When I don't feel like cooking

Cooking dinner can be a challenge. Not that it's especially hard to do, most of the time—particularly for those of us with home offices, who can slip out to put the potatoes on or turn down the oven when we need to. It's the dailiness of the thing. Having to come up with something for your hungry household to eat every single, solitary night that comes along. If nothing else, it gets tedious.

Those of us with a few years' experience at it all have our go-to dishes and recipes for those nights when we really don't feel like cooking at all. Until now mine has been spaghetti and meat sauce. Like my mother used to make—McCormick's sauce mix and a pound of ground beef.

Just recently, though, I discovered that if I realize early enough in the day that I'm not going to feel like cooking, there's an even easier way around it. And it's really good, too.

(Adapted from WikiHow, How to Make Crockpot Chicken Tacos)

Slow Cooker Chicken Tacos

4–8 boneless, skinless chicken thighs
Chopped onion

1 packet taco seasoning mix
16 ounces (a medium-sized jar or 2 cups) chunky salsa

Tortillas
Toppings (shredded lettuce, chopped tomatoes, guacamole or sliced avocado, sour cream, shredded cheese, etc.)

Mix the taco mix with the salsa. (I use medium heat salsa, usually, because I'm not a complete wimp. Suit yourself and your own pain threshold.) Pour a little in the bottom of the slow cooker. Put the chicken and chopped onion on top of that. Pour the rest of the salsa combination over it.

Cook on high for about 4 hours or on low for about 6. When the chicken can be shredded easily with a fork, it's done. Remove the chicken and do that…shred with a fork. Return to slow cooker and mix with juices.

Serve wrapped in tortillas with whatever toppings you like. Pinto, refried or black beans, plus Spanish rice, round out the meal.

These tacos are so good, they remind me of my very first taste of Mexican food ever. It was 1966, I was nine, and we had just moved from Prichard, Alabama (okay, it's a suburb of Mobile, so not quite as Podunk Junction as it sounds) to San Antonio. We were living in an apartment (another first) while we looked for a house, and went to a drive-in Mexican place down the street. As I remember, my very first bite of my very first chicken taco tasted a lot like these. That taco made me a fan for life.

And these tacos make it very easy (in every sense of the word) to recall.