Don't knock fish tacos...

Gonna indulge in another passion of mine… making up recipes. Want to make some killer homemade fish tacos? Don't knock them till ya try them; if you've never had a fish taco, it's a great treat, not fishy at all.

Read on…

You’ll need…

4-6 decent-sized pickled green jalapenos, seeded, de-veined, etc., chopped fine

3-4 Roma tomatoes, remove the guts and chopped fine

1 small-medium sweet onion, peeled, chopped fine

1 bunch fresh cilantro, chopped fine, remove as many of the stems as you can, but you can leave a lot of stems in there

Juice from 1 lemon or a couple limes, or combo of both

Salt and pepper to taste

Sour cream

Olive oil

At least a couple white fish filets (like tilapia (what I used), mahi mahi, cod, roughy, etc.)

1 egg, beaten (start with just one at a time, it doesn’t take much)

Bread crumbs (if you don’t have pre-made kind, make your own)

Corn tortillas (probably 4-6 for 2 fish fillets, depends on size of fillets)

Cabbage or lettuce, shredded fine

Shredded cheese (I used the pre-shredded taco cheese blend, but just cheddar or just Monterey Jack or a combo of those would be fine too)

Here’s what you do… it takes a few minutes but worth all those messy dishes too:

For the salsa, mix the jalapenos, tomatoes, onion, cilantro, and lemon/lime juice. Add whatever salt and pepper you wish here. Set aside for a while, you need the flavors to bloom a bit. You won’t need the sour cream till later, leave it in the fridge for now.

In a big pan with a lid, put a little olive oil (maybe 1/8” to 1/4” deep in a pan), soften the corn tortillas so you can fold them in half – either continue to fry them till they’re crispy, or remove to paper-towel-lined plate and let them cool a tad. Yes, I said tad, hehehe, isn’t that a cooking term? I like them crispy, then after they’re cooled a tad (there’s that word again, it’s just up from a smidge and down from a lot) I split them open and lay them flat on a plate but some people like them just softened – your preference there.

Cut the fish fillets in half if they’re really wide and thick, they’ll cook more evenly. Besides, it doesn’t take but a small piece (about four inches long) for a corn tortilla, and you don’t want them too wide so cut them down to what you want first. Muck them around in the beaten egg then roll them through the bread crumbs – I like to do that step twice so they’re double-coated, woohoo! Fry them gently for a few minutes each side in the olive oil. Watch it, don’t overcook them, there’s nothing worse than overcooked fish. Ewwww. Helps to have the oil not so hot, either. Otherwise you’ll have a splattery mess on the stovetop. A lid helps steam and evenly cook the fish - you can flip them after a minute, they should be done very quickly, test with a fork in the thickest spots..

If you have a cat herd like I do, this is the point where you’ll have to sacrifice a small piece of the fish to each cat. Fortunately only 2 of mine are actual kitchen beggars, but they all smelled the fish and just had to join in the melee when they heard the 2 sobbing pitifully.

After you do the required sacrifice of the small fish tidbits and shoo the cats out of the kitchen for the eleventh time, and while the fish for YOU is gently cooking (keep an eye on it), take out the sour cream from the fridge and get another bowl. Put a couple big spoonfuls of sour cream in it, then a couple big spoonfuls of that salsa mess that’s been sitting and blooming. Only mix as much sour cream and salsa mess as you want to eat just then – the rest of the salsa mess can be refrigerated for days but you don’t wanna have it mixed with sour cream while it sits like that, it’ll get ooky. Yes, ooky’s a cooking term too. Just up a smidge up from grodie and down a tad from icky.

The fish should be done about now, take them out of the oil if they are. Fish frying requires lots of monitoring, don’t let that part get away from you so keep an eye on the fish tidbits in the oil.

Get the cheese out and brace yourself… assembly time coming up.

On a clean plate (You don’t think I’d actually say “on a dirty plate” did you? HA!), layer a tortilla with a spoonful of the salsa/sour cream mix, then plop a piece or two of the fish on top of that, add a little cabbage/lettuce shreds, and then sprinkle on some cheese.

Make a second one if you think you have room for it. Go eat before the fish cools off, it’s tasty. Works really well with grilled mahi mahi too, but I didn't have the impetus to grill the tilapia today so they were olive-oil lightly breaded and pan-fried. Mmm... mmmm... mmmmm...

Guess what I had for lunch? LOL!

Enjoy!

How did THAT end up in the cart?

Good grief, someone just shoot me. Well not REALLY! Put the gun away, it's just a figure of speech, golly.

You see... I went grocery shopping yesterday.

Oh but wait, that's not the whole story. (It never is, in my blogs, hahahah...)

I went grocery shopping on a Sunday afternoon, when everyone and their dog (really!) was at the Super Wal-Mart. Passed a lady with a guide-dog-in-training, so... it really WAS everyone and their dog, hehehe.

Oh but wait, it gets a wee bit worse.

I went grocery shopping on a Sunday afternoon BEFORE I had anything to eat.

Big huge OOOOOOOOOOOPS.

So there I was, resting after the ordeal, and wondering what exactly possessed me when I walked through the deli and the bread sections on an empty stomach. Carb heaven, here we come!

There should be a sign at the end of those aisles that says, "If you haven't eaten in the last four hours, do not enter."

