After raving about my fish tacos for months, I finally had a chance to share them to much acclaim with a few of my coworkers this Saturday at a movie day. This is such an easy dish that people absolutely love. I have to share it…

Ingredients

• Salsa
• 2 ripe mangoes, peeled and diced
• 1 ripe avocado, peeled and diced
• 1/2 large papaya, peeled and diced.
• 1/2 red onion, chopped
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
• 2 tablespoon freshly squeezed lime juice

• Tacos
• 1 lb. salmon
• 1 lb. mahi mahi
• 12-16 white corn tortillas
• 1/2 head red cabbage, shredded

Directions:

1. Combine all the ingredients for the salsa in a large bowl. Depending on your taste preferences and those of your guests, you may want to add some garlic and/or chopped jalapenos to the mix.
2. Cook fish 10 minutes per inch @ 400 degrees on the grill. If you’re skilled enough, you can cut the skin off the filets before you place them on the grill. Once they’re cooked, cut them into 1/4 in. thick slices.
3. Heat tortillas and serve! Use the cabbage for texture and crunch. This recipe serves about 8 and there will be leftover mango salsa that will keep for a day or so.

While my salsa was definitely probably the star of the day, Ernesto’s Nintendo Wii and 60″ DLP flat-screen television also wowed the crowd. In fact, I want one. Now.

My new Macbook Pro arrived this morning! Thing is though, I’m not a Mac person. I’m not even yet a convert. I work on a PC at work, have a linux desktop at home, and a linux server for remote-everything.

I need tips. Tricks. Application suggestions. Resources.

What’s your favorite text-editor? Dashboard widgets? AppleScripts?

What makes working on a Mac more efficient and productive for you?

Thanks to all for your advice!

I can’t believe Hailey is already 1 year old! It seems only a few months ago that Jade, Kat, & I rushed from Austin to Tomball hospital in order to make it for her birth.

Scotty and Melissa have done so much to improve the house. Each time I visit there are new improvements - vegetables in the garden, a new fence, more landscaping around the property, trees planted, et cetera.

View all of the photos here!

Scotty rented a moonwalk for the party!

Sometimes you want a quick meal that doesn’t come out of the freezer or isn’t placed between two slices of bread. Such was the case last night when I wanted to cook myself something to eat, but was already very hungry and didn’t want it to take a half-hour. Rummaging through my cupboard, I came across some Japanese soba noodles and proceeded to piece together a meal from there.

A chicken breast coupled with a handful of frozen green beans and jalapenos for kick quickly led to a rather tasty and satisfying meal. The best part is that it only took about 10 minutes to prepare.

Ingredients:

• Japanese soba (buckwheat) noodles (two servings worth, about 4 oz.)
• 1 boneless, skinless chicken breast, cubed.
• 1 cup (handful) frozen green beans
• 1/2 oz. sliced jalapenos (about 4-5 slices)
• 1 tablespoon fresh ginger (or some ginger-based marinade)
• olive oil
• soy sauce

Directions:

1. Bring a small pot of water to boil. Place the soba noodles and cook for 4-5 minutes until just tender, careful not to overcook. These noodles do not take long to reach desired texture. Once cooked, drain and run under cold water to stop them from cooking.
2. While the noodles are cooking, pour a tablespoon or so of olive oil in a small skillet. Add the fresh ginger or coat the chicken cubes in ginger marinade. Toss the chicken in the skillet with soy sauce and stir-fry for 3-5 minutes.
3. During the last couple of minutes cooking the chicken, combine the green beans and jalapenos in the skillet and cover. Be sure to stir everything so the jalapeno juice lightly covers everything.
4. Serve with the noodles. Zap it in the microwave for 30 seconds to get the noodles warm again.

It’s kind of an asian-mexican fusion, but the spice works out really well because it slightly coats each bite without growing on itself. It’s not one of those meals that starts out spicy but tasty and ends with you sweating. It’s level of spice remains fairly constant. I hope you enjoy it and add whatever other ingredients you happen to have on hand.

Returning from a recent trip to Houston, Jade and I stopped to fill up the tank in Brookshire, Texas at a Flying J.

There I encountered this absurd sign →

YELLOW is not a threat level. It’s a color. It represents the Department of Homeland Security’s Elevated threat level designation in their inane advisory system. While it represents a “significant risk of terrorism”, it is in fact the de facto default threat level as America is always at a significant risk for some terror attack. We’ve never been at guarded (blue) or low (green) levels and I can’t imagine we ever would be.

Please see cashier for details? I’m to defer to some high-school kid for information regarding the state of our national security? What specific intelligence will they impart on me to justify my newfound heightened fear? Who should I look out for on the roads? Do I need more duck tape?

Today we launched the first version of a project started in mid-January: StatesmanShopping

I might write more on this later…