The ramblings of a mom with triplets plus one and now a mini-farm in the making.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Homemade chicken soft tacos!
My children LOVE Del Taco's chicken soft tacos, two children with no lettuce. The tacos are fairly inexpensive but now all four seem to require 3-4 tacos each in order to be full. So today I made it my mission to find out what the "secret white sauce" is that Del Taco puts on their chicken soft tacos. I googled and searched earlier this morning and found that you could mix mayo and sour cream to have a taste similar to the "secret white sauce". I am sure Del Taco does have a secret to their recipe but I was willing to try the mayo/sour cream mix.
So here is the recipe I used today to get a smile from my most discerning young palette:
flour tortillas equal parts of mayo and sour cream chicken that was cooked in the crock pot all day in green enchilada sauce shredded cheese
Actually, all four said my chicken soft tacos were pretty darn close to those sold up the street.
*** Update December 18, 2009 ***
Last night I went through Del Tacos drive thru and before leaving, I asked if the "secret white sauce" was really secret. The workers laughed and said she didn't think so but she didn't know what was in it other than it was a mayonaise based product. Just thought I would share. If you find out more, please leave a message!
Yes, with thriftiness always in the forefront of our minds nowadays, we have made it a family outing to go our local Goodwill Superstores in the last couple of weeks looking for bargains. It seems the kids always grow out of their clothes two days after you buy them or they just plain wear them out.
So, this past week, I dragged #1 to one of the two Goodwill Superstores we have been frequenting after her doctor's appointment (since we were already on that side of town). Despite her being sick (two ear infections), she let me make a quick run through of the clothes for her. She was in need of more meeting clothes. I was able to get #3 several meeting outfits since we had stumbled into "50% off all clothes" a few Saturdays ago. This week, #1 and I stumbled into "25% all skirts". We walked out with brand-name items (many with the original tag still attached) that amounted to five meeting outfits for less than $20!!! (Pictures to come as they wear the clothes.)
Tonight, Jason wanted to go to his favorite GW Superstore, closer to our home, to check out what they had. Well let me tell you, somebody walked out with a super big smile on his face. I have to admit, I did too. We spotted a brand new gas dryer for $60 dollars. What manager's special did we stumble into tonight? It was 25% off everything in the store. So with that, Jason skipped up to the counter and put his name on it. Total spent for the dryer was $45!! There are no dents, scratches or chips on it. Frigidaire has a MRSP of $619, but looking online, it looks like it goes for about $500. He saved $455!! Jason ran a gas line to the dryer hook up a few years ago so that we could save on our electricity bill (which it has). Our friends were kind of enough to give us an old gas dryer they no longer needed but it has been on its last leg for months. It squeaked so bad, everyone on our street knew when we were drying clothes. For the price it would cost to fix it, Jason decided to start looking for another used dryer. Tonight he found on and he got an awesome deal. The following video is a few seconds of the new dryer doing its thing, quietly. That is how proud we are, we want to share with the WWW land how nice it is to dry clothes, quietly.
Still coming down from the high of our thrift store experience, I was craving more of Mama Rose's pizza. I ran into Food 4 Less and what did I find but my pizzas on sale for 50% off! These pizzas come in packs of two, so I came out with two packs at $2.29 per pack and a two four packs of snack pizzas for $2.79 per pack! Even though, for the last two weeks, I have cooked six regular pizzas and 10 snack pizzas for anyone in the house who wanted to partake I still felt the urge to make another one tonight. The crust is wonderful and the cheese is so creamy, almost liquid. Even when it gets cold, the cheese is still soft.
Now that I have totally rambled about a dryer, cheap clothes and pizza for several paragraphs, I can not end this post without sharing a picture of an item that I felt would never be a likely piece of decor in my house. But, when my eye caught I glimpse of this lamp, I knew in my heart that if Jason saw it, the lamp would be coming home with us. Well, he got a glimpse of it. Proudly,here on his side of the bed, stands his new $5 lamp. I am thankful it is not a leg lamp.
