WASHINGTON — Some solo cooks set the table and light a candle whenever they make dinner for themselves. More power to 'em, but I just don't have it in me. Most nights, my dining chair is the couch, the linens are a paper towel, and the only flickering light is the neon blue of "American Idol."

It's the little touches, don't you know, that make every night special.

My weeknight drill is about throwing together something quickly after a long workday. Sound familiar? By the time I get home, I'm already hungry, and if there's not an obvious option at hand, it's too easy to dial up Chinese carry-out. But I would rather make something for myself that is as tasty as anything I might order in a restaurant or cook for friends.

Of course, it should be simpler, and less caloric is always good. And given the couch-potato setting of choice, bonus points go to anything I can eat with my hands.

That's why I usually make tacos. These aren't the gringo kind filled with ground beef, shredded cheddar, sour cream and Old El Paso. That might have been what I ate as a kid in West Texas, but my tastes, thankfully, have matured. I like to wrap soft, warm corn tortillas around spicy grilled, braised or barbecued meat or seafood, add a roasted vegetable and top it with a smoky salsa I've mail-ordered from some little company in the Southwest. That's one way I use up leftovers.

More and more, though, I don't have (or want) leftovers, and that's why I've started paying closer attention to my tacos. The goal: something that tastes freshly made, even if it uses some pre-prepped ingredients.

My first success was born of necessity on a night when my larder offered only fresh eggs and fingerling-size sweet potatoes from the farmers market. There was an onion. And amid the mostly empty jars in the refrigerator was one with brine left over from my sister Rebekah's fabulous pickled beets. As usual, I had corn tortillas aplenty.

I remembered the breakfast tacos of my college days, and the solution was obvious. Slices of the onion went into the beet brine, a small sweet potato went in the microwave and the eggs went into the skillet. I fried them instead of scrambling because wouldn't that gloriously runny yolk enliven a taco? Yes it would, and it did.

I used jarred salsa that first time (probably ordered from Austin Spice Co.), but since then I have been making my own salsa and pickled onions, both crucial to my taco strategy. Such condiments also help extend the life of fresh produce — a challenge that can vex the single cook — by turning it into something value-added.

The best salsa I ever had was from La Fogata restaurant in San Antonio. In the early 1990s, the only way you could take some away from the place was to provide your own receptacle, which they would fill for a few dollars a pint.

My fellow Texas-transplant friend Karin and I would take our containers whenever we visited home from Boston and would return with so much of the smoky, black-flecked nectar that we had to host a dinner party so the stuff could be consumed before it went bad.

These days, La Fogata sells its salsa on the Internet. While I was waiting recently for my first shipment to arrive, I figured I'd try to concoct it at home. Good old Google turned up a blog (Spice Lines.com) by another ex-Texan food writer, along with a recent post featuring her attempt at re-creating the recipe. One look and I knew it wasn't quite right, since hers was red rather than brown.

But I used it as a jumping-off point, cutting the proportions down to single-serving size and using smaller vegetables for more blackening.

Cherry tomatoes, large shallots, garlic and jalapeno pepper went under the broiler; then I pureed them with a little vinegar and water. I pretty much nailed it, and it tastes tailor-made for my tacos de huevos.

Another recent eureka moment came on a trip to Mexico City, where my sister and I ate our weight in tacos. Our favorite joint: El Califa in the Condesa neighborhood. Like so many taquerias, it specializes in tacos al pastor, which use pork that cooks on a vertical spit, shawarma style, as a pineapple sits on top to help baste the meat. You order a few tacos; the cook slices off the pork with a flourish, letting it fall right into a tortilla in his hand. Then he swipes higher and slices off some pineapple, which falls in, too. At the table, you sprinkle on chopped onions and cilantro and spoon on your favorite salsa. Fold, eat, repeat.

At home, I cooked my own interpretation of tacos al pastor by stir-frying chunks of pork and spices and then throwing in some pineapple and salsa. Nice enough.

Then another style of taco in Mexico City inspired an improvement: a beef or pork cutlet pan-fried and set, whole, atop the tortilla. The meat is so tender you can fold it right inside the tortilla, no knife required.

I pound out a pork cutlet or boneless chop so thin that it takes on the flavors of a marinade in just a few minutes and cooks in a flash. While the cutlet soaks in vinegar, pineapple juice and spices, I throw together a salsa of fresh pineapple chunks, jalapeno pepper, shallot and cilantro. While I warm the tortillas, the cutlet sizzles in the pan, and it all comes together in time for whatever's on the tube.

In Mexico City, countless joints specialize in tacos al pastor, carved off a spit like the shawarma from which it is derived, but with the delectable addition of pineapple (and with tortillas, naturally, instead of pita).

This adaptation for the home cook translates the spit-roasted pork into spicy thin cutlets and combines the traditional garnishes of onion, cilantro, pineapple and lime into a quick salsa.

PASTORAL TACOS