Before living in an apartment, there were obviously some things I had never cooked before.
By living with roommates, I learned how to make a few things that I may have had before, but never actually made myself. For one thing, ravioli doesn’t always have to come in a red Chef Boyardee can. One of my roommates introduced me to frozen ravioli that you boil and add your own sauce to. In my mind, this was pure magic and I knew I could learn more from them.
A meal that I have had a number of times back home but was never sure how to make was tacos. My roommate had made them multiple times and I was ready to try it on my own.
There were two different ways I got tacos back home. My mother either made them or we went to Taco Bell. I felt that this meal was probably simple enough that I should be able to handle it with ease.
This, of course, required a trip to Wal-Mart. I thought the only things I would need to make tacos would be ground beef, shells and whatever toppings I wanted. As usual, I was wrong. I would also need taco mix, which I had never heard of. I had no idea where to go to find it.
My roommate showed me a taco kit, which was a complete mystery to me. The only food I knew that came with most of the ingredients already inside were frozen meals.
A taco kit seemed like the easiest and most economical way to make tacos because it included the shells, mix and salsa. After picking up a pound of ground beef, sour cream and cheese, I headed back home, hoping I wasn’t going to fail yet another cooking adventure.
I really hate cooking ground beef. It seems like it takes way more time than it should to chop up the meat and then wait for it to brown. Then you are left with the end result: a ton of hot grease that you have to dispose of properly. My roommates and I still do not have a coffee can to dump our grease in, so we have a more complicated –– and probably more dangerous –– way of doing it.
While I tilt the pan so all the grease falls to one side, my roommate grabs a paper towel and soaks up all the leftover grease. This absolutely is not the fastest or the best way to dispose of grease, but it’s what we came up with.
I was about to start throwing the meat in the taco shell, when I decided I should probably read the directions again and make sure I hit all the steps. Good thing I checked, because I almost forgot to add the taco mix and a cup of water. After doing that, I stirred it up and thought it looked more like a taco soup than taco meat. So I read the directions one more time and realized I had to turn the stove back on so that it would set properly.
Once the ground beef process was finally done, I was able to finish the meal. I put the meat, cheese and sour cream into a hard taco shell and enjoyed my dinner.
The absolute best part about making a pound of ground beef for tacos? Leftovers.
Mesha Baylis-Blalock is a senior studying journalism at Ohio University, a cooking novice and a columnist for The Post. What should she cook next? Email her at mb345109@ohiou.edu.
