March Recipe: Fish Tacos

I was on spring break from Friday, March 15-Tuesday, March 19. I figured it would be a good time to do my March recipe. I needed a night when everyone would be home. Dakota had to close every weekend, and Monday was Alexsei's birthday so I didn't want to make something she might not like. Plus, I needed to grill and it was too windy. Dakota didn't have to work on Tuesday, so Tuesday it was. I just needed to make sure Glen could grill.

The menu was grilled mahi mahi tacos with southwestern slaw, southwestern rice and avocados. I was going to do a vegetable and couldn't think of anything to go with the theme.

I prepped all my veggies, thawed my fish and planned the timing of the meal. Alexsei had guitar lessons at 7:00 and needed to leave by 6:30. I started the rice and prepped the fish and waited for Glen. I waited for Glen some more. Finally, I looked up the best way to broil fish.

Glen got home at 5:45 which was not enough time to get the grill going and have dinner ready so I broiled the fish and slapped things together. I had to plate quickly so Alexsei and Glen had time to eat. The final plate wasn't great and I needed sauce. I also had some fresh pico for a garnish, but Dakota ate most of it, so the plate was lacking some color.

I prepared one taco with the slaw and one without.

This was the verdict:
Glen does not like fish, but he ate the tacos because he loved the slaw. He thought the rice was fine. He prefers the red rice that I usually make.

Dakota loved the tacos and loved the slaw. He ate some of the rice but did not love it. He also voted for the other rice. He also loved the fish.

Alexsei did not like the slaw. She did not like the rice. She loved the mahi mahi. She ate a whole piece of fish and not much else.

Savana ate one fish taco. She didn't love it, but she would eat it again. She also did not like the rice.

What about Alaric? Typical Alaric. He wouldn't try the rice. He tasted one bite of fish and declared that he doesn't like fish. I didn't even have him attempt the slaw. He made himself a quesadilla. Good thing he is resourceful.

I loved the fish. It would be better grilled, but it was very mild. The slaw was delicious. I liked the rice. I like stuff in my rice. The avocados were fantastic!

Recipes:

Fish Tacos: I scoured the internet for recipes. I found recipes using all sorts of different types of fish and many different slaws. I opted to go with mahi mahi because I had fish tacos in a restaurant using that particular fish. I seasoned the fish with salt and pepper, squeezed fresh lime on the fillets and brushed both sides with olive oil. Instead of grilling the fish, I broiled it for 5-6 minutes a side in a preheated oven.  I used corn tortillas for the tacos. I filled each shell with fish and topped with southwestern slaw and garnished with fresh avocado.

Southwestern slaw: I looked at several recipes. Then I was shopping at HyVee, and they had fish taco samples. The taco itself wasn't much to speak of, but I loved the slaw. I loved it even better because it was super easy. I used shredded green and red cabbage. I added shredded carrots and for the dressing: Hidden Valley Farmhouse Originals Southwest Chipotle dressing. I mixed it in the morning so it really had time to flavor the cabbage.

Southwestern Rice Pilaf: This came from a recipe I found on the Internet. Fine Cooking Southwestern Rice Pilaf.

I will probably make the tacos again. I would prefer the fish grilled. The three older children will eat the fish plain so I don't even have to do the tacos with the mahi mahi. I will make the slaw again, but only for a group activity since only 3 of us ate it. I could make a smaller batch. I won't make the rice again unless I bring it for a potluck.

March Book: Live by Night by Dennis Lehane

For March I read "Live by Night" by Dennis Lehane. It is the follow up novel to "Any Given Day". It isn't necessary to read "Any Given Day" before reading this novel, but it helps to have the background story on Joseph Coughlin, the main character of this book. The novel begins in Boston during the Prohibition Era.

One weakness of Dennis Lehane's novels is that he always has his lead character fall in love with the wrong woman and the character loses his ability to think when mixed up with the woman. Enter Emma Gould, the girlfriend of gangster Albert White. It is his interaction with Emma that sets Joe Coughlin on his life's path.

Joseph Coughlin grew up in Boston, the son of a police captain. Instead of following in the steps of his oldest brother, a police officer, his other brother, a lawyer, Joe starts a life of crime. He begins with petty theft and ends up robbing a bank. He gets caught and spends 2 years in prison. It is the prison time that sets him on a path to become a gangster.

