Chicken Tacos.

Last night we had a really fantastic meal. Homemade tortillas, raw milk cheese, shredded juicy chicken, a fresh salsa, a bit of yogurt and some arugula to top it. SO simple, and SO satisfying. The coolest part for me? Every single ingredient, but one was Maine made; so who was the culprit deemed so necessary we could not go without him? Limes of course! That needed lime juice flavor, I should try apple cider vinegar just once to see if it could work, but that's not today's story! The plan came into inception when I realized we had not eaten ANY cilantro this season, I was alarmed, horrified and looked to rectify the situation and was pleased to see the The Crown of Maine Cooperative had Cilantro available, so I ordered 5 bunches logically to compensate.

So what did I do with the cilantro? I added it to a hen. And what hen did I use? The hen that I used was one of our own from back in March, it's been sitting in the freezer for a long time now, waiting to be turned into a chicken pot pie; of course it was not a pie, but instead a delicious taco instead! The moment the cilantro came in on the COMOC van I got my crockpot out and I got my chicken out and the onions were already on the counter so I did not have to move them at all. I pieced that chicken, the piecing of an almost 2 year old hen is much stiffer than piecing a young broiler chicken, but I made do remembering that all the chicken would be shredded so it did not matter quite as much how elegantly I pieced our old layer. I put all of her pieces into the crockpot and mixed them up with 2 bunches of cilantro rough chopped as well as 2-3 onions rough chopped. I then put the crockpot on high and left it alone until the morning! That's right, I did NOTHING! Well actually I did fret a bit about there being enough liquid, but after a few hours all my worries were dispelled as the liquid was rapidly rising up the sides of the cooker. Around noon the next day I took all the meat off the bones of that old girl, sort of shredding it as I went, I also removed everything but the liquid from the cooker. I then put the meat back into the beautiful liquid, added half of one finely minced red onion and half a bunch of cilantro minced fine, put the cooker on high and left it until dinner time. Actually I stirred it a few times. THIS MEAT WAS DELICIOUS.

And the tortillas! I used Maine Grown Org. Whole Wheat Pastry Flour, salt and water to mix up a dough, rolled it into 8 even sized balls and then rolled them each out as thinly as I could between 2 pieces of wax paper. Before serving dinner I pan fried each tortilla and added grated Raw Milk Colby Cheese a big scoop of shredded chicken, some fresh salsa (tomatoes, red onion, hot pepper, cilantro, lime juice and salt), a schmear of Tide Mill Creamery Yogurt and some torn arugula from our garden. FEASTTTTTT-a-ROO!!!