Making tacos is one of those quick and simple meals that can be made on one of your family's busy nights.  Did you also know that making your own taco seasoning will be cheaper and healthier in the long run?  No need to buy those taco kits anymore.

I decided to try a recipe, One Dish Supper, that my mom used to make when I was a kid even though my husband does not care for beans and potatoes.  It was rather easy to make and fairly cheap.

I'm always trying to find new recipes, but it's rather hard with the picky eaters that live with me.  So when I went on Pinterest and saw this recipe from GOODness Gracious, I thought that Jon would at least

I first want to apologize for the pictures in this post.  The flash in my camera decided to die while I was taking the pictures.

The Sunday before Labor Day is always the day of Jon's family's reunion.  Every family is suppose to provide at least one dish to feed their whole family for two meals.  Yes, there are two meals at this family reunion!  Since I had just gotten my Aunt Robin's taco salad recipe from my step-mom a few months ago, I decided that I would make that.  It was a hit!

When my dad and step-mom were in a few weeks ago, she brought with her her recipe book so I could look through.  I did write down several recipes, but haven't tried them yet.  Since my brother was over getting his car fixed by our

Last Thursday my mom wanted to go to my brother's apartment for a few hours since he lives an hour away from us.  She wanted to surprise him with his own

So, I wasn't planning on writing a blog post about this since I had already posted about making yummy steaks (Juicy Steaks at half the cost of a restaurant meal), but Jon wanted to take pictures of me cooking the steaks.  Yes, you read that right - I cooked my own birthday dinner.  Normally we go out for my birthday, but we had already gone to Texas Roadhouse for Easter the week before.  I decided that since Jon's been coming home later than normal that it would just be better for me to cook my birthday dinner.  Plus the plate you see above is my plate - Jon would only eat the steak and mac-n-cheese (which I made for Michael).

When we went grocery shopping at Wegmans on Sunday, we picked up a two pack of Strip Steak First Cut (not exactly sure what that means, but it was all we had to choose from in our price range) for $15.19 (roughly $7.60 per steak).  You may think that's a little to much, but that is for two extremely think pieces of steak.  Plus if I had gone to Texas Roadhouse, I could easily spend with my drink included that much on my meal alone!

Monday afternoon I prepared the steaks with a McCormick Grill Mates marinade called Backyard Brew.  It said on the packet that instead of water you could use beer, I wonder how much that would of changed the flavor?  Once I had the marinade mixed, I took a fork to the steaks and poked holes so that the marinade would soak into the meat.

Jon normally calls when he's leaving work so, once he called I pulled the steaks out to bring them to room temperature and started heating up the George Foreman Grill.  Since it was for my birthday, I decided to make all the sides that I would want to eat.  I pulled out a can of green beans from the pantry and added some onions and bacon grease to them in a pot and let them cook.  While the green beans were cooking, I poured water into a pot and got that boiling for the noodles for the Kraft mac-n-cheese.  Also got my potato flakes to make mashed potatoes with (I know, it's better when it's from real potatoes) out and started bringing the water, milk, and butter to a boil.  A little trick that my mom taught me that my Grandma (my dad's mom) taught her:

Switch the milk and water.  The amount that the instructions says for water, use it for the milk and vice versa.

I use that little trick every time I make my instant mashed potatoes.  Makes them super creamy!

Time to grill these super large steaks!  It rained all day Tuesday so, even if I wanted to grill them on the charcoal grill that was not an option.  I had a hard time at first to get both steaks to fit and make sure that all the steak was being cooked.
I like to brush the marinade on both sides of the steak when I first put them on the grill and every time I flip them.

I'm not sure how long I cook them.  Every few minutes I would flip and brush more marinade on.  When I felt they were good, I cut through the center of each to make sure they were cooked the way we like them.  Then put them on a plate to rest.  Finish up with the rest of the sides and then it's time to come and get it!

What do you all normally do for your birthdays?

This is one of many meals that I loved when I was growing up.  When I would come home from college, I would ask my mom to make this meal.  Once I got married, I decided that I would try some of the meals that I loved growing up.  This was actually one that Jon will eat.  Tonight, Michael actually tried it and ate what we put on his plate.  Here's how you make it.

This is a very simple and easy meal to have any night for the family.  My mom used to make this when I was growing up.  Since my husband loves pizza, I have been making this to give him his pizza fix without having an actual pizza.

A few nights ago, Jon made cheese steaks for dinner.  Many years ago, before I ever met Jon, he worked at Jerry's Subs and Pizza.  Never knew for many years that he actually knew how to make a cheese steak.  Every so often he'll make them and every time they are supper yummy!  Here's how he made them.

My husband had bought these two yummy steaks as a Valentine's Day back up.  Since we ended up going to Outback for our Valentine's Day meal, we put these steaks in the freezer to save for a later meal.  We decided to use them for dinner a few days ago.

You guessed it, last night's dinner recipe was from ~The Kitchen Wife~ (Meatballs in Marinara).  The smells that where coming from my kitchen where heavenly!  I've made meatballs before, but they never smelled as good as they did last night and I've never started cooking them on the stove.  I've always baked them in spaghetti sauce.

I absolutely loved the meatballs and the marinara sauce, but my husband was not too happy with the sauce.  He thought that it was weird that there were onions and green peppers.  He's not a fan of green peppers and actually picked them out of the sauce.  I must admit, I suck at cutting onions and green peppers so they were rather large.  I probably should have put a little more garlic, but it was supper yummy the way it was.

Oh man, completely forgot that I was going to make garlic bread or I should say put some frozen garlic bread in the oven.  As you can see, I had milk with my spaghetti and meatballs.  It just goes so well together!

A yummy, cheap go to dinner - hamburgers and Kraft mac-n-cheese!  We used a pound of, I believe, 80, 20 ground meat that made 4 nice and juicy burgers and a box of mac-n-cheese.  When making hamburgers, you want to go with the fattier meat so it won't dry out while cooking it.  Oh, and don't press down on the meat while cooking.  That will cause all the juices to come out and you don't want that.

A more updated post on how to make your own tacos at home, can be found on my Do It Yourself Tacos post.