Saturday Dinner: Fish Tacos

Tonight's menu:

• Beer-battered fish tacos
• Tomato and avocado salsa
• Rice and black beans

Wow, this was a great meal! The fish tacos were better than I've ever had in a restaurant. That's one thing I love about cooking; you can have the same food you would get in a restaurant (a great steak, hamburger, fish tacos) but for half the cost and you can cook it to suit your tastes perfectly. Why eat out?!

We followed the fish recipe exactly and it was delicious. Crispy on the outside, flaky on the inside, and with that slight flavor of beer which, when combined with seafood, makes me think of a beach vacation.

The salsa was absolutely amazing...there is nothing better than homemade salsa. We left out the cilantro because we aren't huge fans and for some reason it's really hard to find up here in New England. We also added garlic because we are of the opinion that garlic makes just about anything better. It was so good we both wanted to eat the salsa straight out of the bowl. We will definitely be making it again.

The rice and beans were plain and simple...just some basmati rice, cooked in our new favorite way, with a can of black beans thrown in for extra protein and flavor. And yes, we did use canned beans. Back in the co-op days (more to come on that later) we would have cooked the beans from scratch along with the rest of the meal. But that is, frankly, way too much work for us now that we're only cooking for two people. Sometimes canned food just makes more sense. It's a little more expensive, but worth it to save a couple hours of cooking time.

The only problem with this meal was the sorry-excuse-for-a-tortilla we had to use. Back in Texas, really good tortillas were easy to come by. Apparently that is not the case here, and we had to use these flavorless, mealy, floppy things. I'm thinking we're going to have to start making our own tortillas. If anyone knows of a good tortilla recipe, post it in the comments please!