The first time we entertained in our new dining room.

This past Tuesday, J.R. and Tracy came over for a yummy Cinco de Mayo dinner in our new dining room. Mishap after mishap occurred with the food, but the company was fabulous. The food was delicious, just not that "pretty" and about an hour and a half late...

I got tied up at work Tuesday (The state bar's computer database got hacked. I got an email at 4:30 saying I should put a fraud alert on my credit report. Awesome!) So, I didn't even start cooking until 5:30ish.

I made chicken enchiladas, homemade guacamole and tortilla chips, chili rellenos, and I tried to make margaritas. The guacamole was DELICIOUS, as were the chips. Both are super easy to make, and I got the recipie from Tyler Florence's cookbook, Eat This Book. For the chips, you basically buy the 4" corn tortillas, cut them into forths and fry them in canola oil. Nothing is better than hot, salty, GREASY tortilla chips, freshly made.

The chicken enchiladas were great, too. And since I try to only eat like that 1 day a week, my co-workers enjoyed almost a whole pan of them for lunch yesterday. The four of us ate so many chips while waiting on the enchiladas to get done, we couldn't hardly eat any of the main course. The chili rellenos were tasty, but fell apart when I tried to stuff and fry them, so they were a pile of pepper, chorizo and cheese with some batter by the time I got them on the plates. I have a new respect for the cooks in the back of Mexican restaurants that make the perfect crispy fried peppers.

And, finally, before we ate, I got around to making the margaritas. I had a bottle of Patron, which I'm ashamed to say, I've had since last July, that I was going to use. Well, I put the ice in the blender, poured in the mix (I was gonna make my own, but ran out of time), and low and behold the base to the blender wasn't screwed on tight enough, so a whole bottle of mixer ran all over my countertop. Thank God I didn't pour the tequilla in. I would have been wringing it out of a kitchen towel back into the bottle...

J.R. was quick to offer up some of the Dos Equis he brought. Disaster averted!

We spread all the food out on the table and listened to Santana while picking at our food--we were stuffed from tortilla chips by the time I got dinner on the table at 8pm. But nonetheless, it was fabulous to have company over and dinner in the dining room.