Soyless Taco Seasoning

When Beth first started to articulate her food allergies, she called it her "taco feeling". It was the feeling she got when we ate tacos at home.   It was a feeling on the back of her tongue or in her throat.  I'm not exactly sure, but it made her stop eating.

And that was bad because I used to make tacos to increase protein in the kids' diets every time they'd gone a few days without eating meat (they didn't like steak, any red unground meat, or anything that required chewing).  Tacos were always a hit. 

I used to use one of those seasoning mixes for the taco meat.  I also used to use a mix for chilli, but she didn't get a reaction with that.  The only difference between the two mixes was soy protein.

So, no more taco seasoning around here.

Until, once again, I found a mix recipe in Mary Ostyn's book (Family Feasts for $75 a Week) and I use it for chilli too. 

Taco Seasoning Mix

1/2 cup dried minced onion            2 tablespoons garlic powder
1/4 cup sweet paprika                    1 tablespoons ground cumin
1/4 cup cornstarch                        1 tablespoon dried oregano
3 tablespoons chili powder             1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 tablespoons salt

Put all in a jar and shake it well.  Use 1/4 cup of mix for every pound of ground beef.  

I'm out of mix right now because I haven't bounht garlic powder for a while, so I can give you no visual.  Happily, we are still eating the garlic from the garden that I harvested last year.  The new batch is starting to poke up through the leaf mulch, so I may just have figured out how much garlic to grow to avoid buying Chinese garlic. 

Maybe I should dry some of it and grind it into powder.  That's probably a good idea before it starts to sprout in the basement. I'm just thinking that as I type.  Hmmm, I'll give you an update if it works well.  It worked great with leek, so I can't think why it wouldn't work with garlic.