IMHO In My Humble Opinion

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about and working on marriage equality recently. Enough so that at last night's dinner party I stepped out for a phone call on the topic for about half an hour. (Did I mention I was throwing the dinner party?) Anyhow, the latest news on that:

• in California, SF is joining the marriage lawsuit but ACLU, NCLR, and Lambda Legal aren't
• Maine is gearing up to be a big battle. If we want to avoid the whole "oops, we forgot that we need to raise money early in order to buy TV ads" thing we had in California last year, we should be donating to the campaign (there's a matching grant until Friday, so your money counts double right now) and if you want to help out in person, they want people to visit Maine on Volunteer Vacations to help out on the ground.

But this isn't a post about marriage, I was going to talk about food! Last night's dinner party had a Mexican theme, and my friend Michael came over to help me cook all afternoon. Everything on the menu was made from scratch (and where we could, we bought everything at the local greenmarket.)

• Ground Ostrich taco meat
• Refried black beans (not vegetarian: refried beans are so much better with bacon grease added)
• Salsa Verde (hot, see below) and Pico de Gallo (mild)
• Corn and Flour tortillas (fresh made tortillas are delicious.)
• Tortilla chips, made from the corn tortillas
• Chicken fajitas

And just in case someone wants to make nuclear-hot salsa verde, here's how I did it (the recipe is loosely based on ones I found online.)

Nuclear Salsa Verde

Unwrap and simmer one pound tomatillos in boiling water for about 5 minutes. (They should darken in color.) In a food processor, combine the tomatillos, 1 handful chopped onion, 1 handful chopped cilantro, 1 tbsp lime juice, a pinch of sugar, 1 habanero pepper, and 1 serrano pepper. Chill in the refrigerator.

It's a pretty simple recipe, although it's a bit too spicy. Last time I made it, I used half a habanero and 1.5 pounds of tomatillo, and it wasn't nearly spicy enough. Next time I'll definitely tone it down a bit, but I was looking to make something very hot, and it's almost there. I'm thinking that 1.5 pounds of tomatillo with that much pepper is probably the right answer.

(If you really need exact numbers in your recipes, where I said "handful" substitute "1/3 cup", but I didn't measure exactly.)