You Know I'm Gonna Be Like Him

When I was a young girl wandering around in my parents' Mexican restaurant, I began breaking out of my finicky eating habits and understanding just what my dad saw in food.  I started to get why he got so excited about the sweetness of the summer corn or how a burger was put together just right.  I knew that I wanted that type of passion in my life.  I had a laundry list of foods I wasn't fond of and generally stuck to tried-and-true options.  But I also didn't want to miss out on all the fun he seemed to create out of thin air.  I wanted to learn this skill of honing happiness from very small occurrences. Peeling an orange, choosing a ripe watermelon or spotting a fruit stand were all things that could change the entire day.  Come to think of it, our general welfare tended to depend on our dad's mood, so just like you wouldn't want to be around if he was grouchy, it was an absolute privilege to be there when he was happy. 

I loved the mellowness of my mom's Mexican rice. She had the goldilocks factor with her food.  It wasn't too tomatoey, it wasn't spicy, you couldn't place all the spice, it was very subtle and delicate.  Her hot sauce was hands down the most addictive in all of the Fort.  Other restaurants bought it to serve, it was that good.  Even with my undeveloped taste buds, I knew their food was special.  

My small mark came with the secret invention of the rice bowl.  I would grab a soup bowl, fill it with rice, hot sauce and ground beef from the front of house.  There were giant vats of chilled chopped lettuce and tomatoes sitting on ice, so that cool bite would go on top. Afterwards I scooped up all the goodness with freshly made warmed corn chips, no need for a spoon and that became my feel good meal.  It was non-committal, which was important, even back then.  I hated sitting at the booth and eating alone.  I could be mobile with my bowl, to go bother the dishwasher or sit in the back with my mother.  It had the best of everything, hot and cold, crisp and crunchy, fresh, and packed with flavor.  That was my initiation into finding absolute joy and contentment in small things, in the moment.  Of course I would get older and forget everything for too long a time but I remember now.   

Just like the thrill of discovering fresh flowers, reveling in their beauty and then riding off.  Like these Peonies.  Peonies were one of my mother's favorite flowers and now they are also mine because of their large bulbs and giant bold blooms. They are robust and burst open with no apologies.  We had two giant bushes in our front yard and I used to run and leap on them like pillows, much to my mother's horror. 

Today's Mexican Rice Bowl sans chips and sauce

Later a bowl of leftover green chili

Let's Face the Music and Dance

Black Bean Soup.  Don't underestimate the flavor punch of a great soup.  I love canned black beans but made from scratch, it's another level for sure.  A few hours and you have a few meals in a bowl. If You Need a Recipe, This is a Good One!

The thing about beans is you really need to add the flavor and don't be shy with the spices and seasonings.  Black beans love Cumin and that smoky Chipotle pepper in sauce, or use fresh jalapenos or roasted peppers.

It only happened a couple of times but my mother made these huge vats of beans for our restaurant back in Indiana and you know, she must have made hundreds over the years.  There were certain steps to getting her refried pinto beans just right and hers were always that, seasoned just right.  But once in a blue moon she forgot to salt the beans properly and let me tell you, there was nothing worse than getting that huge hot combination platter set down in front of you and digging into the beans and rice, and tasting the blandness of an unsalted pot of beans.  My mom's food was so consistently perfect that it was tragic when this happened, like time stopped in that restaurant.  I remember being shocked, like she could not mess up, it just wasn't in her.  I admired her so much for that steadiness.  People think recipes are solid, that you just follow instructions but food has variants. Love, care and consideration goes in. Sometimes the jalapenos are super hot, the tomatoes have no flavor or the avocados are not quite ripe so adjustments needed to be made.  She took it all into account and when that plate came, you never had to wonder if the rice would be amazing because it always would be.  The only danger was that at times it could all be too good, that you'd overeat to the point of total discomfort because she hit it out of the ballpark. Her famous hot sauce was sometimes so off the charts and addictive that you couldn't quit eating it even after you had your fill.  So much so that other restaurants began buying it to serve at their establishments.

I have none of that unwavering talent.  I really have to concentrate and even then I botch it up half the time.  Maybe that's how I can celebrate every good dish and mom never thought much of her art.  She wasn't even a fan of most of the foods she made.  She loved fresh lightly dressed salads on small plates. Heavy foods were not her thing. I love both which is both a blessing and a curse.

new haircut - the modern shaggy mullet. Both cute bang in the front, wild layers in the back.  A cut to showcase my diversity of lameness. 

When I Was Young, I Never Needed Anyone, And Makin' Lunch was Just for Fun

Imagine you have full access to a Mexican restaurant's kitchen. Vats of warming Mexican rice, spiced ground beef, refried beans, chips, salsa, guacamole, everything and its all pre-cut and ready to go. Okay, now imagine that you're only 10.

Before I was old enough to really get in my mom and dad's restaurant and make my own plates, I started making 'bowls'. And to this day, I think they are a great invention. I didn't know how to put an enchilada together but I knew it's main parts. Bowls for me are a mixture of hot and cold foods that taste great together when assembled and built properly but even super tasty and fun to eat when you put them on top of each other in some crazy food orgy. A bowl.

So for example I would get a bowl and put steaming hot rice and beans together with grated cheese and warm salsa, stir that up and then scoop ground beef on top and top that with a pile of cold shredded lettuce,tomato and avocado. I'd scoop it all together with warm chips. It was a meal that ate like a dip that tasted like heaven.

Once in a while now I'll have some leftovers in the fridge and I'll make myself a bowl. It works with most leftover meals. This time I had ground turkey, the Greek chopped salad and because tomorrow is grocery day, I made a quick stir fry of leftover veggies, zucchini, corn, green bell pepper, potato and onion. I put a layer of the hot veggies on bottom, then the meat, topped that with the cold Greek salad and some crumbled feta cheese. I scooped it into my mouth with warm pita bread.

When I was in junior high there was a kid I knew, but pretended not to because he tended to do disturbing embarrassing things. He used to take our satellite lunches which conveniently for him already came in this huge plastic deep container and he'd mix everything together and eat it with a spoon, no matter what it was. At the time, that seemed outrageous and disgusting. Yet now, maybe he was just really efficient. Why not? Saves time. Hell, Rachael Ray is making a career out of mixing themed-ingredient casseroles in giant baking dishes that she has trademarked and melting cheese over the lot and calling it 'what's for dinner'. So, yeah, why not? Bowls are a time saving, artful way of eating leftovers but you don't have to add extra calories to make them appealing because you build the layers with greens and vegetables.