JM's Memorial Day Getaway

Memorial Day weekend was spent gloriously on the beach with a group of girlfriends.  A long weekend of fun and sun was exactly what I needed after the past few very stressful weeks at work.  At the beginning of the trip I only knew half of the girls going, but we got lucky and the whole group got along really well.  Everyone was laid back and fun to hang out with.  We rented a small townhouse a block from the beach, and to save some money we decided to cook most of our meals.  We skipped the usual barbeque and grill foods, two of the girls were vegetarian and we didn’t have a grill anyway.  At first I thought meals might be difficult- I almost always cook meat- and wasn’t sure what we would eat all weekend without it.  I’m happy to report that it wasn’t difficult at all (the girls ate fish, so it made things a little easier).  Meals were cooked together and served family-style, so it was easy and a fun way to hang out. 

I learned a new meal that I am definitely planning on making again, fish tacos.  I’d had shrimp tacos before, but never ones made with fish, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.  They were delicious and healthy!  We were limited on spices since we didn’t want to spend a lot of money on something we’d use once or twice, but we used such fresh ingredients that we didn’t need much more than salt and pepper anyway.  We baked tilapia with a tequila lime seasoning rub (just a packet of premixed seasoning), mixed up a cabbage-cucumber salsa, and topped off with homemade guacamole and fresh tomato salsa.  The cabbage-cucumber mixture was a big improvisation, we bought mangos with the intention of making mango salsa, but they weren’t ripe.  Instead, we threw together some red cabbage (prepackaged), diced red onion, a jalapeno, cucumber, tomato, lime juice, olive oil, salt and pepper.  It was so easy and had a ton of flavor.  It had just enough citrus to complement the fish, and a little kick from the jalapeno.  The tacos were incredibly fresh tasting; it was a perfect summer beach meal. 

All in all it was a successful weekend away, I got plenty  of sun (my sunburned skin says too much), made some new friends, and even learned something new.  If you did anything fun or made an interesting meal, tell us about it in the comments!