Beef Fajitas w/Guacamole & Cilantro

By Dave Pepple's Request:

Shelley's Beef Fajitas with Guacamole & Cilantro (etc!)
(you should be warned that my measurements are never exact! I always add more or less based on taste, but this is a good guide to go by!:)

Beef Fajitas Marinade
Ingredients:
1 pound flank steak, sliced into 3 inch strips (easier if the meat is partially frozen)***
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup olive oil
3 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp oregano
salt & pepper
1-2 tbsp olive oil
*obviously, you can double or triple this recipe. This was enough for 3 people to have 2 "tacos")

Place all ingredients in a Gallon sized Zip Lock and marinate in refrigerator for up to 24 hours, but for at least a couple hours. The longer the better, in my opinion. Turn often while in the refrigerator. *** (my husband said that you should marinate the flank steak whole, then slice afterward to keep the juices in. I disagree with him, but maybe he has a point. However, you didn't ask him for HIS recipe, now did ya? :)

When the meat is ready, saute in olive oil until it gets a nice golden color. You might need to cook off all of the excess moisture; I ended up pouring alot of liquid out before I finally got the meat to brown. Another option is that you could pat the meat dry with a paper towel before putting in the saute pan, then it might brown a little quicker.

Fajita Veggies
Ingredients:
1-2 tbsp olive oil
1 sweet yellow pepper, thinly sliced
3 bell peppers of various colors (1 red, 1 yellow, 1 green, etc), thinly sliced into strips
salt & pepper

Heat olive oil in saute pan until it ripples. Add vegetables, salt and pepper. Stir and saute until veggies are soft, 15 to 20 minutes. Just leave then in the pan "full of love" until everything else is ready. :) They keep nicely and you can give them a quick re-heat.

Guacamole
Ingredients:
2 ripe Hass avocados
juice of half of a lime (or a lemon)
1 tbsp red onion, diced fine
several dashes of ground cumin
a dash of cumin seed
a dash of garlic salt
pepper

In a small bowl, smash the avocado with a fork. Squeeze the lime juice in, toss the rest in, mix it up and let it "marry" in the fridge.

Sour Cream with toasted Cumin Seeds
Ingredients:
1 cup sour cream (I use light)
2 tbsp cumin seeds

In a small non stick pan, toast the cumin seeds on med-high heat for about 5 minutes, until fragrant. Let cool. Toss in a small bowl with the sour cream and let "marry" in fridge.

Additional ingredients:
Flour tortillas ( I steam/toast mine over a gas burner on my range top)
Cilantro
Hot sauce, pico de gallo, or salsa

Now the fun part! Fill a flour tortilla with the fajita meat, onion/peppers, guacamole, sour cream, several sprigs of cilantro and a few dashes of hot sauce or salsa. Personally, I like to use Sriacha sauce, but its really hot. Or else I make my own pico de gallo, which is just diced tomato, red onion, jalepeno, cilantro, a little lime, salt & pepper.

Enjoy!!
And thank you for asking! :)

Meat Loaf

I had defrosted some ground beef, some sweet Italian pork sausage, and some spicy "Caprese" (?) Italian sausage, so I decided to go ahead and make a meat loaf. Its been a very, very, very looooong time since I've made meat loaf. The main reason being that my kids don't like it...actually, they just don't really like meat very much. Its getting exhausting trying to get them to eat what I make. Anyway, I followed Elises' recipe from her website, Simply Recipes. Love that site, btw. I was out of carrots & celery, so omitted that and the butter, and I am out of bread crumbs, so I smashed up some stoned wheat crackers. Funny name, but thats what they are called. LOL.

The goulash turned out really good. I had a bunch of mushrooms so I added those in for the heck of it and also to make up for the fact that I didn't have enough tri tip. I made a gorgeous cucumber salad, too, which turned out good. The Basil-Lemon sorbet? No so good. It was just way too sweet! And I cut the sugar from 2 cups to 1 and 3/4!! The basil was weird, but interesting. I should have used more mint, too.

My husband and I went to see "Burn After Reading" this afternoon. OMG, it was hysterical!!!! I was dying! There was this little old lady sitting by herself in front of me and she was laughing so loudly it cracked me up. She was laughing so loudly and for so long at this one scene where it was not even funny! It was sad, actually, but I won't give it away! Oh, why not? No one reads this! LOL It was when Brad Pitts' character was "offed"! I was bummed because he was so funny!! I won't tell "you" who else died, though! ;)

I am tripping out on how Twitter works. I mean, I get it, but I see something that sparks my interest and I try to follow the "conversation", but can't. Its kind of frustrating. There was some buzz about someone being on some talk show and I was finally, after lots of searching, finally able to figure out that a few of my favorite food bloggers are going to be on Martha Stewart on Wednesday. How fun! I'll have to tape it.