In prison he is taken under the wing of Italian mobster Maso Pescatore. Pescatore's angle is using Joe to get Joe's father, Thomas Coughlin, to go after his rivals while he is in prison. Thomas does his bidding until he is asked to murder a rival. Joe turns the tables on Maso and earns the man's respect. When Joe gets out of prison, Maso sends him to Tampa, Florida  to run his rum running business.

As with all of his novels, Lehane has done his homework. He transports you back in time. The reader is   placed in the Latin Quarter of Tampa, Florida. We learn about the Cubans, the Spaniards, racism, the fight for Cuba's freedom and how the illegal rum trade developed and flourished in Florida.

Like his other novels, Lehane creates complex characters. While other reviewers say Joe is the gangster "with a heart of gold", I found he didn't have much of a heart. He wasn't void of emotion, and he was able to keep some humanity. However, don't be fooled, Joe does some despicable things.

The novel, like other Lehane books, is well written and a page turner. If you are interested in historical novels and crime novels, I recommend picking up this book.

Bully

For the family activity, I wanted to find a movie we could watch. I went through pay-per-view and found 5 worthy movies. We voted on the movies and Bully won.

The Bully Project

After I made popcorn, we sat down to watch the movie. From the opening, where a couple talk about their oldest child, and we find out that he committed suicide when he was 17 because he had been bullied terribly at school, we were enthralled.

It was a very difficult movie to watch. My heart broke for the children. My heart broke for the families. I was also frustrated at some of the administrators that were in the movie. I yelled out loud at them. It was very frustrating to watch such ineptness when children in their care were being harmed both emotionally and physically.

Our children made comments at times that the behavior in the movie would not be tolerated in Gretna. That makes me very happy living in the town that we do. There are openly gay students in the high school. No one shuns them. No one bullies them. There are mean kids, but none that bully. I also think that the middle school I teach at is pretty much free from bullies. There might be a few incidents, but nothing to the extent that the kids in this movie had to deal with especially Alex, who was a 13 year old boy in Sioux City, Iowa.

I am going to look more into the bully project.

Reviews:
Glen and I both thought it was very difficult to watch as parents. He also disliked the principal at the middle school who seemed inept.
Dakota said "it destroyed his faith in human kind".
Alexsei said it was very sad.
Savana liked it a great deal.
Alaric also said it was very sad.

I think this is an excellent movie to watch with your family. It opened up some excellent discussions with our children. I think one of the saddest things in the movie is that some of the parents had no idea what was going on at school because their children didn't tell them. I want my children to always be able to talk to us about anything.

February Recipe Asian Ginger Pork and Fried Rice

We had two snow days this week. I was actually unhappy about it. We will now have to go to school after Memorial Day. Grrrr! I feel exceptionally lazy on snow days as well. Since we were home on Thursday, I made the decision to make the February recipe. Dakota didn't have to work so he would be home for dinner.

I decided I would go with what I could find in the freezer. I dug down to the bottom and discovered pork chops. I checked my refrigerator for ingredients and then looked for recipes on the internet. I had fresh ginger so I decided Asian was the way to go. I found this recipe, Asian Pork Chop. I made it exactly as printed except I had bone in chops so I had to cut the bone out.

I made a very basic fried rice recipe. It involved white rice, eggs and green onion. I did add soy sauce and garlic otherwise it would have been very bad. But it is such a basic recipe that many ingredients could be added to make it more interesting.

I had some asparagus left, so I roasted that with oil and soy sauce.

This was the finished product. I am sorry we didn't have any good beer to have with it.

Reviews:
Glen liked everything.
I liked everything.
Dakota liked the meat and rice. He does not do asparagus.
Alexsei liked the rice. She thought the pork was too gingery. She doesn't like pork.
Savana liked the rice. She was also not fond of the pork.
Alaric didn't like anything. He ate one bite of pork but found a green onion on the meat so that ruined him eating any more. He wouldn't taste the rice because it had egg in it. And, of course, he won't touch anything green.

I will make the rice again, probably not the chops unless we grill them. We couldn't grill Thursday night because it was snowing.

February Book

As in past years, I went until almost the end of the month to complete my 3 tasks. I finished my book first. Thankfully, I picked an easy read. I had grades due on February 20 so that cut into my free time. I was on the wait list for Janet Evanovich's "Notorious Nineteen". The latest book in the Stephanie Plum series. These books are a quick read.

I loved the series when I began reading it back in 2004. Stephanie was fun. The books were fresh. Lula was a hoot. Grandma Mazur knocked caskets over. After 19 books with little or no character development, the series is running out of steam. I stopped caring about the love triangle. Will Stephanie pick police detective Joe Morelli or the mysterious and oh so hot, Ranger. I used to like when he said, "Babe." Now I want to knee him in the groin. It is leaning toward Joe which is the only direction that makes sense.

This book at least had some funny moments. I don't think I laughed at all during the last two. The most fun was the Tiki that Stephanie took from an FTA that she failed to capture. The running theme in her books. Even though the FTA is supposedly easy to catch, Stephanie and Lula fail in over-the-top ways every time.

Briggs the midget security guard added to the humor in this book.

Cars blowing up, someone trying to kill Stephanie, Lula and Stephanie eating lots of bad food, eating at her parent's house, feeding her hamster. It is a tired series. Like most fans, we are begging and pleading for this series to end. Marry Stephanie and Joe and call it good.

January Recipe

For January, I went Asian. Dakota and Alexsei had been begging for orange chicken. (They love the stuff from Panda Express.) And Dakota wanted Pad Thai.

I scoured the internet for recipes and looking at several different ones, found one for orange chicken and one for pad thai that I thought would work. On January 6, I began the Part 1 of my January New Year's resolution. I had shopped for ingredients at HyVee and didn't find exactly what I needed so I decided to make do. When Alexsei saw the canned bean sprouts I purchased for the pad thai, she made the disgusted face and suggested skipping that ingredient. So I did.

The recipe included a great deal of prep. Asian food always does. Lots of chopping. I also made Asian inspired mushrooms and asparagus so that was more prep. Cutting mushrooms and snapping asparagus stems.

Coating and frying the chicken in the wok was extremely time consuming, and I made a lot because leftovers are always good. I kept it warm in the oven while I worked on the pad thai (I also doubled that  recipe.). When things got crazy, Alexsei made the orange sauce, because stir frying the pad thai was constant work.

Got the vegetables in the oven. Everything was ready and then the plating began.

This is what the final product looked like.

Reviews:
Glen loved everything.
I loved everything.
Dakota loved everything but the asparagus. He especially loved the mushrooms and would now like to try pad thai in a restaurant. He also spiced it up with hot pepper flakes. A boy after my heart!
Alexsei liked everything especially the orange chicken. She also thought the pad thai was a bit too spicy.
Savana liked the orange chicken and the vegetables. She thought the pad thai was too spicy. She was very fond of the mushrooms.
Alaric didn't like anything.

Alexsei and Dakota have already requested that I make orange chicken again. I will. Just not as much. But it will be a recipe in our new cycle. I always like finding something new to add into the rotation.

These are the recipes.

Pad Thai
I could not find tamarind so I went with the change on the recipe. I thought it was too limey so I would add less next time. I also did not put in the canned bean sprouts. I would like to find fresh bean sprouts.

Orange Chicken
I followed this recipe exactly, but I doubled the recipe. It took a long time to cook all that chicken!

For the asparagus and mushrooms, I used baby asparagus and button mushrooms. I cut the stems off the mushrooms. (When I remade the mushrooms, I cut them in thirds.) I tossed the mushrooms and asparagus in soy sauce, olive oil, garlic (2 minced cloves), salt and pepper. I roasted them at 425 for 10-15 minutes.

Henry Doorly Zoo

In January we all went to the zoo. We went on a Saturday that was unseasonably warm for the month. It was surprisingly busy for January. I am sure many people wanted to see the cubs, and the warmer weather encouraged people to go out. Plus there were people in Omaha for the U.S. skating championships.
The main reason we went was to see the new lion cubs. They were born on December 29. They were just less than a month old when we saw them. We probably spent an hour watching them. They have a second female in with the cubs and the mother. She helps tend the babies. While we were there, the 2 moms were trying to bathe the cubs. It was fun to watch them try to escape and then just give up and let the bath happen.

The pictures come courtesy of this blog.

We also went into the butterfly house. We discovered that Alaric is afraid of moths and butterflies. He was trying to dodge them as we went through the house. I don't blame him for not liking the other insects, the giant cockroaches, beetles, etc.

We also went through the Jungle, the aquarium and the Desert Dome. It is nice to go through the exhibits when they aren't crazy busy. We actually got to spend time looking at some of the animals. The best addition to the aquarium is the jellyfish displays. I don't know what the fascination is about jellyfish, but I could sit and watch them for a long time. I love the upside down ones. What's up with that?

We finished with The Kingdom of the Night. That is probably my favorite exhibit at the zoo. I love seeing the nocturnal animals especially the swamp.

I recommend a visit to the Henry Doorly Zoo if you come to Omaha. You will not be disappointed.