I'm a big believer in the power of breakfast tacos - nothing starts my morning off quite as well and breakfast tacos do. Apparently though, lots of people don't know about breakfast tacos (which I was reminded of by the New York Times coverage of breakfast taacos several months ago). Breakfast tacos are a staple in our family because not only are they quick and easy to make, but you can make them in advance and store them in the fridge for quick hot meals.

Breakfast tacos can be as easy as serving scrambled eggs and potatoes on a tortilla (flour or corn per your preference, though flour tortillas tend to break less easily than corn tortillas do) or as complicated (if you can call them complicated) as migas. Migas are basically eggs scrambled with sauteed onions and hot peppers and mixed with crumbled up tortilla chips or slices of corn tortillas and cheddar cheese. (Incidentally, this is an excellent way to use those last little chip crumbles in the bag that are too small for dipping.) I don't care for eggs, so in our house, we substitute tofu for the eggs, and season with brewer's yeast for an eggy color and umami protein flavor. In fact, the only rule of breakfast tacos is that they are served on tortilla! If your menu plan for the week includes making black or pinto beans or potatoes, throw in some extra while you're cooking them and save them for the next morning's breakfast - you can add those to the eggs or migas too.

Basic Ingredients

Here's a list of basic ingredients, you can mix and match to make your own breakfast tacos:

• scrambled eggs
  
• refried or whole black or pinto beans


• migas (scrambled egg and onions or firm tofu crumbled and scrambled with onions and brewer's yeast)


• hashbrowns


• salsa or pico de gallo


• guacamole


• fried potatoes


• cheddar cheese

Tofu Migas

Sautee a medium onion and 2-4 jalapeno peppers (to decrease the heat, take the seeds out but make sure you wear gloves when you cut them up) in your preference of oil (we always use extra virgin olive oil, because that's what we keep around the house).

Add two 16-oz. containers of extra firm tofu and smash them with a potato masher.

When the tofu has started to heat up, add 1/2 to 1 cup of cheddar cheese and a handful of tortilla chips or sliced up corn tortilla strips (I always use the end of the bag of tortilla chips since I rarely have corn tortillas on hand).

Stir and cook until tofu is hot.

Season with 1/2 T turmeric, 1 T cumin, 1/2 t red pepper, 1/4 t chili pepper, 1 T nutritional yeast and salt to taste.

Serve on flour tortillas topped with your choice of sour cream, guacamole, beans, salsa, or pico de gallo.

If you really get into the breakfast taco thing, you can branch out into chorizo, sauteed nopalitos (the de-spined pad of the prickly pear cactus, it's got a slightly sweet flavor and the consistency of bell peppers without that pepper flavor), or one of my favorites, chilaquiles (basically migas without the eggs with a green or red mole sauce).

The best thing about serving breakfast tacos is that you can have a variety of ingredients and each person (or, ehem, picky kid) can choose their own ingredients. Next week when you make them again, serve different ingredients and voila, a new meal!

The key to good breakfast tacos is getting good tortillas - see if you can find a Mexican grocery store or a taqueria that makes fresh tortillas and buy them by the dozen. Our local grocery store has a "tortilla factory" in the store so we keep tortillas on hand all the time.

Oh, and if your little one (or you) has a hard time keeping the stuffing in the taco, try this trick we used when Z was first learning to eat tacos.

Do you serve breakfast tacos in your house? If so, what's your favorite ingredient for breakfast tacos? If not, what are you waiting for? Give them a try and let us know what you think!

A few great reads we've seen on other blogs this week:

These DIY "treasure stones" look like the perfect activity for a hot summer day (or maybe a cold winter one) and would be great for a dinosaur party activity!

I love the thoughtfulness of this Craftzine post about making "magic wands." I'm thinking we're going to have to make some someday soon.

We try hard not to use food as a "treat" but in our small town it's sometimes hard to think of something else that we could do to reward ourselves. Do you have any ideas for non-food, family rewards? Mary at A Merry Life has some thoughts on the subject.

