Taco Party aka Birthday Party aka I Love My New Dishes Party

I've been slacking, I know it.  This blog post happened during the end of May, and I've made so many different meals since then.  Again, as is often my motto, I guess it's better late than never.

Every Sunday, my family has dinner together.  It's a nice tradition that we've tried our best to uphold throughout the years as our family has grown and changed.  Plus, it's very Italian of us to have a huge meal together in the late afternoon after we've been in church all morning.

It's very unItalian of us that we don't usually cook the meal ourselves.  

It is usually made by one of our surrounding pizza parlors or delis....and paid for by mom and dad.   (Note: If I didn't say it, they would have commented about it later.  I figure it's best to be open and honest right from the start.)

Hubby's birthday was on a Saturday this year.  I thought, as a way to celebrate hubby with the family and to reprieve my dad of having to buy lunch, I'd make lunch for the family.

I've done this before, as you might recall from this post: Chili Family Fun Day.  This was in the time before the Orange Strainer.  You'll also notice it was a time before I took pictures of every minute of my life.

Whenever I cook for my whole family I have to plot out my time table before hand so that my head will not explode from over thinking about what I need to get done.  I got smart this time and wrote my schedule on a huge post it note that I found the perfect place for in my kitchen as the madness began.

Before I tell of how crazy my kitchen was in the two hours before dinner time, let me start with the real reason for why I wanted to have my family over for dinner.  My hubby's birthday was a great facade for what this dinner was truly for.  Ultimately....and honestly, it was all about the dishes.

These beautiful dishes that I found at Pier 1 and absolutely needed to have in my life.
These beautiful dishes that hubby bought me eight of, then said, "Are you sure you don't want ten?"
To which I said, "No darling, eight is fine".  Then days later said, "Dearest darling, I think I want ten."
To which hubby then willingly drove me back and forth across the greater parts of Central Jersey in order to find stores that still had my number nine and ten dishes in stock.

I love him.

My appetizer for Taco Sunday aka Birthday Sunday (secretly named Fiesta Plate Sunday) was Katie's Roasted Corn Salad from Pioneer Woman's first book: The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl.  I chose this because I could make most of it the night before and finish it off a few hours before dinner time and then not have to think about it any longer.

The hardest part about making this is cutting all the delicious veggies up into tiny scoopable pieces.

Scoopable.  Yup, it's a word.  I don't care what spell check says.

It's delicious, and super healthy which is a total bonus considering delicious and healthy do not compute in my brain.

I had a little under two hours to complete my main dish: Fried Chicken Tacos, also a Pioneer Woman recipe deeply loved by all that I have made it for.  The recipe is in her newest cookbook, but it's also on her website:  Click here and your thighs will hate me

I've made this recipe for a large crowd before all by my lonesome-ness and it worked.  This day I was fortunate because my big brother and his wife came by early and wanted to help.  I don't take an offer of help lightly, so after double checking that they really wanted to help I set them to right to work.

As I was chopping my chicken for the tacos, I had them shredding cheese, dicing tomatoes, scrubbing my kitchen floor....okay, maybe not that last one.

The most difficult part of Fried Chicken Tacos is the frying part.  Hubby is adverse to corn tortillas so that is the one substitution I make.  Typically, I will use the huge burrito style flour tortillas and go light on the chicken so that the taco can be loaded down with sour cream, cheese, lettuce, tomato, etc.  This time I used the tiny shells.

I created an assembly line with the servants, I mean helpers that I had.  Hubby was the chicken part of the assembly line.  He was a little generous with how much chicken he gave per taco and I think it through me off completely when it was time to fry them.

Usually they will come out perfectly crisp, utterly delicious, and simply fattening.  As I pulled them out of the hot oil, I realized they were a little on the softer side.  My time constraints and perfectionist mentality had a little battle and the time constraints won out.  Though I kept complaining that they weren't crisp enough, I didn't fret so much over it to force them to become crispier.

My sister-in-law was the third part of the assembly line (hubby=first, me=second).  After the tacos appeared close enough to done, I would grab then from the hot oil and plop them into a paper towel my she had laid out in preparation.  She was a good sport considering I had a blazing hot pocket of meat flying at her every four minutes or so.

My brother was the final step of the assembly line.  He would fill each taco with cheese, wrap them up in the paper towel, and then put them into a warm serving tray.

Deep fried chicken taco.

Warm, gooey cheese melted to perfection inside.  

I did not leave the kitchen without my share of battle scars.  The oil got out of control at one point and splattered all over, leaving my arms spotted with tiny polka dots of brown.  It was at that point that hubby grabbed my apron and made me wear it.

I always seem to forget that aprons are not pretty decorations for the kitchen walls but actually an additional cooking item.

When my dad arrived, he got to work blending up margaritas and pina coladas.  That blender in the background is my mom's from I'm assuming the year 1892.  I'm amazed at how all her appliances have lasted so long.  I lost my blender in the battle of 2012, when ice and a fork made mine magically crack.

I have yet to get over that loss.  

And no, I don't want to talk about it.

I'm all about serving up dinner buffet style.

While I was rushing around my kitchen splattering oil and tossing hot things at my sister-in-law, I also made two pounds of taco beef, rice and beans, and yummy cheese quesadillas.

It looks like so little spread out on my table, but it definitely didn't feel that way as it was being made.

Although I couldn't live with myself for the fact that my chicken tacos weren't the crisp crunchy delights that I know and love, my family put up a good front and said they were delicious.

I ate one and although my perfectionist side disagreed, my normal person side agreed.

I made delicious dessert, which aren't pictured so I will have to leave your imagination with thoughts of moist chocolate bundt cake, sweet strawberry shortcake trifle, and heavenly, creamy, and did I say heavenly?....Halo Farm ice cream.