Birthday Weekend One: Friday Taco Night

This past weekend, we celebrated my 28th Birthday.  While it's actual tomorrow, my girlfriends came into town and we had a blast.  I'm calling this Birthday Weekend One, because this next weekend we'll be having a big party at my parents' house.  So much birthday love!!!

Before my friends got here, I stocked up on TONS of amazing vegan food to cook for them.  This first post is about our dinner Friday, taco night!!  As you know, I'm sure, taco night is our favorite dinner theme.  Everyone hanging out in the kitchen, snacking on salsa and cooking up fresh food is amazing for company or just two people.  I prepped some work before the girls got there, and once we got hungry, we hit the kitchen.

I wanted something fresh and crunch to top the tacos, so I made a Jicama slaw similar to this one I did earlier this year.

Jicama Slaw

Ingredients:

1/3 red onion, chopped small
2 small mangos, chopped small
2 small jicama, peeled and chopped into small, long pieces
1/2 cup carrots
zest from 1 lime
juice from 1 limes
1 tsp olive oil
1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
a few generous cracks of sea salt

• Prep the cut ingredients, toss into bowl
• Add lime juice, olive oil, rice wine vinegar and salt
• Let sit in fridge for 1 hour

I decided I wanted to try to make fresh corn tortillas, so I used this recipe.  This turned out pretty thick, and I think I will have to play with it.  I only got 2 or 3 made before we were ready to eat, so I stopped making anymore.  I did get the brilliant idea to use them almost like a gordita crunch!

Dana's Birthday Tacos

Ingredients:

1 green cabbage leaf

1 spoonful vegetarian refried beans

1 corn tortilla, see above

1 serving tofu taco meat, 1 block tofu cooked down with 2 packs of low sodium taco seasoning

1 spoonful Jicama slaw (see above)

topped with cilantro, daiya cheese and cashew cream sauce (1 cup soaked cashews blended with Mexican hot sauce)

These were absolutely delicious!  We spent the rest of the night catching up and talking to our lovely friend in New Orleans.  The drink of the night was red wine cooler!  We used the Revolution bota box, mixed 50/50 with lime seltzer water.  It was light and delicious.  My girlfriends all went in together to get me a beauty box subscription for a year!  They're the best.  

I'm breaking up all the activities we did into multiple posts, so there will be a lot coming from me in the next few days.  I'll have a picnic recap and food ideas, a tour of a local distillery, dinner at one of my favorite places in Little Rock, in addition to my daily food recaps.  We have a busy week planned also, so I'm happy and excited.  I'm also looking forward to doing a little dieting/cleaning up of my food intake once Labor Day is over.  Birthdays are exhausting, haha.

Head on over to Scribbly Brain if you want to see a weird sketch of an evil mermaid.

Here are a few more cute Bodhi pics, just for fun!