Easy, deliciously flavourful meals that can be customized by my friends and family are my favourite kind.
My family has never been one for formal sit-down meals with one person serving up different courses. There were no cloth napkins, seasonal tablecloths, or even enough matching chairs to fit around the small dining table. Casual get-togethers where multiple dishes or components of dishes are spread across a table—with close friends and family reaching for their favourites to add to their plates—this is meal-time familiarity.
As much as my brother wished our family was one that would gather around a TV and watch a sports game together, food and connection with each other was (and continues to be) the focus of our gatherings.
For as long as I can remember, Mexican meals have been our family’s go-to cuisine of choice. Growing up in Houston, Texas, we’d often enjoy food at home from local Mexican restaurants. Everyone enjoyed digging in to the bags to get our food. We placed the purchased food on the table among homemade salsa and guacamole. Quick and easy (yet delicious) food has long been a part of my life.
When I invited a couple of my favourite people over to my house for dinner, I knew exactly what kind of meal I wanted to enjoy—Mexican! With everyone’s full lives and packed schedules, a meal that came together quickly was at the top of my mind. Knowing that my friends had different preferences for what to include in their meals, not to mention how much more fun it is to create your own hand-held food, I headed to my nearby Loblaw’s City Market location to pick up a few things for my gathering.
The aisle with Mexican food was easy to find and was filled with just about everything I needed for my meal. After a quick stop in the produce section afterwards, I was on my way!
Tortilla Bowls from OLD EL PASO work perfectly to enjoy my favourite components all in one convenient self-contained morsel of goodness. I picked up the Mini Tortilla Bowls so that my friends and I could test out different combinations of ingredients and have several different bowls each. These Mini Tortilla Bowls are fun and easy to fill. I used a combination of store-bought and homemade components for my Mexican meal.
Components for my Mexican meal
- OLD EL PASO Mini Tortilla Bowls
- OLD EL PASO Restaurante medium salsa
- guacamole
- fresh seranno chillies
- roasted potatoes
- mango salsa (recipe below)
- fresh bell peppers
Mexican Mango Salsa
Ingredients
- 1 Medium mango cubed
- ¼ cup red bell pepper chopped
- 1 stalk green onion chopped
- 2 tablespoons cilantro chopped or torn
- ½ - 1 serrano or jalapeno pepper chopped or sliced
- 1 tablespoon lime juice
Instructions
- Mix all ingredients together!
Notes
My closest friends loved putting together their OLD EL PASO Mini Tortilla Bowls. The next time we gather together and someone else’s house, I’m pretty sure I know what will be on the menu! What can I say, when a meal brings together the people that I love in a way that’s fun and easy, it’s something I’ll keep going back to again and again!
The next time your friends and family get together, I’d recommend gatherings you favourite ingredients, picking up a few packages of OLD EL PASO Mini Tortilla Bowls (or full-sized ones), and enjoying a delicious Mexican meal!
