Roast Part 3: Taco Night

It's time for the third and last meal of the weekend using the chuck roast I cooked on Friday.  First there was a simple roast beef meal with rice and gravy, then spaghetti with chopped roast added to the sauce. This last meal is a soft taco bar with shredded roast beef.

This was the simplest meal, by far, with mostly just reheating and chopping involved.

I decided to serve the tacos with a packaged Mexican rice mix, so I go that started first.

Then I put the shredded beef I had set aside Friday night into a small pot with a steamer basket set inside. I added about an inch of water to the pot and set it over medium-high heat when the rice had only about 8 minutes left to cook.

Next I started preparing the rest of my toppings. I shredded green leaf lettuce (because that's the kind I had) and cheddar cheese. I chopped some green onions and cilantro. I put a dollop of light sour cream in a ramekin and added some chipotle in adobo sauce, along with a little salt, to make a spicy sour cream spread. I also opened up a container of blue cheese crumbles.

Once the meat was reheated and the rice cooked, I wrapped a few flour tortillas in damp paper towels and heated them to a minute in the microwave.

Then the taco bar was open!

On one taco I used the spicy sour cream, beef, cheddar, lettuce, tomatoes and cilantro. On the other I used regular the plain sour cream, but substituted the cheddar cheese for blue cheese and left off the cilantro. Both were really good, and it was easy to forget that the meat had started out as an oven roast two nights before.

I really enjoyed my weekend of creating three meals with one protein. It was a challenge to come up with three completely different menus, making leftovers interesting every night. While I don't know that I'll do this on a regular basis, I hope it will inspire me to re-imagine leftovers in the future and keep meals (and meal planning) more fun!