Fajitas

We make Mexican food pretty often, and normally we just throw something together. One night we thought we would try something different and here is the result. From start to finish it took us about 45 minutes working together (we did start marinating the beef earlier). We don't always use recipes, and we generally don't measure, so here is the best recap:

Beef
We rubbed some boneless sirloin with minced garlic, Adobo seasoning, chipotle chile powder, and lime zest and marinated it in beer for about an hour (it happened to be a light Portuguese beer that we had not tried before). Mike grilled it for 5-6 min. each side on high heat.

**The beer gave the meat a nice caramelized crust, helped keep the meat moist, and gave it a nice flavor to balance the heat of the chipotle powder. We were surprised by how much the beer flavor really came through after cooking, so next time we will choose a beer we both like to drink (Leah likes the lighter less hoppy beers).

Onions and Peppers
Sauteed one large onion, two bell peppers, a few cloves of garlic, and salt and pepper in olive oil. When the veggies were soft, we added one packet of Goya's sazon.

**We use this method for all types of cuisines by just changing the spices. We've used it for Italian, Cajun, Latin and Asian dishes.

Rice
We toasted 1 cup of brown rice in olive oil, then added one packet of Goya's sazon with saffron, about 1/4 cup of salsa, and 1.5 cups of chicken broth.

**Adding salsa is a short cut we use sometimes. When we have a little more time, we finely dice some onions and garlic to saute with the rice. We then add some fire roasted tomatoes and season with salt, pepper, oregano, and chile powder.

Tortillas
Mike found a recipe online for chewy flour tortillas (http://www.texascooking.com/features/sept98flourtortillas.htm).

**We usually buy the thinner burrito-style tortillas from the store, but we thought we'd give this a shot (plus you can cut them up into triangles and bake them to make some delicious homemade chips). They were easy to make and cooked very quickly. Letting the dough sit a little longer would have probably helped us roll out the tortillas a little thinner, but the recipe is pretty fool-proof for making good tortillas.


Thoughts on the meal
The rice and veggies are old standbys for us so we were able to make these dishes quickly and spend a little more time spicing up the meat and trying to make tortillas from scratch for the first time. This was a fun and easy meal to prepare, and the leftovers were great! We used the extra veggies in combination with some leftover potatoes from a previous meal, and a turkey kielbasa to make a delicious hash for our weekend brunch.