Food and Friends: Fajitas and ‘Ritas in Boise

Welcome all to “Food and Friends,” where six winning bloggers get to host America’s Test Kitchen dinner parties. For the next six weeks, we will travel across North America and into the homes of these bloggers who will be using our new Menu Cookbook as their guide to entertaining for a party of eight.

Meet Our Lovely Host

Hi everyone! I’m Sara from Our Best Bites and I’m excited to be over here on The Feed today. I’ve never been shy about sharing my love for America’s Test Kitchen. My DVR is set to record every episode with Chris, Bridget, Julia, Jack, and Adam. (Oh yes, we are most certainly on a first-name basis. And by first name basis I mean they have no clue I exist and I live under the illusion that we’re best friends.) So I was more than thrilled to try out the new America’s Test Kitchen Menu Cookbook; a beautiful collection of perfectly planned and proportioned menus specifically designed to make hosting a casual get-together or a fancy dinner party a piece of cake. (What’s that you say? You want a piece of cake? They have that too!)

Also thrilling? Getting to prepare the “Fajitas and ‘Ritas” menu, since another thing I’ve never been shy about sharing is that if I ever have to choose a last meal, it would involve fajitas. Really, I’ve said that. I take talk of last meals very seriously.

I love the whole concept of the Menu Cookbook, because most of the stress of planning a dinner party comes from figuring out what to serve and then coming up with a plan to bring it to fruition without wanting to collapse by the time your guests actually arrive! The Menu book makes the whole process seamless.

Planning Ahead

One of my favorite features is that each menu outlines a “Game Plan,” which is basically like a little personal assistant telling you exactly when and how to do each step. What would be really awesome, is if it included a personal assistant that also cleans your house, finds you a babysitter, and reminds you to put on clean clothes before your dinner guests arrive. But hey, I’ll take what I can get. For example, this particular game plan tells you that the Key Lime Pie (aka heaven-in-a-graham-cracker-crust) can be made a whole day ahead of time.

When I’m planning gatherings in my house, the more I can do the day before, the better. So I got the dessert whipped up, baked, and cooled, and resisted the temptation to stick a fork in it and steal a taste. The one drawback of key lime pie? There’s no way to sneak a bite without being caught!

Another part I could make ahead of time was the beverage, so I got started on that. Little fact about me? Lime juice pumps through my veins. Okay, not really, that would be weird, but I love limes. I love them as much as I love chocolate, bacon, and my three offspring. And that’s a good thing because as I started making a grocery list for this meal, I kept scratching out the lime tally to add more. The final count? Twenty-four! I credit my amazingly toned biceps to my specialized juicing workout. Watch out, it’s going to catch on. As a side note, I literally just watched an episode of America’s Test Kitchen this week where there was a segment on juicers and mine was one of the ones shown. And then they showed another type that kicked mine’s rear. I’ll have try it out next time I need to juice 24 limes. Which considering my aforementioned affinity, could very well be today.

Now, I might get kicked right out of the Test Kitchen for doing what I’m about to do. I don’t drink alcohol, and there would be children at my dinner party, so I made virgin margaritas. (I know! Stick with me, people.) When you take the tequila and triple sec out of this margarita recipe and add water instead, you get a icy cold drink with the perfect blend of citrus and just the right amount of tang and sweetness.

It was a heavenly glass of a homestyle lemon-limeade which everyone gulped down quickly! It was nice to have it done and chilled a whole day ahead of time.

The Guests Have Arrived

With those two things checked off my to-do list, the day of my dinner party was pretty simple! I pulled my event together pretty quickly, so I turned to the people I knew would be most likely to drop anything for a free meal and even switch their own plans around to join me: family. My brother-in-law and his lovely wife and children arrived first and I quickly put them to work in the kitchen. My sister-in-law started chopping up tomatoes for the fresh salsa, and I gave my two sweet nieces a quick lesson in cutting avocados. I am a huge proponent of having kids in the kitchen and giving them age appropriate tasks, and my nieces loved getting to help out. Right in the recipe for the guacamole in the Menu Cookbook there is a little how-to about avocados, so that made the prep even easier. The girls were so proud of their dish!

Some people might think you should have every last thing prepared on on the table for a dinner party, but I actually love the process of having people pitch in, one of the best parts of a meal for me is chatting with my friends before the meal when we’re prepping food together. So I almost always save a few of the last-minute things, so everyone can jump in when they arrive. Unless of course they sneak up to the big screen TV when they arrive and watch football like all of my male guests did, including my husband. Sneaky sneaky!

The Final Touches

All that was really left to do before our meal was to grab my bell peppers and onions which I had already sliced and prepped.

While those were on the grill, we tossed our fresh sweet corn in the pot to cook, and the timing was perfect. When it came out of the cooking water, we drizzled it with quick and easy lime butter.

My last guests arrived at this point, so I grabbed the veggies and chicken from the grill and while I was slicing and dicing, I had them put finishing touches on the table and fill serving dishes with condiments like sour cream, and the salsa and guacamole we had just made.

Dinner is Served

We poured everyone a glass of our virgin margaritas and we were set to eat! Like I expected, the kids finished first and we sent them off to play while we adults lingered and chatted about things like politics, Halloween costumes, and the phenomena that caused all of us to lack the ability to stop stuffing food in our mouths.

Dessert, Anyone?

Somehow we managed to save room for the key lime pie, which was the absolute perfect sweet ending to a fabulous meal.

I really love entertaining, and I especially love anything that makes that process as seamless as possible, because when the planning and prep is organized, then you get to enjoy your own dinner party too! My favorite part of this meal was getting to spend time with people I love, and devour some amazing food. I know my guests loved that part too, but I think they might have enjoyed taking home a gift even more!

Kudos to America’s Test Kitchen for creating such a beautiful, and useful book with a fantastic collection of recipes. It is definitely one I will get a lot of use out of; just looking through the menu plans makes me want to start a weekly dinner party tradition! Thanks to America’s Test Kitchen for letting me stop by and share about my experiences; I hope I get to come again! Until then, you can always find me back on Our Best Bites!

Sara, thank you so much for bringing America’s Test Kitchen into your home and sharing your dinner party with us. The food looked amazing and your guests -– satisfied.

Join us next week: Candy Wong of Dessert by Candy will be cooking up a Provencal Bistro Dinner in Toronto, Canada.