Homemade Cinco de Mayo Fiesta

As some of you may or may not know, I've recently been hired as the Huntsville Gourmet Food Examiner!  Pretty exciting.  I am responsible for keeping readers up to date on the latest gourmet gadgets, the best local restaurants, delicious gourmet recipes, gourmet cookbooks, and so on.  Rough life, huh??  :)  While I do have a good bit of freedom in what I write about, we are nudged to write about upcoming holidays/local events/specials/etc., so I felt it was my duty to inform Huntsville readers of several different spots to go out and celebrate Cinco de Mayo.  And like a bad article-writer, I did the exact opposite of what I encouraged my readers to do:  I created my own fiesta instead of going out to support our favorite Mexican restaurant.  (We go there enough times during the week, I doubt they missed us on this one night!)  So, I felt like an utter hypocrite as I gathered my Mexican ingredients from Publix, but let me tell you, our "homemade fiesta" was awesome!  I do not regret it a bit.  Tee hee!

We made:

-Guacomole
-Pico de Gallo
-Chipotle and Tomato Salsa
-Roasted Jalapeno Queso Dip (AMAZING!!!)

-Mexican Saffron Rice
-Spicy Black Beans
-Chipotle marinated Skirt Steak Fajitas
-Mexican marinated Chicken Fajitas
-MARGARITAS, OF COURSE!

If you have the time and the energy, I highly suggest spending an evening throwing together your own homemade Mexican fiesta. Your family will love you!  If you want any recipes for any of the above listed items, just comment and I'll post them!  Hope everyone had a very happy 5th of May.  Mother's Day is right around the corner.....are you ready???

Cheers,

The Chef Next Door