A Treat from Main Street Cellars {Winters, CA}

I must admit this post is a long time coming.  

Back in August, (yes, August) The Cyclist did a ride out of Winters, CA.  Before returning home he stopped for a bite with some of our friends at Main Street Cellars.  Upon his return to our house he brought me a bounty.

Multiple beers, deliciously smoked pork with cabbage fixin's and the best rolls I've ever eaten.

Seriously.  Good.  Food.  Oh yeah and seriously good beer too.

I have to give it to that husband of mine.  He is much more charming than I.  In talking to the owner, Mike Peterson, he dropped that I have a food blog and scored all of this deliciousness.  I'm sure it also helped that Mike is the cousin of a good friend of ours (thanks Jay!).

I can't even form the words to describe how good it was except to tell you that if I think hard enough I can still smell the smokiness of that pork, all the way over here in October.

Beerwise - Knee Deep's Tanilla Porter is a favorite of mine but I think I enjoyed the Cool Beanz a little better actually.  There was a nice strong chocolate-y, coffee flavor which is a great match for the smokiness of the pork.

But yeah, lets get back to my bad blogging habits and delay on this post.  I think I've mentioned we've moved recently.  Twice that is.  I swear in the process of this move I've lost many things including my mind.  The photo editing department at TCW (read: Sarah, me, this lady, TCW) is seriously backed up. Latent internet connections, exhaustion and life (among other things) have prevented my normal blogging flow.  These are all just excuses though.  The real deal is, I am incredibly thankful for all of this generosity from Main Street Cellars and I'm sorry it took so long to share it.

Beyond delicious food and the best tag-line ever "juicy wine.  stinky cheese.", Main street Cellars has a lot of great stuff happening including jazz on the patio every first Friday, Sunday Brunch, multiple events and wine dinners.  If you live in the area, you should like their Facebook Page or sign up for their e-mail list.

Via

Not to mention, they've got a great looking patio too.  Even though we're now in Fall it would be nice on a crisp, clear day.

Via

And, they have bocce ball.  Enough said.

Via

If you are in, around or near Winters (or not), you should take a peek at Main Street Cellars.

♥TCW

Tasty Turkey Taco Towers

Alright.  To start, I promise all of my recipe's won't have foods that all begin with the same letter (remember Penne Portabella and Prosciutto?).  I'm sorry, I just couldn't help it.

As a kid, taco night was my favorite.  Now, I tend to make taco's with ground turkey instead of ground beef, just to keep them a bit healthier.

Let's meet the suspects:

1/2 pound ground turkey, your tortilla of choice, black beans, red onion, avocado, bell pepper (any color will do), salt & pepper, chili powder, ground cayenne pepper, red pepper flakes, salsa of your choice and:

Oh yeah, and the most important ingredient:

CHEESE!

I should just go ahead and admit now that I'm a little bit Urkel-ish when it comes to cheese.

Being allergic to dairy until I was about 10 created an abnormal love of cheese; proof that absence makes the heart grow fonder.

OK!  Moving on to Tasty Turkey Taco Towers.  When I pulled out what I needed to make this I realized I was out of taco seasoning.  Normally I would use a store bought low-sodium seasoning packet.  But, I was out, so I mocked up my own seasoning using the chili powder, ground cayenne pepper, red pepper flakes, salt & pepper and (oh yeah) garlic salt.  I actually liked it better than the packet.

Start off by browning the turkey meat....

....turkey meat normally produces very little grease (like almost none), so I don't typically drain anything from the pan.  Also, we only use 1/2 of a 1 pound package - we usually can't finish the left-overs if we cook it all, so splitting it gives us two meals. 

Once the turkey is getting brown, throw in some chopped red onion....

...after I added the onion, I started my made up seasoning.  I added about 5 shakes of each spice, 2-3 turns on the salt grinder, 3-5 turns on the pepper grinder & about two shakes of garlic salt....

 ...stir it up and add in some chopped bell pepper....

...and also, drain the can of black beans and add them in....

--(I forgot to take a photo so please insert your imagination here)--

Now, tower time.

Heat a non-stick pan and don't grease it with anything, just get it hot.

Put in your first tortilla and put some shredded cheese on top...

...on top of the first layer of cheese, add some of the meat mixture and some sliced avocado, then more cheese!

Then put tortilla number 2 on top and repeat.  At the end your stack should have 3 tortilla's...

...let it heat for a bit, then flip it & let it heat some more....

take it out and top it with, of course, more cheese, some sliced avocado and salsa...

....Viola!

We have never made the tower format before, we usually do just regular old taco's, but Mr. O and I came up with this on the fly.  It was good and the presentation was more interesting than plain old tacos.

I've posted the whole recipe on Tasty Kitchen - Tasty Turkey Taco Towers

Before I go, a note about the tortillas....

I found these tasty tortillas at Trader Joe's (LOVE Trader Joe's) recently.  They are super good!  Even plain (without cheese!).