Taco Soup.

First of all, let’s recount the festivities of the last week!  I hope y’all had a wonderful holiday!  We surely did – we spent it here at home with my parents, who were visiting from Florida.  (Bless them for making the 16-hour car drive each way; we’d travelled for the last two Christmases and they decided to give us a reprieve for this one!)

They came bearing all sorts of goodies – from the fixins for pumpkin pie to an array of nutcrackers and Santas that Mother doesn’t have room for, from treats for the cat to a fruitcake from my very favorite bakery, The Bread Wagon in Thomasville, Georgia.  And most of all, they brought themselves, two wonderful people with whom I’m very close, two people who make me laugh and make me think and generally make me a better person.  It was a wonderful Christmas week, and I hated to see it end.  I apologize for not checking in throughout the festivities, but there never seemed to be enough time!

Now, usually on Sundays, we fire up the smoker (or in the warmer months, the grill).  But today was a rainy, messy day, and so I decided on taco soup in the good old Crock-Pot instead.  As usual, it didn’t disappoint!  It remains one of our very favorite dinners, and it was perfect on a cool, clammy night.

Also as usual, we have plenty of soup left over for weekday lunches – a perfect antidote to the feelings of post-holiday malaise we’re both suffering from at the moment!  What is it about Christmas that always leaves us feeling strangely lonesome afterward?  “It’s like the National Championship game,” my father lamented as we cruised to a national park on Thursday in pursuit of more park passport stamps.  “You wait and you wait and you wait, and it’s over in three and a half hours.”

At any rate, I know we’ll be able to count on the taco soup to get us through the week (if not the upcoming BCS title game).  It warmed our hearts and our stomachs tonight, and that’s a grand start indeed!

:)