Mission Possible: May

This month's dinner party threw me for a loop. Try as I might, I could not come up with a clever or interesting dish, despite an entire bookshelf and internet worth of recipes. I couldn't even decide on a genre. Thus far, we have done Japanese, Italian, and Thai. What was next? Indian? Southern cooking?

"Mexican!" KC suggested (which is something he always suggests). Nah, I thought, that's just too easy. Too over-done. We eat Mexican food several times a month, because it's so accessible and convenient to prepare. But as I perused one of my new favorite cooking blogs, a certain taco recipe kept popping out at me. So I gave into fate's siren song: Shrimp Tacos were officially on the menu.

Alice, author of the gorgeous Savory Sweet Life blog, adorned her shrimp tacos with fresh mango pico de gallo. I'm a sucker for anything that has mango in it, so naturally, I had to make it too ;)

Tomatoes, onion, cilantro, jalapeno, and mango-- oh my!


Cooking up the cumin and garlic marinated shrimp


Our lovely friend Shauna was this month's dinner guest. It was so nice to have her over.


Beauteous and so easy! Wrap the shrimp in a warm, white corn tortilla and top with some lightly cooked cabbage and pico de gallo, and-- TADA! Heaven


Pairing our colorful tacos with a Corona and lime wedge

Dessert was equally tasty. Earlier that week, Bakerella had posted a recipe for Congo Bars, which are a mouth-watering combination of cookies and brownies. I substituted coconut for the pecans and added extra chocolate chips in my version.


They tasted like extra-thick coconut chocolate chip cookies from Paradise Bakery-- fabulous! I can't wait to make them again with M&M's...

The verdict on both recipes? Definitely keepers. And let it be known that there is no such thing as too much mango pico de gallo. We ate the leftovers with tortilla chips all weekend ;)