Vegan Taco Salad — The First Saturday Dinner My Mama Had Off in Three Months

I have been at the Sonic for two weeks now. Two weeks of the four-to-eight evening rush, five nights a week, plus a Saturday morning shift, and the rhythm has finally settled into my body the way the rhythm of a job does once you have been there long enough that your hands move before your brain has to think about them. I do not have to look at the register anymore to ring up a Route 44 cherry limeade. I know the codes for cheese tots and chili dogs and the small chocolate shake that everybody’s favorite niece comes through the drive-up to order on her way home from cheer practice. The first paycheck came Friday. $186 net of taxes for the partial first week. I held that check in my hand at the kitchen table for about two minutes before I cashed it at the QuikTrip on the way home, and then I held the cash in my hand for another two minutes before I put it on the counter and started splitting it.

I want to talk about the splitting because I have decided the splitting is a thing I want to be honest about in this notebook. I split that first paycheck three ways. One hundred dollars of it I gave to Mama in cash, in an envelope, on the kitchen table Friday night when she got home from work. She tried to argue. I told her not to argue. I told her this was money toward the household and she could put it where she needed it most, and she could not argue with me about the destination because I did not want to know where it was going. I just wanted her to take it. She took it. She put the envelope in the cabinet over the sink where she keeps the bill folder, and she sat down at the kitchen table for a minute and she put both hands flat on the table and she said, thank you, baby. Then she got up and went to take a shower because Mama does not stay in big feelings for long.

Twenty dollars I put in the savings envelope in my closet, the same envelope that bought Mother’s Day. The savings envelope is not for any one thing. The savings envelope is for the future. I am not yet sure what shape the future takes — a car at sixteen, maybe, or a community college class on something, or a deposit on a place of my own at eighteen, I do not know — but I have decided that putting some of every paycheck into that envelope, no matter what, is part of how I become the person I am trying to become.

The remaining sixty-six dollars I kept in my wallet. I have never had sixty-six dollars in my wallet at one time. I checked it three different times Friday night before bed, just to make sure it was real. It was real. It is real. It is mine.

And then Saturday happened, which is what I really wanted to write about today. Mama got Saturday off. She has not had a Saturday off since March. I did not even know it was a thing that could happen until Wednesday afternoon, when Mrs. Henderson three doors down mentioned it across the fence as Mama was coming up the walk after her shift. The new district manager at the Dollar General region had rolled out a schedule policy three months ago: any employee who has been with the company more than three years can request one weekend day off per month, no questions asked. Mama has been at the Dollar General for fourteen years. She had not known. The policy memo had gone up on the staff bulletin board in March, and Mama had not seen it because Mama does not stop at the bulletin board, Mama clocks in and goes to the floor.

She put the request in Thursday morning. They gave it to her. Saturday she slept until ten o’clock in the morning. I will write that down again because writing it down is how I keep it real. Mama slept until ten. I worked the morning shift at Sonic, eight to two, came home for lunch, and Mama was just finishing her coffee at the kitchen table in jeans and a t-shirt, hair down, looking like a person who had been allowed to remember she was a human being. I had not realized, until Saturday, how rarely my mother gets to look like that. I had not realized how much of her was being used up by the schedule. The version of her sitting at the kitchen table on Saturday morning was not a version I had seen, in any sustained way, in years. I sat down across from her and I tried not to stare and I did not entirely succeed.

That night I made dinner. The recipe I worked from was a vegan taco salad I had copied out of the same magazine I have been raiding all spring. The recipe called for plant-based crumbles, like a soy-based ground meat substitute, the kind they sell in the freezer aisle for six dollars a pound. We were not going to buy plant-based crumbles. I do not think there is a household in our zip code that buys plant-based crumbles. What I had in the freezer was a half-pound of ground beef, frozen flat in a freezer bag the way I have learned to freeze it for portion control, that I had bought on the markdown rack at Walmart three weeks ago for $1.79. So I made a non-vegan taco salad. I am going to be honest about that.

