It is common that the longer you eat a raw food diet, the simpler your food tends to get.  Since we have been eating raw food for so long now, we have lots of smoothies and salads and fruit type meals.

For a busy mom of 4 little ones all vying for my attention in their many ways, this is a nice trade off.  No long hours baking or cooking, tending to the food while it cooks away - which for me usually meant letting something burn or boil over because my attention was somewhere else!

On the other hand, there are many of the gourmet raw foods that mock regular cooked meals that can take days to plan between soaking, sprouting, dehydrating and such.  These aren't so bad because you don't have to hang over the food as it cooks.  You only have to remember to rinse while sprouting or flip the food in the dehyrator when it is time.  You just have to get the hang of planning ahead.

Today, I was in no mood for a light meal!  I was also thinking of a good old Tex-Mex meal like I used to love from home.  We had all the fixins' for a yummy Taco Salad!  I would have made actual tacos if I had the dehydrated taco shells, but I didn't have them.  And I wasn't about to wait another day for this meal because I thought about making it too late in the day to have the shells finished in time!!

What I did have was dehydrated corn tortilla chips.  My original plan was to have these for a snack with my homemade salsa.  I am sooo addicted to this!  I don't think I could ever be 100% raw without knowing how to make my own tortilla chips so I could eat my salsa!  :)

In the last minute, I turned our snack into a full, very filling, and oh-so yummy meal with extra things that I keep on-hand.  With the addition of a bowl of lettuce, "taco meat" (walnut based), cashew "sour cream," and guacomole, the salsa and chips were turned into the best taco salad I have had!

And best of all, I made all this in less than half an hour.  Fresh, raw, and homemade!