Date Night Recipe: Spring Taquitos

Written with love, by Sarah-Elizabeth Labelle

It’s all over the magazines and people are even beginning conversations with strangers about it. We can all feel its impending arrival. Spring is coming, or so we all desperately hope. We change over our coats, we try and make it through the commute in shoes that really aren’t fit for melting snow and we spice up the colours in our wardrobes, all in the faint hope that we can force the weather to get warmer.

I find myself constantly checking my weather app thinking if I will it hard enough, spring will simply just appear.  It’s not only me - Store fronts optimistically display gardening tools, clothing stores promote their new line of rain boots, and food articles literally turn green with envy. So why not add to the fever that’s over taken us all and make some delicious food that reminds us of backyards without snow, and of tee shirts instead of parkas?

 

Ingredients

·         Taco shells, or tortilla bread

·         1 lbs of ground beef

·         1 lbs of ground turkey (or chicken)

·         3 stalks of celery (chopped)

·         ¼ cup of chopped green onion

·         ¼ cup of chopped asparagus

·         2 cloves of garlic

·         ¼ cup of olive oil

·         ¼ cup mushrooms

·         1 tomato diced

·         1 Zucchini

·         1 bag of mixed cheeses, or 3 cups of shredded cheese

·         1 tbs paprika  

·         2-3 cups of shredded lettuce

 

Spice Mix Ingredients

·         1 tbs chili powder

·         ¼ tsp garlic (or 2 garlic cloves finely diced)

·         ¼ cup of diced onion

·         ¼ tsp crushed chili pepper flakes

·         ¼ tsp oregano

·         ½ tsp paprika

·         1 tsp cumin

·          Pinch of salt and pepper


Zucchini Sliders // Directions

zuccini sliders

1. Preheat oven to 170F

2. Chop up zucchini, dip into a small bowl of paprika and place on a greased baking tray

3. Cover the top with shredded cheese

4. Cook in oven for roughly 15 minutes, or until cheese is golden brown (put in oven at the same time you begin ground beef for timing purposes)

 

Beef or Turkey Mix // Directions

1  Mix all the ingredients for Spice Mix into a bowl with ground beef, or ground turkey, and work together (using your hands for this works best)

2. Over medium heat cook ground beef until no longer pink (roughly 10-15 minutes)

 

Fillings // Directions

Set aside your cheese, and lettuce as well as diced tomatoes in separate bowls as fillings

Combine the chopped celery, green onions,  asparagus, mushrooms and garlic with olive oil on a sauce pan over medium heat (can be done while ground beef is cooking) and let cook for 5-8 minutes. Set this aside as a vegetarian filling, also goes well with ground beef

spring taquitos recipe

Drink Pairings

Light beer; Corona
Wine; Santa Carolina, Merlot