Tacos in a Bag

Our family hosted a playdate and dinner for our good family friends last week. While I was doing my grocery shopping for our dinner, a store employee saw me wandering back and forth in the aisle and gave me a suggestion for tacos in a bag.

Here’s the deal – I don’t really cook.  I mean, I feed my family as nutritiously as possible, but I don’t enjoy cooking.  There, I said it.

For as much time as I spend on Pinterest pinning delicious recipes, it’s amazing that I don’t take more of an interest. My mom jokes that the “cooking gene” skipped me.

All you need to make tacos in a bag is all the fixings for tacos, but instead of serving them to the kids in the traditional fashion, you can have them participate in making their own – in a messy, fun way. 

Here’s what you’ll need:

– Ground beef or ground turkey – your preference – cook taco meat thoroughly
– Shredded cheese (I picked up a Mexican cheese blend, already shredded)
– Iceberg lettuce (I chopped and shredded this as well)
– Chopped tomatoes
– Sour cream
– Salsa (or as my kids prefer, ketchup)
– Any other favorite taco topping
– Fritos or tortilla chips (to act as the taco “shell”)
– Sandwich ziplock baggies

Here’s what to do:

– Set out all of the taco ingredients out in little, easy-to-handle bowls.
– Give each child a baggie.
– Have them spoon whatever they want into each bag to make their “taco.”
– Once all ingredients are in the bag, close the bag and have them mix the stuff all together (a lot of giggles happened at this part in the process).
– You can either have the kids eat out of the baggie with a fork OR pour the mixture onto their plate.
– Enjoy!  YUM!!

Once I conducted this little dinner experiment, I realized that this type of fun food activity only works for kiddos who don’t mind their food touching.

Note to self – my kids were upset with different ingredients mixed. But the visiting kids had a blast and smashed and smushed away, enjoying the experience and the yummy result.

What’s your favorite kid recipe?  Any fun family dinner ideas?

Let me know how your taco in a bag experience goes!