Hola, Amigos!

Hola! Happy Cinco de Mayo! I hope you've had a wonderful day of singing Cinco de Mayo carols, decorating your Cinco tree, and baking all your Cinco goodies. Or something like that.

To tell you the truth, I forget what Cinco de Mayo is even about...you know, besides salsa and margaritas. Or maybe that's all it's about. I could Google it, but who has time for that?

In honor of this day we know nothing about, we celebrated in grand style around here. First, we cancelled all our plans so we could stay home and wear our traditional festive masks.

I'm pretty sure there's something they do in Mexico involving fish masks. Am I right?

So who needs margaritas and tamales when you have albuterol? Sam threw us for a loop this week when he got wheezy when it wasn't the middle of the month or a holiday. Little did we know he and Jack had conspired for Jack to get sick on a holiday. Too bad the only thing our kids are good at sharing is germs...well, and nebulizers.

Since we were stuck at home with a sick boy, we made our own celebration. To tell you the truth, it was kind of lame, but it involved good food. (Although Jack would not agree with that statement. He wasn't a fan.)

Finally, Publix put our beloved avocados on sale again, so the homemade guacamole and salsa made a comeback at our house. If dinner had ended right there, I'd have been a happy girl.

What did everyone else do while I slaved in the kitchen? Sat on the couch and looked cute, of course.

Though I would have been happy with guac and salsa, I went ahead and whipped up some taco fritters. You could follow the recipe and fry them in a skillet (an iron skillet, no less), like this:

Or, if you prefer not to splatter hot grease from one end of your kitchen to the other and all over your lovely light pink shorts, and if you frown upon scalding your arm hair off with this same hot grease, feel free to cook them with no grease at all on a nonstick griddle, like so:

They're still delightfully yummy, you'll cut down on the clean up by an astronomical amount, and your skin (and arteries) will thank you. Just a tip from your friendly chef. No extra charge.

Here is Luke, holding up cinco fingers! See, you get to feed your family and make them multicultural all at the same time. He's even wearing a Guatemala soccer jersey that his sweet mama got him on her recent international trip. And Guatemala borders Mexico, which is where they celebrate...you guessed it...Cinco de Mayo!

Here's our fancy meal presentation. Because we pull out all the stops around here at dinner time.

And here is Sam, who shared Jack's opinion of the meal. He went cantaloupe only tonight.

And guess what else? We got our first watermelon of the season this week! See how big that bowl appears in the picture? It's really that big! Yummo! And just for fun, you get a picture of me looking old and holding a mostly empty plate. You're welcome.

I hope a look at our very exciting holiday celebration has inspired you to eat something new and yummy or at least stink up your house by frying some food.

Now I'm off to slave some more in the kitchen in my very courageous attempt to make the Pioneer Woman's cinnamon rolls. So far, not so good. It's taken way longer than I thought for step one, so at this rate, I'll be up until 1 am. Please, Lord, let these be edible.

Hasta luego!