Tonight at the Meeting, Sister H had invited the kids to be her householder for an impromptu talk. The kids were very excited to be a part of this talk and to be on the stage in the front Hall. They wanted to make sure we took video of it and then posted it on the blog. Needless to say, they felt good and received lots of complements for their effort, reading from the Bible and willingness to go up on stage.
If you could have seen the cameramen, you would have seen two very proud parents.
Mimi came to visit us a few weeks ago and wanted to take the kids to Fremont. #2 was not really wanting to go but sure was glad he did go! The kids really enjoyed the "American Pie" show and it was fun to watch them sing the song and dance (That is why a few pictures are blurry.) They enjoyed shopping at the souvenir stores even more because Mimi had given them all $5 to spend. One unexpected treat was the "ball of death". It consisted of a steel ball cage and 1-3 motorcycles would ride around inside. At first I thought it was going to be corny but it turned out just the opposite! Jay was even impressed!
This past Saturday, we were invited over to the BFF's house for dinner. The roast was good and the sauce Spendell made was great. I am glad to be back in the circle, even if it was a pity invite. (LOL Just joking BFF and Spendell, I just couldn't resist!)
Anyway...Spylie had set up her karaoke machine, placed a bar stool on top of a fuzzy rug, made a spotlight with her ceiling light and had amateur night in her bedroom. We could hear the kids having fun while the adults were in the living room chatting but unless you walked in to the room, the experience was just not complete.
I was able to capture a quick snapshot that totally set the scene and if I did not know better, I would have sworn #2 got into bar with a fake I.D. I believe #2 was doing a stand up comedy routine in this picture.
Guess who needs to clean their "eyes" with Windex now?
Yes, the long awaited specs finally arrived today. The office had said they should be in on Monday of this week but maybe as early as Friday. Since I had not heard from them as of this afternoon, I called them. They said the glasses were not in but quickly called me back, I guess after double checking, and said they were in! I could not drive fast enough for #3. The office closed at 5pm and we were not able to leave the house until 4:45. #3 was at a point of being willing to just physically run to the office as she knew she could run faster than I was driving. Fortunately, she liked the case the glasses came with so I did not have to stop at Wal-Mart to look for one more befitting of a picky 9 year old girl with new glasses to show off.
On the way home, she read all the signs. Even as I type, she is skipping around taking her glasses off and then putting them back on then giving me updates of how much clearer she can see this and that.
How fun to be a 9 year old with your first pair of neat new eye glasses.
I don't have a picture because it is late but the girls finished their brothers' sleep pants tonight. It went quick and their seams were even better than last night!
This evening, the kids suggested we do our nightly bike ride to Wal-Mart because I need to go there to pick up prescriptions. We also had a visitor tonight, TL from down south, so we decided to get a little extra flannel to make his kids sleep pants. I don't know if we will get them done by the time he goes back home on Thursday or Friday but we will have them in the mail by Monday.
The last two nights have been so fun! Hopefully, I truly have two new sewing partners who I will not have to beg to sew with me.
After the girls finished their sewing class in the fall, we bought them a sewing machine to share. Even though there were no fights over the sewing machine, Mimi made sure none would come up in the future. She bought another sewing machine this past weekend. Now all the girls in the house (including me) have a sewing machine to call her own!
With this new serge of excitement over sewing, we cut out pajama pants patterns and began sewing up a storm on the kitchen table. I was the teacher and did the serging(ok, we have a serger we all share) and each girl worked on a pair of pants for one of their brothers. Tomorrow, we will hem them and insert the elastic.
Mimi came for a week long visit and #4 was able to take her on a date to Mimi's Cafe'(no relation to our Mimi). As you may remember, #4 was awarded with a free dinner at Mimi's Cafe by the school. So off to dinner they went!
Location: blogging about the next phase of family life...country living, United States
I am a mom who had triplets and then had a surprise baby.
We are now living in the country, which is completely opposite from our life just 3 years ago.
