One day last week, our office had a free lunch delivered by a drug rep. The menu was Tijuana Flats, a chain Mexican restaurant started by some local college kids that has done incredibly well with its fast food and HOT sauces with funky names. I was very impressed with the amount of food delivered because we are a large office and generally the amount set aside to allegedly serve 50-60 people only feeds 40 or less. So in case you were looking for a casual catering recommendation, this is my vote. Naturally, the salsa isn't special, but it's fresh. The same goes for the guacamole. We almost never eat out here because we like to do Mexican food at home (or downtown at Pacos because it's close) and like making our own guacamole. But when it's brought to the office, I devour it gratefully.

I had some containers at the office from past lunches; so, I cleaned them out and packed tortillas, chips (which are special with their heavy salt, pepper, and spice flavor), and some of the veggies away to bring home. I have a phobia with cheese left out for three hours and chose to use my own cheese at home. There was no rice or beans left.

At home, I poured the onion, tomato, black olives, and peppers (the lettuce came home separately) into a lightly oiled skillet. By this time, they were already mixed up in their container. I heated them and added some veggie-turkey of my own (which struggled to saute because of the juice from the tomatoes). We rewarmed the tortillas and sat with a big bowl of chips and salsa waiting for the main course to be ready. We rarely have black olives in the house because I am generally the only one who eats them, and I am also rather nervous to eat jalapenos, but cooked down, they had great flavor. When everything was warm, we dumped the vegetables and turkey onto the tortillas, topped them with lettuce and our cheese, and chomped down. I really enjoyed the unusual fajitas and will likely invest more time into adding jalapenos and black olives to fajitas in the future.

This is an unfair cost measurement because most of the meal was free. However, I do like to point out that when food is free, take the opportunity to use it for something really good (if that's possible.) The cost for us was $1.00 for the veggie turkey, $0.35 for the cheese, and another $0.50 for our own chips because we ran out of the ones from lunch by the time we sat down to eat. Our grand total was $1.85, with a bit of leftovers.