Taco… Monday?

We are all very much over eating out for nearly every meal, so we planned our go-to meal for dinner tonight - Tacos.  

Now, I know that New Zealand is multicultural but Latin American may be the smallest influence here. It was weird to see a single shelf dedicated to Latin American cuisine in the grocery - especially since most of it was “Old El Paso.” We picked up some taco seasoning (we don’t yet have a full spice cabinet), flour tortillas, and even a jar of salsa. We couldn’t find any fresh or canned peppers outside of capsicum, as they call it here (red bell pepper). We also couldn’t find refried beans. “Not to worry!” I thought, “I’ll just make my own.” But I couldn’t even find pinto beans! It was also very difficult to find tortilla chips because all of the ones we could find were cheese or Thai chili flavored. We did eventually find one that was plain and labeled “corn chips.”

In the end we had seasoned mince chicken (they don’t have ground turkey here, from what I can tell), seasoned black beans, brown rice, sour cream (tasted closer to Greek yogurt), Colby jack cheese, “corn chips” (they were unsalted!), and a jar of salsa.

Let me just tell you that this jar of salsa tasted like sweetened tomato paste. It was so sweet, I wondered if we had accidentally picked up mango salsa or something. It was… not good.

I had anticipated this hurdle, but I also forgot how much this style of food is a staple in our house.