Stuff landed in the cart without me even asking it to hop in! It was almost like shopping with hubby - stuff just mysteriously appeared in the cart. After wandering the Super Wally World for an hour, my feet were saying to my brain "Just take it! It's screaming your name! You want it, really you do!" And the worse inner comment: "There's room in the cart still!"

Did I really need two packages of whole wheat hamburger buns? Well, they WERE on sale. And they'll be used, no doubt... because I loaded up on sliced meats and cheeses too.

Did hubby really need two loaves of nine grain bread for sandwiches, when just one would do? Hey, they were on sale too, such a deal. And he does love his tuna salad.

Did we really need two packages of five-count butter croissants? Not on sale, but they will make absolutely fabulous turkey and swiss sandwiches.

There's a problem with grocery shopping for me though and I'm fully aware of it: if I don't eat, I come back with just about everything we ever needed and THEN some. But on the other side of the coin, if I eat before I go, then I come back with one bag of vegetables and some lettuce. AND NOTHING ELSE! Good grief, we can't live on that for a week!

Now where am I going to put all this STUFF...???

Some Days It Pays To Complain

Okay this is a long one, but worth it. Sit back, relax, grab a cuppa coffee... enjoy.

I don't care what hubby says, some days it pays to complain. He can be as embarrassed if he wants, if I wanna complain, I will. And publicly, too. I'm too old not to, at this point.

Now, I don't mean just complaining for the sake of hearing my own whining, I mean complaining when someone's done something wrong. Like messing up your meal in a restaurant, or telling you they'll have your car ready at such-n-such time and then it's four days later they finally tell you 'oh woops we forgot we had to order that part from Germany!'... ya know... stuff like that. We're all consumers at some point, so if my purchase is whacked out for any reason, there's a right to complain somewhere in there. And I mean I complain nicely, I don't go off half-cocked. If I'm gonna go off, it's fully-cocked.

*cough* *cough* *cough* Don't touch that.*cough* *cough* *cough*

See, it all started innocently. Heck, it always does. Last week, to get hubby outta the house so I could work on my writing, and to make him happy with something to do on his day off, hubby went to Taco Bell. Ooooo I love those Gordita Baja with steak, mm mm mm. Tasty things, they are... when they're made right!

Problem is... what he brought back was a piece of flatbread with just steak and lettuce and a teensy sprinkle of cheese.

Well. Humph. I've had them before, I know what's in them: seasoned ground beef, jalapeño pepper sauce (that stuff is AWESOME), salsa fresca, lettuce, cheese, and since we added steak... carne asada steak. I even looked up their website to verify that's what I'd had before, and compared it to the receipt showing what he'd ordered, AND what he'd paid for were all correct. They'd just screwed up in making the thing, and had skipped most of the ingredients. Ack.

Some days I'm fully passive-aggressive (and this was one), so I figured why complain to them directly by phone when their WEBSITE lets me complain to the head honchos? Soooo I fired off a well-written and stated-clearly complaint, no screaming just stating the facts on when-where-what-how-etc. That was ummm... last Wednesday night I think. Late at night, too, I had to think on it for a while... to complain or not complain, that was the question.

In today's mail - a very, VERY nice apology letter from Taco Bell Corporate, and a coupon for two free items of my choice from the menu. Woohoo! Free lunch, here I come.

Works for me!

Then as I sat here thinking of all the bazillion times I've had something like this occur, I think the absolute best was Arby's:

Quite a few years back, me and a friend had gone to an Arby's that just so happened to have one of the corporate offices NEXT DOOR. And not in a separate building, they shared the SAME front door. You'd think the staff would be ultra-trained at that site, right? Wrong.

I'd asked if the special new ham-n-cheese sandwich on the menu was hot (they don't serve it anymore, not the same way), and it turned out, it was not - it was deli style, but nowhere on the overhead menu or the signs by the cash register did it say that. It even looked hot in the picture, melting cheese and all! And the cashier taking my order told me it was hot, he confirmed it.

When the tray arrived, I said it's wrong, it's supposed to be hot. The employee said no it's not hot, and walked away. Well, that bent me the wrong way.

And so began my life of filing complaints at restaurants.

So I went up to the register with the offending food. THEN... they refused to refund my money because it's what I'd ordered (the previous cashier was on break, what timing). So I walked next door (with the tray). Now this really embarrassed my friend, but I wasn't going to eat cold ham-n-cheese when hot was what I'd paid for and what I'd expected and what my head and stomach and mouth were all prepped for – cold just was not gonna cut it.

Whaddya know, the corporate office was closed for the day. I think it was a Saturday, that's why.

So I grabbed a complaint form, went back to my table, filled out the complaint, stuffed it in the complaint box by the corporate door, along with my receipt and...

...about 2-3 days later got in the mail an envelope with a personal letter apologizing, and the promise that they'd retrain the individuals, AND... a stack (!!!) of free coupons, enough for ohhh a dozen meals and potato cakes, fries, drinks, etc.

Shocked the heck outta me!! All I'd wanted was a refund for 2 small cold ham-n-cheese sandwiches. Did they go over the top? You betcha!! Now that's customer service. Didn't cost them anything in the long run, and it made me an Arby's fan for life, hehehe.

We don't live by that Arby's place anymore, but you bet when we did, I went in there once a week... just to see if I could get them to screw up again. And darn it if I couldn't!! They'd retrained them all very, very, VERY well.

But now... we live near this Taco Bell.

Looks like 'game on' again. *grin*