those beautiful juices in the refrigerator.

Tonight I turned part of that meat into my barbacoa beef. I have the full recipe on my website, so I’ll link it here.

But here’s something else I always do:

I don’t turn all the beef into barbacoa.

I have a couple kids who don’t love the barbacoa seasoning. So I leave some of that beautifully tender chuck roast plain and simply reheat it in a pot.

The rest gets all the barbacoa treatment.

Again: same dinner, slightly different versions, everybody eats.

I reheated the rice I made on Sunday and cooked some peppers and onions to go alongside everything. Then everyone could build their plates however they wanted.

While I’m in the Kitchen…

Since I was already in the kitchen cooking dinner, I knocked out two more things for Future Me.

I cooked a batch of ground sausage to replenish the cooked sausage I like to keep in my fridge and freezer.

And I cooked bacon.

Tomorrow morning is our first co-op day, and there will be no leisurely bacon cooking session. We need to get up, get everybody fed and get out the door.

So tomorrow’s bacon is already cooked. I’ll just throw it onto a sheet pan to reheat while everyone gets ready.

Raspberry Ice Cream to Finish the Day

After dinner, my daughter had some fresh raspberries she’d picked from our garden, so we mixed them into vanilla ice cream for dessert.

I had bought ice cream cones specifically for this, only to discover that approximately half the box was crushed.

So irritating.

But the surviving cones did their job, the fresh raspberry ice cream was delicious, and nobody seemed particularly concerned about my cone grievances.

And now lunches are packed, bacon is cooked, sausage is stocked, dinner leftovers are in the fridge, and tomorrow…

Co-op begins.