Tilapia Veracruz

Saturday 5 May
A double whammy. Or, if you prefer, the bifecta of holidays: Cinco de Mayo and Derby Day! What to do? We followed our motto on religion: "All of the feasts. None of the fasts." So Mint Juleps (with the new mint from the garden) accompanying chips and salsa (the drink is the main event) while watching Barbara's pick, Street Sense, romp home. She chose the horse not only for the name (a good pick for a New York girl), but for the jockey Calvin Borel, whose name is pronounced almost as if he were family. Holt's horse, Glueshoe, was somewhat less fortunate.
Then, for Cinco de Mayo, a Veracruth sauce for fish: onions and garlic sautéed in olive oil, a couple of chopped roma tomatoes (surprisingly meaty for this time of year), capers, lot 'n' lots of green olives, half a lime, plus the non-traditional additions of a handful of oregano (just because we have so much of it) and cilantro (just because). We simply slid the fillets into the sauce, cooked on low, covered, for 10 minutes.
The drink of the evening was a Tequila Sunset, a drink we've just invented, born of desperation: orange juice, tequila, and—since we had run out of grenadine syrup—a splash of Boggs cranberry liquor, one of several strange booze-like objects we inherited from Lynne's parents' candy-making business. Rather tasty in fact.