Dinner: Chicken Fajitas

While fajitas aren't anything fancy, making them with fresh ingredients results in one of those meals where I ended up saying, "This is so good!" aloud about seven times as I eat it. Part of that passion comes from my love of sauteed onions and peppers. And guacamole. And fresh, chunky salsa. And more onions. And really all things Mexican.

I did some prep work the night before fajitas were on the dinner menu, so it made night-of prep quick. (After all, my work has me writing about the glories of prepping ahead of time; gotta put it to practice.) Here's what I did.

Night before:

1. Used my kitchen shears (err, scissors that live in the kitchen) to cut chicken into small strips.

2. Chopped bell peppers into slices and white onion into chunks.

3. Mixed up a lime-filled marinade from Cooking Light and put half in a baggie with the chicken and half in a baggie with the peppers and onions. (Next time I might try a spice mix in the skillet to replace the marinade. The flavor wasn't that strong, maybe because I substituted chicken broth for beef. But that would add a night-of step, and the strong flavors of everything else covered up the chicken.)

4. Chopped tomatoes, red onion, and garlic; squeezed limes; mixed it all up with dried cilantro (yes, I cheated) and salt for a nice chunky salsa to marinate overnight.

Night of:

1. Sauteed meat and veggies.

2. Cooked a black bean and rice mix for a side.

3. Mashed up an avocado and mixed it with handy natural guac mix (even though just adding salt, lemon, salsa, and garlic takes like 2 minutes longer) for so-good guacamole.

4. Snacked on tortilla chips and guac as everything else was coming together.

5. Nuked tortillas.

6. Made an assembly line of the goods out of the skillet, tortillas, salsa, guacamole, and sour cream.