Picks for Fragrance
Virtually everything we see is in bloom right now be it trees, shrubs, vines, groundcovers and even cactus. But you can deepen your garden experience with beautiful plants that excite your sense of sight and smell. Right now there are several beautiful blooming plants that offer tremendous fragrance for any garden area. Perhaps one of >> Read More…
Developing the Menu at a Mexican Restaurant
For the first time in my culinary career I’m involved in the development of a restaurant’s menu from zero to reality. To my great excitement this menu, and restaurant, happen to be Mexican. Menu development is a rewarding, frustrating and and creatively demanding process, with the added benefit of eating–a lot of eating. Tasting meetings >> Read More…
Attracting Butterflies
Arizona offers tremendous diversity in insect life, rivaled only by Texas, and that includes butterflies. According to the Arizona Cooperative Extension Journal, Arizona touts “250 species representing six families that are native to Arizona: Papilliondae (Swallowtails), Pieidae (Whites and Sulfurs), Lycaenidae(Blues) Hairstreaks and Metalmarks), Libytheidae (Snouts), Nymphalidae (Brushfoots), and Hesperiidae (Skippers).” You can attract this amazing diversity into your own backyard >> Read More…
Pozole: Deceptively Simple But Big on Comfort
Growing up with a Mexican mother is like being under the constant and watchful eye of a gentle foreign dictator. A constantly-in-action presence, sporting yellow rubber gloves and smelling faintly of bleach on bath-cleaning days; bleach is the scent of all Mexican mothers, and despite the chemical harshness of it, a scent that I find >> Read More…
For Love of My Garden
Nothing beats back the stress of urban life than picking roses, planting flowers and veggies. Even weeding. When I need to center myself, it’s the garden that feeds my soul. Gardening compels my sense of womanhood by creating something beautiful. It increases my sense of peace and order to see plants nourished by earth and >> Read More…
Eggs’ Magical Power
Any Mexican-published Mexican cookbook is likely to contain a sizable egg section; being a cheap. filling and nutritionally packed food (don’t even mention the high cholesterol thing, those nasty rumors were dismissed years ago), why shouldn’t the simple egg be considered the perfect food? The history of the egg in Mexico is slightly more >> Read More…
Avoiding ‘Unholy’ Guacamole
I have never liked guacamole prepared by anyone outside of my family. There’s always something unacceptable about it: too smooth, too chunky, metallic tasting because of garlic, ruined by cumin, not enough lime, cilantro, etc … Call it snobbery if you will, but a girl has to hold something sacred; in a country where a >> Read More…
Let Them Eat Cake!
The thought of writing a holiday food column sent me into a state of panic at the rememberance of Christmas past, and the horror that was (dum dum duuuuuuuummmmm) Menudogeddon (insert thunder and lightning, a hunchback dragging chains, and an evil mad scientist maniacally laughing in a dark corner). Even now, nearly a full year >> Read More…
Scrumptious Bunuelos
A napkin is just like a tortilla, at least if you were me as a toddler, enjoying dinner on my dad’s lap, as apparently I ate all my meals at that age, pinching food off his plate with a bit of tortilla. On one occasion, with no more tortillas nearby, I simply reached for the >> Read More…
Hot Dogs, Sonoran Style
I had a recent and very uncomfortable conversation with an older man, a PhD in Divinity, a minister for 30 years, someone one you would expect to have plenty of tact and delicacy of words. The conversation led to the following statement upon learning of my nationality (Mexican) and occupation (culinary): “Oh so do you >> Read More…
