cook pot stories

The first time I ever ate anything calling itself Mexican food was probably when I was little and my mother prepared tacos at home. If you grew up in the U.S. anytime before 2000 you have probably had these, too. Brown some ground beef with the seasonings in the packet; chop up some lettuce, tomatoes and onions; stuff it all into hard taco shells with some grated cheddar cheese. Tacos. Or something resembling them, anyway. It was years before I had real Mexican food, but somehow I caught the idea that Mexican cooking is one of our great cuisines and often overlooked. The balance of seasonings, the emphasis on fresh ingredients and the incredible range of what we call Mexican cooking have won me over. Give me a good mole´ any day. Since moving to Kansas City I've had excellent Mexican food, from mole´ to menudo and various things that I can't really identify but taste great. It's been a delight. My local supermarkets have aloe, cactus pads, dried chiles and more. Yum....

How can I describe it? Good food is like music you can taste, color you can smell. There is excellence all around you. You need only to be aware to stop and savor it. - Chef Auguste Gusteau, Ratatouille, 2007

"If you're afraid of butter use cream." - Julia Child Sounds like good advice for life in general. Fear one thing? Use something else just as rich.

“The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity.’ The child enjoys his cold meat, otherwise dull to him, by pretending it is buffalo, just killed with his own bow and arrow. And the child is wise. The real meat comes back to him more savory for having been dipped in a story…by putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it.” ― C.S. Lewis, On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature