Thursday, May 5, 2011

Feliz Cinco de Mayo!

Happy Fifth of May!



“The French invasion: Late in 1861, a well-armed French fleet stormed Veracruz, landing a large French force and driving President Juárez and his government into retreat. Moving on from Veracruz towards Mexico City, the French army encountered heavy resistance from the Mexicans near Puebla, at the Mexican forts of Loreto and Guadalupe. The 8,000-strong French army attacked the much more poorly equipped Mexican army of 4,000. Yet, on May 5, 1862, the Mexicans managed to decisively crush the French army, the best army of the time.” Since the Battle of Pueblo, thus becoming independent from the French; thanks to a few sources Wikipedia and ask.com.

A challenge came into my kitchen today, how to make a festive celebration for this happy holiday of tasty foods and music and overall joy! We are not of the nationality of the people who were touched initially by the outcome, but as a nation many here do have fun with enjoying the fiesta feel that it brings to anyone who allows it, they do seem to salute it and all it represents.

That said I felt with Hubby’s restrictions in his diet of low sodium and low fat (me too) that I could somehow still make this holiday one of our favorites food wise.

And so I rethunk my recipes for soft tacos and we went with whole-wheat soft tortillas heated on our grill pan sprayed with Pam, and chopped turkey instead of beef sautéed in Pam with half a packet of low sodium taco powder and water, and homemade salsa instead of jar, and we had quite a delicious meal, if I do say so myself! The salsa was chopped tomatoes, which are from our garden, chopped red onion, avocado, fresh chopped jalapeño, flat parsley or cilantro, lime juice and yes even a dash of red wine vinegar, mmm, mmm, good! Quantities are according to how many you wish to serve; ours was small since it was for only the two of us, but we still have quite a bit left over. Additions for me were jarred pickled jalapeños and fat free sour cream as toppers. I hear some saying yuck, well you eat what you want and I will eat what I like, OK?

Beverage wise we came up short with our non-exciting diet caffeine free soda and club soda, used to be a time when we would have Margaritas or Tequila, and may I suggest that you have some; we will probably have a goblet of a nice California wine later, Merlot or Chardonnay.
Hope that any of you who chose to fiesta today had a great one!

On that cheerful idea let me be the first to wish you all a very happy good night and to ask you kindly to count those blessings and share those overages and we will too!

And next time please be here or wherever you are, ya hear?


PS Hubby update he is waking with the higher blood pressure but within hours it does appear to go down, and he read, since I forgot that it does take as long as three weeks for the medicine to get into your system to work at a faster pace or some such thing.

PSS Oh, and his new insurance, Universal, has free/no co-pay for GP office visits and the prescription portion charged him only six bucks co-pay for all of his prescriptions, cool, huh?

PSSS The co-pay for the hospital emergency was only fifty bucks! But if he stayed it would be just one hundred fifty a day! Now I want mine…boo hoo…
soon I hope.

Which way will the war go?

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