Cilantro and Lime Chicken Fajitas (also Bacon Jalepeno Poppers)

This dinner was great. Like, I sighed a heavy sigh of relief and contentment that all was well with the direction of my life.

But, it took me a day beforehand to prep for it all. The night before, I made some pico de gallo (just enough to mix into the guacamole), some salsa, and the marinade. All inspired - duh - by the Pioneer Woman's stuff. (She is my first and only home cooking idol, y'all. I can't relate to most food blogs, but she's an exception for some reason. I just roll with it). When I read her tequila lime marinade recipe I knew I had to try something like this, if only to get rid of all the extra cilantro I ALWAYS have left over when I make salsa. And I'm kind of sick of my usual taco seasoning mix.

ANYWAY. My marinade consisted of whatever spare cilantro I had (including a hefty dose of the stalks, because I don't like to be wasteful), the juice of 2 limes, some salt, and 3 fresh cloves of garlic. I blended all that up with some olive oil and - because I don't have tequila *sadface* - I just thew in a little water (like, 1/4 cup) to help the blades turn. Oh, and because I'm me, I threw in lots of black pepper and some Tony's seasoning mix. Must make spicy.

I did a LOT of blending in my new blender that night, to the point where Curt ran over to me and hugged my legs and cried, because either he thought I was being hurt or he was really sick of the noise. Or both.

So yeah, I cut a few chicken breasts into fajita strips and marinaded them all night and all of yesterday while I was at work.

As you know, I do not have a grill. To cook this stuff, I heated up a skillet on medium-high, and tossed the chicken in. I sprayed the pan with some cooking spray, but the marinade probably was oily enough to keep things from sticking on its own. I cooked each side of the strips until they were nice and browned. I had to work in batches, because I made a lot of chicken, and I didn't want to crowd the pan for this. I was worried, because a grill would be ideal to catch all the marinade drippings and keep everything clean. In the skillet, the marinade was pooling all over the place, and browning, and I was afraid it would burn. BUT, it didn't! After the chicken was done, I added in some thinly sliced green pepper and onion to soak some of it up and kind of deglaze the skillet a little.

I tossed all the chicken back in the skillet with the veggies and there you go. A fajita type situation.

While all that was going on, I cut up some avocados and mixed the guacamole together (I think you have already posted that recipe). I got out the (store-bought, come on now) flour tortillas, cheese, sour cream, and black olives for trimmings.

OH AND I MADE CREAM CHEESE BACON JALEPENO POPPERS.

My neighbor has a garden (maybe you heard), and he's been growing a ton of jalepenos. I probably had 20 jalepenos sitting in my fridge about to go bad. So I sliced them in half, scooped out the seeds (DO NOT RUB YOUR EYES OR YOUR MOUTH OR ANYWHERE ON YOUR BODY WHILE HANDLING PEPPERS), and stuffed them with cream cheese. Then I wrapped them in bacon. The peppers were small, so I cut the bacon in half both ways. I basically quartered the strips of bacon. It was fine.

You can bake those on a foil-lined cookie sheet at 400 degrees until the bacon crisps up and the edges of the cream cheese brown. SO GOOD.

I got that recipe from Kelley years ago. She called them "Armadillo Eggs" but a little research shows me that what most people call armadillo eggs are the breaded and fried jalepeno poppers stuffed with cheese - wrapped in bacon. So I don't know what to actually call these (neither does the PW, apparently!), but they're crazy awesome.

I brought some of this mighty bounty over to my neighbors, to thank them for the peppers, and was rewarded with a huge hunk of chocolate cherry cake.

I hope they never move.