Celebrating Cinco de Mayo the Easy Way
May is literally just around the corner (as in tomorrow!) and that means now is the perfect time to plan out what you might be doing to celebrate Cinco de Mayo (the 5th of May.) I did a small round up of Cinco de Mayo Food Ideas last year, but wanted to share about a menu you can put together with even less effort.
Celebrating Cinco de Mayo the Easy Way ~ Main Dishes
While I might like to make dishes from scratch, there are times when it just won’t happen. It isn’t that the process is necessarily hard. Rather, it is more about the time crunch and the need to get dinner ready in 30 minutes or less.
Rather than visiting your local Mexican restaurant, you may be able to save some money by using the gourmet dishes from Old El Paso found in the freezer section of your local grocery store. Each of the packages is made to serve 2, so plan accordingly for how many you’ll need for your family.
Mock Mexican Rice #recipe + @oldelpaso entrees = celebrating #CincodeMayo the easy way! http://t.co/Syj6s7o4hR pic.twitter.com/p0ugaGn4Uy
— Laura O’Neill (@LauraOinAK) May 1, 2014
I decided to try both the beef and chicken enchiladas and the beef fajitas with my family. Word of warning…watch the enchiladas carefully when they are in the oven as overcooking leads to a burnt tomato flavor. (Yes, it happened to us as we were using the grill as a makeshift oven. A little plain greek yogurt on top helped for me.)
Celebrating Cinco de Mayo the Easy Way ~ Side Dishes
In our house, we love to stretch out meals with both vegetables and starch. For our recent Mexican feast, we made a Mock Mexican Rice that took just a few minutes longer than cooking the plain rice which serves as a base. This quick dish costs less than $2 to make and that’s in Alaska prices!
Of course, you can also help the kids fill those hungry bellies the same way the Mexican restaurants do by serving tortilla chips and salsa. If I pick up a pound bag of tortilla strips and a giant vat of salsa at our local warehouse store, I end up spending under $10 for that appetizer and always have a bunch left for snacking during the week.
Mock Mexican Rice
Ingredients
- 4 cups cooked rice
- 1 - 2 cups salsa
- 1 cup corn, heated
- 1 can black beans
- shredded cheese for topping, optional
Instructions
- Once you have the rice cooked, heat your corn and salsa.
- Mix warmed corn and salsa as well as the beans into the rice.
- Top with extra salsa and cheese if desired.
Do you or your family enjoy celebrating holidays from other cultures?
What are some of your favorite Mexican dishes?
This post on celebrating Cinco de Mayo the Easy Way was made possible in part with a package from Old El Paso as part of a campaign with PlateFull Co-op.
Yum. I think I have everything on hand to throw that together tonight.
Looks delicious. I soo will make this, you made it look so simple, this needs to go on my meal plan. Thanks for sharing
We do love Mexican! Your dishes look yummy!
Hmmm! Greek yogurt on an enchilada is very intriguing!
Plain greek yogurt is quite similar to sour cream. It worked great for me.
This sounds wonderful, love rice dishes. We eat quite a bit of rice in our home.
Yum! That looks fantastic!
We celebrate Cinco De Mayo at least once a week. 🙂 Mexican style food is one of our favorites. I need to try your rice recipe next week.
Celebrating the easy and yet yummy way!
We love Mexican food in our house! My chicken enchiladas with green chile sauce is probably the favorite.
Keikilani,
My eldest son actually likes enchiladas with the green chile sauce the best.
We have Mexican food quite a bit in our house. Cinco de Mayo is a great excuse to try some new dishes and snack on salsa.
Pam,
I have one son who found taco socks on clearance at Target a few weeks back. He wants to wear them every Tuesday and have Taco Tuesday for dinner. Yep, he LOVES Mexican dishes.
YUM! THAT ALL LOOKS WONDERFUL!
Oh I absolutely love Mexican food and any excuse to eat it is great by me! We actually don’t celebrate Cinco De Mayo; cause it’s my mom’s birthday; so we are always celebrating that instead. but we do enjoy some great Mexican the day before or after.
I love celebrating Cinco De Mayo because I love Mexican food! Your recipe looks delicious, we use Old El Paso stuff all of the time!
Yum! That all looks absolutely delicious!
It’s so hard to believe that it’s May already. Your Cinco de Mayo meal looks great!
Yum yum! I just love Mexican food. We have been eating a lot of steak tacos lately. I will have to try this rice!!
Counting the days until the 5th. First Star Wars day (the 4th), then Cinco de Mayo – perfect weekend!
We don’t celebrate Cinco De Mayo but I think it would be fun too!!! Might have to!