Mandy and Jace

Here’s another one of our faithful recipes. We make fajitas all the time. It is another must have recipe, especially if you live in West Texas or if you don’t and need a Mexican food fix.



You can also make the chicken in bulk and put it in the fridge. It keep well and makes killer nachos or on-the-go burritos.



Chicken Fajitas
makes enough for 2 people

2 chicken breasts
1/2 onion, julienned
1/2 bell pepper, julienned
1/2 serrano pepper, minced
your favorite fajita seasoning
1 lime
6 corn or flour tortillas
extras:
rice, refried or pinto beans
chopped cilantro
sour cream

Season the chicken breasts liberally with your favorite fajita seasoning.

Put some oil or butter into a saute pan and heat on medium high heat. When hot add your chicken breasts and cook for 3 1/2-4 minutes on each side until fully cooked. Set aside to rest.

Pour your onion, bell pepper and serrano pepper into the pan with the chicken juices and cook until soft. Remove from pan.

Squeeze lime juice over both the chicken and onion/pepper mix

Cut the chicken into cubes or strips however you prefer.

Warm 2-3 tortillas in the microwave for about 10 seconds and fill with the chicken, peppers and onion, and any extras that sound good to you.

Serve immediately with a side of rice and beans.

Happy Valentine’s day everyone! This is one of my favorite days of the year for a couple of reasons. First, I love a fancy date night. We are actually going to have two Valentine’s days this week. Tonight we are going to cook and have a nice dinner here at home then on Friday night we are going go go ahead and dress up and go out. The second reason I love Valentines day is I have a reason to give gifts (and get gifts).

This week’s plan is pretty simple. We are going to make tacos on Tuesday and if all works out well I will post our taco recipe on Wednesday. Here’s this week’s plan.

Tonight: lamb chops, lemon thyme rice and dessert (I’m splurging for Valentines day)
Tuesday: chicken tacos with pinto beans
Wednesday: grilled sandwiches
Thursday: take out after praise and worship practice
Friday: Valentine’s date night #2

Happy eating!

The next several recipe posts are going to be some of our go-to dishes. We always make things like rice, sauteed chicken, stir fry, and fajitas or tacos. They are our faithfuls that we rarely screw up. We try to stick to what we know for one night a week then branch out on the other night. I hate messing up dinner so it’s better for my ego if we do one really good meal and one not so good.

I have to admit we have come a long way in our meals since we got married three years ago. We ate chicken and mashed potatoes at least twice a week. I was pretty sure I was about to start clucking if we didn’t branch out soon. So one way we branched out was to change the potatoes to rice. I never liked rice until I married Jace and he got me to reluctantly start eating it. Now most of my meals consists of some kind of rice. I’ll eat it plain for lunch or breakfast, put it in soups or make it as a side dish. This recipe is really easy and the salsa in it gives the rice TONS of flavor. I make a big batch of this probably every other week and eat on it for several days. It’s so good! We normally use Julios salsa but any salsa will work. The other day I had some salsa from Rosa’s that was really good too. You can make it as mild or spicy as you want.



Quick Spanish Rice
2 tablespoons canola oil
2 cups white rice
1/4 cup salsa (more or less depending on how spicy you want it)
1 carton chicken broth
salt

Pour the oil into a pot set on medium high heat. When the oil is hot, add the rice and cook for about 2 minutes to toast the rice. Add the salsa and stir to coat all of the rice. Add in half the carton of chicken broth and reduce the heat to medium. Cook until the rice absorbs the liquid and is soft. Add more chicken broth during cooking if needed.
Pour the rice into a serving dish and salt to taste.

After a week of both of us sick with the flu I am happy to say I think we are both well again. I absolutely hate being sick. Not being able to move conflicts with my inability to sit still. I want to get up and move but I physically can’t. Not fun.

We had a roller coaster of a weekend. Saturday was a good day. Jace worked at the church all day putting up our new speakers and I took a girls road trip to Lubbock with my best friend Jamie for some retail therapy.

Sunday morning we found out that my great grandmother who was 99 years old passed away. If everyone could please keep my family in their prayers we would greatly appreciate it. A lot of my family will be making the trip to Arkansas for the funeral and the weather is supposed to get bad again. Also keep my memaw in your prayers. She is going up there early to take care of all the details.

This week’s meals are kind of a repeat of last week. Since we were sick we didn’t get to eat any of the food I had planned. Here’s this weeks plan.

Tonight: Tex-Mex pork chops with rice
Tuesday: chicken pasta in a cream sauce
Wednesday: Not sure
Thursday: take out after practice
Friday: girls/guys night with youth group

Happy eating!