I chose this recipe because it’s my mom’s, and I actually love taco salads.

First, I want to tell you something I found surprising: taco salads have a specific birth date and place: at a restaurant called, “Fritos” (exactly those chips) in Disneyland sometime in the 60’s. Apparently, it was called a “ta-cup” and was cup-sized with a shell made entirely of Fritos. I guess it’s kind of like what some consider a “walking taco” these days.

Growing up, my favorite (and the only) Mexican restaurant was called, “Rojo’s.” It was out by the high school in Fulton, Missouri. That was the first place I ever had a double decker taco. If you’ve never had one, let me enlighten you: it’s a hard taco shell that’s wrapped with a soft taco shell that’s smothered in refried beans. The beans acted like a glue to hold the soft shell on to the hard one. It had all the crunch without the blow-out explosion synonymous with hard tacos. I also loved that place because there was a huge salsa bar that had little containers of onions, peppers, salsa–you name it. I’ve always been a huge fan of condiments and little extras. Mom ate taco salads. (I can’t remember what Dad ate back then, but I can tell you that when we eat at Mexican restaurants now, he orders chicken fajitas and then dumps all the meat onto the salad plate, mixes it all until it’s barely recognizable, and digs in.)

Unfortunately, Taco Bell moved to town and you know the rest of the story when it comes to small towns. Sometime in the early 2000’s they had a double decker taco; I still think they stole it from Rojo’s.

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My mother loves salads. It seems my whole childhood was filled with Dad and me making fun of her for eating “rabbit food.” Don’t get me wrong, I love a good salad, but Mom eats them all the time. If we go out to dinner, that’s what she orders. It’s so rare that she chooses anything else. She’s proudly told me, “I judge my restaurants on their salads and iced teas.” Periodt.

I remember eating taco salads for dinner when I was a kid. There would be the ground beef cooked with that packet of “taco seasoning” sprinkled into the pan. There was salsa so mild it could’ve been canned tomatoes. Throw in some cheese and onions, and douse it in sour cream. Yum! We’d eat it usually in a pre-made fluffy, crunchy taco salad shell. Can you still buy those?

Because of those memories and my mom’s love of all types of salads, I trusted this taco salad recipe would be good, though I was wary about the “Catalina dressing.”

I accidentally bought chili in a can instead of “chili beans” which I think are just red kidney beans. Oops. So, I just used that instead. I followed the rest of the directions as written and presented it to Gaby and Camila. I offered sour cream, too, because it looked like it needed something more. Their noses wrinkled.

But that was nothing compared to their faces when they started eating it. Camila is usually the slowest eater at any table, but I saw her pushing around the salad and nibbling tiny bites. Gaby ate with less gusto than usual, too. When I asked her opinion she said, “Just…No.” Camila nodded her head in agreement.

I didn’t think it was that horrible. After all, it was saturated with sour cream, so it was at least edible. What we all agreed on is how awful Catalina dressing is. What the hell is it, anyway? It’s just a tomato sauce. It’s almost like a ketchup? Why not just use salsa?

Not much more was spoken about the dreaded salad until a few nights ago when we had dinner with my parents. I confessed to my mom we made her recipe and we all didn’t really like it. We apologized, but Mom really didn’t seem to care. She just said, “well, I just got that recipe from someone out at the plant. It was really popular then.”

There’s a lot to unpack in that sentence: 1. Mom didn’t really love cooking and didn’t really write recipes. 2. The plant is the UE/Ameren Callaway Nuclear Plant. 3. She wanted to contribute a recipe to the book but really didn’t care a whole lot about what it was. 4. that was in the 1980s.

Chef Gaby rating on a scale from 0- Grandpa’s Pasta Sauce: 2.5 

Join me next week for Salmon Chowder!

Instead of rewriting the recipe you see above, I’d like to offer one of our family’s favorite and very easy meals:

Christina’s Redneck Tacos/Taco Salad

1 pound ground beef

1 packet of taco seasoning

1 can black beans

1 green pepper, chopped

1 red pepper, chopped

1 onion, chopped (maybe more)

3 garlic cloves, minced (or a teaspoon of garlic powder)

flour or corn tortillas

1 avocado

lettuce, chopped (not iceberg, please)

1 tomato

1.5 cups shredded cheddar cheese

sour cream

a good salsa

a handful of cilantro, chopped

You can add pretty much anything you want. Some people do black olives, corn, or jalapeños.

Instructions:

Begin by cooking the beef for a few minutes with a little salt, pepper, and the garlic. Add the chopped onion, green and red pepper, and taco seasoning packet. You might add a half cup of water to really soak the meat and veggies in the spices. Cook until done. There’s no need to drain the meat.

Meanwhile, cook the black beans in a small pot over low heat. You could also just throw them into the meat when it’s cooked if everyone you’re feeding wants to eat them.

Choose from any of these items and put them into a tortilla, or grab some lettuce and put all the toppings you want on that.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: please do not microwave your tortillas! Simply put them in a hot skillet until warm to the touch, then flip.

When I was trying to find something fun to write about taco salads, I found the video you’ll see below. This “salad” is essentially 40 pounds of miscellaneous stuff thrown onto flavorless iceberg lettuce. It looks…heavy. I’d still eat it, though. But, again, just use salsa and not that god-awful Catalina dressing.