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My five year old is amazing. She is truly one of the most amazing, kind hearted people I’ve ever met in the entire world. Most of the time. When it comes to mealtime, I swear she has an alter personality. She will cry and complain that she hates what I’ve made even if she has no clue what I’m even making. She seems to have this idea that we should only ever have pizza, peanut butter sandwiches, pancakes or cereal. It’s ridiculous and completely exhausting when it comes time to eat. I absolutely refuse to battle with her on this so I decided on a better tactic. I’m altering some of my go to recipes to make them a little more fun for her in the hopes that she will at least try the food before claiming how awful it is. I realize that kids like to eat when it’s fun. You know, lunch in fun lunch boxes filled with finger foods, that sort of thing. So, I made it fun because I knew otherwise that there was no way that she would even try it otherwise. She will never eat a bite of it, just asks if I made bread.
Now, the bread may be the saving grace, she has started to stuff foods into the center of her bread. It’s something, but she takes really small bits of the meal and stuffs it in there. Anyways, tonight for dinner we made Italian Soup, an old recipe I have adapted from a friend that served it at our girls poker night many years ago. I don’t make it quite as soup-y, more of a goulash type of dish. So tonight I decided to serve it in some quick and easy homemade taco cups. They are small, cute and I was pretty sure I could get her to at least try the food.
It worked. She started crying about dinner before she even got to the table to see what we were having. But, the cup was cute and fun enough to get her to give it a taste. I was blown away! Yay, success. For one brief minute. I wasn’t thinking and because of the Italian Sausage in the recipe, it’s a little spicy for her, she doesn’t like any spice at all, so eeeekkkk. She kind of panicked but we made it through dinner. I now know that the mini taco cups worked and were a huge hit. Check out this quick and easy kitchen hack to make meal time fun for the whole family.
Using flour tortillas, a mini muffin pan and either a canning jar lid or circle cookie cutter, cut circles out of the tortillas. Mine are small and I was still able to get two circles out of each one. The kids ate all of the scraps so there was no waste. Gently lay each circle on top of muffin pan and press into each cup. This is a great job for the kids to get them helping and excited about dinner. 
This recipe is ridiculously easy to make and only takes a few minutes to throw together. I love crock pot meals for sports nights because it helps us cut down on eating out after dance class or gymnastics.
To get started, you will want to brown 1 lb hamburger and 1 lb Italian sausage. I usually use only one pan so I don’t have so many dishes to wash. Drain and add to the crockpot.Add 32 ounces Hunt’s tomato sauce and 2 – 28 ounce cans of RO*TEL diced tomatoes {undrained}.
Spice it up! I like to use about 4 tbsp minced onion, 1 1/2 tsp garlic salt and 4 chicken bullion cubes.
No meal is complete with out some fresh produce, am I right? Green peppers are a family favorite so we decided to add in an entire large green pepper and I’m so glad we did! It added so much flavor and made this batch the best ever!
I top it off with 4 cups of water. I cut it down a little bit to make it less soupy for the taco cups, I probably only used around 3 cups.
Stir it up, add the lid and cook on low for 8 hours. I recommend not being home while it cooks or it will be sooooo hard to wait until dinner time to eat.
About 15 -20 minutes before you are ready to eat, add in a cup and a half of macaroni noodles, cover again until time is up or noodles are tender. This is also when I use a mix of olive oil and garlic salt and brush it onto the insides of the taco cups. I then toss it into the oven until they are done too my liking, probably about 10 minutes {in which I could hear my daughter telling me how great dinner smelled because she is obsessed with anything similar to bread}.
Remove taco cups from the oven and fill with a spoon of Italian soup. Garnish with shredded cheddar cheese. I also kept some raw chopped up green pepper because that increases the likelihood of my daughter eating it; besides – YUM!
I know, Italian and taco cups don’t usually go hand in hand but I’m telling you, the crisp saltiness of the taco cups paired with the Italian soup was so delicious!!! We picked up all of our ingredients from Walmart, including our green peppers because fresh produce makes every meal better.
Ingredients
- 1 lb hamburger
- 1 lb Italian sausage
- 2 - 28 ounce cans RO*TEL diced tomatoes
- 32 ounces Hunt's tomato sauce
- 3-4 cups water
- 4 tbsp minced onion
- 1 1/2 tsp garlic salt
- 1 large green pepper
- 1 1/2 cups macaroni noodles
- Shredded cheddar cheese to garnish
- For taco cups:
- Flour tortillas
- Olive Oil
- Garlic salt
Instructions
- Brown hamburger and Italian sausage in pan. Drain and add to crock pot
- Add Hunt's tomato sauce and RO*TEL diced tomatoes
- Add water
- Add minced onion and garlic salt
- Chop green pepper and add to crock pot
- Cook on low for 8 hours
- About 15-20 minutes before you are ready to eat add macaroni noodles to crock pot
- Once you have added noodles, using a canning jar lid and the tortillas, cut out circles of tortillas and add to a mini muffin tin; one circle to each muffin cup
- Press circles gently into cup making a soft tortilla cup
- Brush with an olive oil and garlic salt mixture
- Toss in oven preheated to 350 for about 10 minutes or until desired crispness
- Spoon crock pot mixture into mini muffin cups and enjoy
