Yo’ mama is so…

Hopefully you said nice things to your mamas yesterday.

I pulled together a dinner on the fly that even I am impressed with and damn glad I have leftovers to partake in this afternoon. After being in Baltimore for three days, grouchily enjoying an evening with my most favorite and most beautiful people and shuffling through a 10K race on Saturday–I was one tired banana, and one without the help of the internet to help plan a fabulous gourmetish dinner for my mama.

Working off the notion that guacamole is one of my Mom’s favorite foods, I headed to the grocery store Sunday morning with nothing but visions of avocados dancing in my head. After spending an inordinate time in the produce section, I left for the baking aisle with the following items in my cart:
*5 ripe avocados
*1 clove of garlic
*Fresh cilantro
*3 limes
*1 cucumber
*A variety of bell peppers
*2 jalepeno peppers
*1 plum tomato
*1 pint of grape tomatoes
*A head of romaine lettuce
*1 red onion
*1 bunch of asparagus
*1 lemon
*1 mango

After hitting the baking aisle, I added:
*2 boxes of instant lemon pudding
*A ready-made graham cracker crust

Then there was some random running around to fill out the still unsure dinner and dessert plans that were scattered everywhere inside my head. So the groceries were rounded out with:
*3lbs of chicken breast
*Taco sauce
*1 jar of chunky salsa
*22 oz. of cream cheese
*Frozen lemonade
*Organic tortilla strips
*2 cans black beans
*1 can black olives
*Honey
*Evaporated milk
*8 oz. of plain yogurt
*1 container of sour cream
*1 tub of Cool Whip

Out of the above, I ended up with a taco salad on steroids. I call it Fiesta Salad.

Fiesta salad goes like this:

Marinate chicken for two hours in a homemade fajita sauce consisting of  salsa, taco sauce, fresh lime juice, red onions, cilantro, jalepenos, garlic and various seasonings.

Then chop, red, green and yellow peppers along with skinned cucmber, avocado, grape tomatoes, black olives and mango.  Add rinsed black beans to the veggies and toss in with chopped romaine lettuce. Drizzle with some homemade Honey-Lime dressing that you kind of just made up–equal parts honey and olive oil, the remaning limes and those various seasonings.

After dicing the nicely charred chicken, artfully arrange it atop the salad and serve with homemade guacamole (that included pureed asparagus and yogurt…tre delish), the remaining salsa, some sour cream and crushed tortilla chips.

After dinner you can serve the I-should-be-ashamed-to-call-myself-a-baker Lemon Mousse Pie which was made by whipping up lemon pudding with the evaporated milk then whipping the cream cheese, fresh lemon juice and zest with the frozen concentrate.  After you combine the two mixtures, just pour into the graham cracker crust and freeze. Serve with Cool Whip.

A mish-mash of a dinner if you ever saw one, but at least Mom liked it!