This dish is a SIMPLE, but special one for me. My brother and sister-in-law have been from the St. Louis area all of their lives and one day, after a lot of research and planning, they decided to take the leap and move to California! At first, I was like WHAT?? and then I got it, you live once–one shot at living your best life. I got it even more after I went and visited them in July.

My mom and I went for four jam packed days including Napa Valley, Lake Tahoe, shopping and driving around to experience their new hometown.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Ok, ok back to the food! While I was visiting, we tried so many different places and they were all so good. Two of my favorites were Mel’s Diner and Jack’s Urban Eats. Mel’s Diner reminded me of a diner out of Saved By the Bell or Back to the Future. If you go there, try the Santa Fe skillet. Worth the calories! Jack’s Urban Eats had so many great choices, but I was sold on the Buffalo Chicken Salad. It had a mixture of walnuts and apples and I thought it sounded interesting. It ended up being DELICIOUS!

After I returned home, I didn’t want to forget that amazing meal, but I also wanted to create something of my own from it: a taco.

Buffalo Chicken Tacos

Prep time: 15 minutes | Cook time: 10 minutes | Total time: 25 minutes

Ingredients:

• Rotisserie chicken torn apart
• Frank’s Buffalo Sauce (or whatever hot sauce you like)
• Pieces of romaine lettuce
• Shredded carrots
• Shredded apple (I took a potato peeler and sliced off the apple skin and made small shredded pieces of apple. Here’s my favorite potato peeler. It has a great fruit peeler on the other side. Love it and it’s less than $5!)
• tortilla bowls
• queso fresco
• chopped up walnuts
• 3 tbs honey
• 1 tbs olive oil
• 3 tbs brown sugar

Recipe:

• Heat up the cooked rotisserie chicken in the skillet with buffalo sauce. Cover and let it steam and heat up!
• While that’s heating up, put the walnuts, olive oil, honey and brown sugar into a small skillet on low and let it combine and cook the walnuts. I usually cook them for around 10 minutes. You can tell by the smell they’re done, yum!
• Once the chicken is done, heat up the tortilla bowls in the oven for a few minutes.
• To assemble: take the tortilla bowl, add the lettuce, buffalo chicken, shredded carrots, shredded apples, walnuts and queso fresco.
• ENJOY!
• Note: when making this for my kids, I use bbq sauce instead of buffalo sauce on their tacos.