Tara at The Organic Sister wrote an interesting article about shifting her thinking in honoring her eleven-year-old's needs and getting him a cell phone. Don't judge until you read.

Guest post by Amy Brecount White

[I've always been fascinated by the language of flowers - in my early teen years and again in college, I read several different books on what certain flowers meant when they were given to another (this correlated with the time when I was first heavily reading Emily Post's Etiquette). I always made sure that if I bought flowers for anyone, I knew what I was "saying" with the flowers. We jumped at the chance to have a guest post by Amy Brecount White who published a young adult novel, Forget-Her-Nots, about the language of flowers this summer. And in these dog days of summer when the land around us (at least here in Texas) is brown and dusty from a lack of water, I can think of the beauty of the flowers and dream of the fall and spring to come. - Jennifer.]

I often ponder what the very first cavewoman thought when she encountered a flower. It was beautiful, delicate, and gave off the most amazing scent, but she had to wonder what its purpose was... what "message" it could be sending her. Then she probably tried to eat it.

This question of the purpose of flowers has boggled the human mind for centuries. Why so much loveliness that lasts oh-so-briefly? Why such a variety of petals, textures, scents, and colors? We assume there must be some higher meaning.

The ancient Greeks came up with creative explanations for the existence of certain flowers in their fabulous myths. According to one, the narcissus (also known as a daffodil) sprang up from the death of a beautiful boy who fell in love with his own reflection in a still pool of water. Ever since, that flower has come to send the message of being egotistical, or narcissistic, in the language of flowers. According to another myth, the laurel that crowned the victors was originally a nymph named Daphne. Struck by Cupid’s arrow, the god Apollo fell in love with her and pursued her through the woods. Her river-god father changed her into a beautiful laurel tree when she cried out to him. Apollo turned the meaning of a crown of laurel into "glory."

In Shakespeare's Hamlet, the tragic Ophelia speaks the language of pansies, rosemary, and rue. On a lighter note, the sprite Puck uses the juice from a flower to work his mischief among the lovers in A Midsummer Night's Dream. And poetry from Robert Burns to Emily Dickinson is filled with flowery messages.

In short, human beings have always believed flowers must be more than they seem. Even now, when we modern types have the decisively scientific explanation for the colors, petals, and scents of flowers as a means to attract specific and well-suited pollinators, that logic falls short. Surely, the purpose of all that beauty cannot be to attract mere insects. Bugs don't deserve such beauty. In the Victorian period, the concept of a "language" of flowers reached its peak both in the United Kingdom and the U.S. Numerous books were printed with lists of flowers and their "secret" meaning. For example, lily of the valley is for "the return of happiness" while a red camellia expresses "unpretending excellence." Sweet basil means "best wishes," while regular old basil means "hatred." These books assign a meaning for nearly every herb, plant, or tree you can think of. No one really knows how popular it was to send messages through tussie-mussies (symbolic floral bouquets), but even today you can easily find books about the language of flowers.

What you may not realize is that this language is already a part of your life. Think about it. Even today, almost every special occasion is marked with flowers. Special birthdays like Sweet Sixteen, Mother's Day, rites of passage such as a bat mitzvah or confirmation, weddings, proms - all of these occasions call for flowers in our minds. And why? Because, I believe, flowers represent our quest to add beauty to our lives; they symbolize freshness and our hope that the world will always bloom.

No one can help but smile when she is presented with a fresh and festive bouquet. Place flowers in a room or yard, and they can transform the very air, so we can breathe in their sweetness. Flowers can also awaken memories and desires, as they do for my main character, Laurel and everyone around her in my novel Forget-Her-Nots. We give flowers to connect with each other and to express emotions that we might otherwise struggle to say out loud. We like to speak with flowers, just as Laurel does.

Personally, I believe the world would be a happier place if we all grew and gave each other a lot more flowers.

Amy Brecount White is the author of the novel Forget-Her-Nots, in which the language of flowers comes magically to life (Greenwillow Books, a division of HarperCollins, for ages 12 & up). You can find out more and order the book at www.amybrecountwhite.com.