On the subject of Mexican food

In an effort to keep up our accents and maintain some cultural ties, I have instituted "Fiesta Friday" in our house. This means that dinner every Friday will consist of some sort of Mexican food and, much more importantly, J's famous margaritas. Last Friday, due to mountains of moving boxes, I cheated, and we ordered take out from the "best" Mexican food place in Dayton. It was passable, and will do if we're ever desperate. So today is my first real Fiesta Friday. Since the weather has been unseasonably warm, we decided that grilling fajitas would be a good, easy choice, and the girls and I headed to the grocery store this morning to get the fixings. Shouldn't be hard, right? Just meat, beans, and tortillas, pretty much. Well, welcome to Dayton.

Since time was short, I was hoping to find pre-marinaded meat. After the butcher looked at me like I was nuts for asking if he carried any (seriously, his jaw dropped open and he stopped what he was doing to stare at the weirdo with the baby tied to her back), I decided to just pick up some skirt steak and do it myself. Well, they don't sell that. Instead, the closest thing I could find is something called "flat iron steak" which looks close enough. We'll see.

Next, on to pick up rotels for Spanish rice and some refried beans. Nope, no rotels by the rest of the canned tomatoes. And, nope, no refried beans with the rest of the beans....hmmmm.....

Of course! They're on the international aisle!

Arg.

And that shredded Mexican cheese blend? It's called nacho cheese here.

And fresh jalapenos? Forget it. Only pickled.

And you know how tortilla chips constitute about 98% of the chips aisle at HEB? I only have 3 choices here, with the best being On the Border.

Amazingly enough, Kroger has a tortilla bakery thing onsite, so I picked up a pack and we'll see how they do.

I'm thinking my Fiesta Friday is going to be a bit more complicated than I had planned.