I browned the ground beef in the cast iron skillet with a packet of Aldi’s house-brand taco seasoning, forty-nine cents. While the beef was browning I drained a half can of pinto beans, the rest of which I poured into a freezer bag for next week. I added the beans and a half cup of canned tomato sauce to the beef and let it simmer for ten minutes. While that was simmering I shredded a head of iceberg lettuce, sixty-nine cents, fine on the cutting board. I diced two tomatoes from the markdown rack, $1.99 for three, the third one going into next week’s sandwiches. I fine-chopped half an onion. I shredded mexican blend cheese, eight ounces of it left over from last week’s enchiladas. I crushed a handful of tortilla chips, the broken ones from the bottom of the bag, because crushed chips are cheaper than buying taco shells and you get the same crunch.

I assembled it in two big bowls, one for me, one for Mama. Lettuce on the bottom. Beef and bean mixture in a hot pile. Tomatoes, onions, cheese, sour cream, crushed chips. The whole dinner came in at $4.10 for the two of us, with enough beef-and-bean leftover for my Sunday lunch.

I served Mama at the kitchen table at six. Sun was still bright through the window. Honeysuckle still on the fence. Mama was on her second iced tea of the afternoon. She picked up her fork. She looked at the bowl. She said, baby, this is a real dinner. And I said, I know, Mama. And we sat there and we ate, and we talked. We talked for an hour. Just the two of us at the table. We talked about the Sonic job and the new manager and the older girls and Carlos. We talked about whether to plant tomatoes in the side yard next spring, the way Aunt Tammy had been telling Mama to for two years. We talked about Cody, briefly, both of us picking our words carefully. Mama said, I think he’s in deeper than we know, baby. I said, I know, Mama. She said, I don’t know what to do. I said, I know. And then we did not talk about it any more, because there was not anything more to say. But the sentence sat at the table between us, between the bowl and the iced tea, and we let it sit.

Cody was not at the dinner. He has been gone for three days now. That is the longest stretch yet. I am writing the days down in my notebook in pencil so I can keep count. Three days. Soon to be four if the pattern continues.

But Saturday was Mama’s day. Mama had her first Saturday off in three months. She slept until ten. We ate taco salad together at the table at six. The honeysuckle was on the fence. The savings envelope is heavier by twenty dollars. The wallet has sixty-six dollars in it. The Sonic shift starts again Monday. The future, whatever shape it ends up taking, is being built one paycheck and one Saturday at a time.

The recipe below is the vegan version, the way A Couple Cooks wrote it, with plant-based crumbles and the works. I made the meat-and-bean version because that is what was in my freezer. Both versions work. The bones of the recipe — lettuce, tomato, beans, cheese, crushed chips, sour cream — hold up no matter what protein you slot in the middle. If you have plant-based crumbles, use them. If you have ground beef from the markdown rack, use that. The salad is the structure. The protein is the placeholder. Both are dinner.

Vegan Taco Salad

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 10 min | Total Time: 25 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 1 can (15 oz) black beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 can (10 oz) Rotel diced tomatoes & green chiles, drained
• 1 tablespoon taco seasoning
• 1 tablespoon olive oil or neutral oil
• 1 large head romaine lettuce, chopped
• 1 cup frozen corn, thawed (or canned, drained)
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1/2 small red onion, thinly sliced
• 1 avocado, diced
• 1/4 cup fresh cilantro, roughly chopped
• Juice of 1 lime
• 2 cups corn chips (Fritos or off-brand)
• 1/2 cup salsa, for dressing
• Salt and black pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Season the beans. Heat oil in a small skillet over medium heat. Add black beans and taco seasoning, stirring to coat. Cook 5–7 minutes until beans are heated through and slightly crisped at the edges. Remove from heat.
2. Prep the base. Add chopped romaine to a large bowl or divide among four individual bowls. Top with corn, cherry tomatoes, and red onion.
3. Add the warm beans. Spoon the seasoned black beans over the salad while still warm. Add the drained Rotel on top.
4. Finish with fresh toppings. Layer on the diced avocado and cilantro. Squeeze lime juice over the entire bowl and season with salt and pepper.
5. Dress and crunch. Spoon salsa over the top as the dressing. Right before serving, crush the corn chips over everything so they stay crunchy. Serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 375 | Protein: 13g | Fat: 16g | Carbs: 49g | Fiber: 12g | Sodium: 620mg