Eye-of-the-Storm Enfrijoladas

Beans.  They’ve been on my mind.  Specifically, pintos that, in a refried state, rank high on my list of comfort foods.  This is probably because my grandmother always had a pot on the stove.  Always.

She served them with everything: with fried eggs for breakfast, mounded next to enchiladas at lunch, slathered across a tostada for a snack and dolloped on a milanesa-dominated plate for dinner. But my favorite variation? My grandmother’s enfrijoladas, corn tortillas warmed on a comal, then dredged through mashed, refried beans and topped with a crumbling of queso fresco.

As I’ve mentioned before, I spent my summers and different periods of my life living in Laredo with my grandmother.  I wish I’d paid closer attention to the world then.  I didn't know until years after I'd left Laredo, for example, that my grandmother's house was located in the "El Cuatro" section of Laredo, west of downtown.  The battered barrio has historical significance and recently caught the attention of The National Trust for Historic Preservation.

As a child growing up, I probably knew on some visceral level that most of the buildings on Lincoln Street were dilapidated.  But I was oblivious to the fact that the area was home to some of Laredo's poorest families, including my own.

A Spanish colonist founded Laredo in 1755.  Laredo remained a part of New Spain until the land port was ceded to the United States in 1848 at the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo.  Another historical tidbit that I learned on one of my visits to Laredo as an adult:  in the late 19th century, Fort Macintosh (now the site of the Laredo Community College and one of my childhood "playgrounds") was home to some of the first peace-time, African American U. S. Army units known as the Buffalo Soldiers.

El Cuatro was another early barrio which sprang up west of the centro. The name, El Cuatro, was derived from the city voting precinct in which the barrio was located - the "Fourth Ward." Many early residents were employed with the railroads, and their box-shaped board and batten houses are still present throughout the neighborhood. Due to its proximity to Fort McIntosh, the neighborhood attracted a small enclave of blacks. For a short time in 1865, the post was manned by a company of the 62nd U.S. Colored Infantry. Since that time a number of black units were stationed at the fort, including Company K of the Black Twenty-fifth U.S. Infantry in 1906. The soldiers' families and their descendants made their homes in El Cuatro and the small barrio across the tracks called El Tonto. Saint James Tabernacle and the Grayson school remain as the only architectural relics of Laredo's black history. (http://tiny.cc/xlyx5)

I don't recall learning about Laredo's rich history while I was in school there and I wonder now whether it was taught at all.

Also out of my intellectual reach at the time were the complexities of life.  My grandmother was the matriarch of a sprawling family and ran a household that was made for a high-ratings reality show.  There was always a stream of visitors, old friends from Mexico, cousins from California or my assorted aunts and uncles and their children, some of whom also lived with us.  There were borders at the house from time-to-time.  A man named Cecil who parked his car in front and stamped out social security cards from the back of his camper. The boy with liquid-green eyes who lived around the corner, one of my first childhood crushes who, years later, was stabbed in a bar fight.

Along with a bustling, busy household came the concomitant family crises and commotions, garden variety goings-on whose meanings I did not comprehend at the time.  Those were the long, hot summers of my innocence and I observed it all from the center of my grandmother's universe.  There was always so much activity that I now realize my grandmother was a quintessential multi-tasker.  She could negotiate a great deal on a used appliance while strategizing about its resale.   Listen empathetically to a neighbor whose son was in serious legal trouble while watering the lawn and tending to her plants.  Yield to the demands of her large family while shopping and cleaning and cooking for them—from scratch.

There were rare moments of quiet.  The old house was without air conditioning most of the time, the little window unit in the front room turned on only for special visitors, if it worked at all.  This meant that the windows and doors were always open.  The oscillation of stand-alone fans provided a relaxing rhythm for a summer borderland soundtrack: the cooing of pigeons, trains rumbling by, the thwack of a neighbor’s screendoor, cicadas in the trees and crickets in the grass, the clucking of chickens in a nearby yard.

And I am ten again, sitting at the oval, formica table top in my grandmother's kitchen.  I notice the way the sun spills into the window above the sink and how the light dances in the sudsy water.  I’m sorting tomorrow’s beans, separating the shriveled and broken ones and the bits of sediment from the rest.  Meanwhile, my grandmother stirs freshly-squeezed lime juice, water and a little sugar in a plastic glass because she knows a limonada is my favorite drink.  I take a sip and watch her at the stove, turning the dial and perfecting the gas flame.  I smell the oil warming in the pan and hear the spit of onions in the moment before they succumb to sizzling.  She ladles beans from yesterday’s batch into the pan and effortlessly squashes the macerated and formerly-speckled seeds into a brown pulp.

I’m done discriminating against imperfect pintos and my grandmother thanks me with a kiss, placing in front of me a plate of earthy and savory enfrijoladas.  A little something just for me in the eye of the storm.

Eye of the Storm Enfrijoladas

#ratingval# from #reviews# reviews

Print

Recipe Type: Breakfast/Desayuno

Author: Gilda Claudine

Ingredients

• 1 lb pinto beans


• 1/2 small onion, finely chopped onions


• 2 or 3 slices of bacon, cut in pieces or diced


• Salt to taste


• 1/2 cup of Canola oil


• Corn tortillas


• Queso fresco


• 1/2 avocado (optional)

Instructions

1. Soak the beans in 4 cups of water overnight.


2. In the morning, drain the beans.


3. Over medium heat, warm the bacon until it yields some fat.


4. Add half of the onion and simmer.


5. When the onions and the bacon are almost cooked through, return the beans to the pot.


6. Add another 3 or 4 cups of water.


7. Add salt to taste and cover.


8. Allow the beans to cook at a low temperature for several hours or until they reach the desired consistency.


9. The beans should be soft and easy to mash.

Refried Beans

1. In a skillet, heat the Canola oil.


2. When the oil is hot, add the rest of the onion.


3. Sweat the onion until it is completely translucent.


4. Add three or four ladles of the beans in their liquid.


5. Raise the temperature and when the liquid begins to bubble, mash the beans.


6. Add water as needed to keep the beans from drying out.


7. Once the beans are mashed to the desired consistency, turn down the heat.


8. In a separate pan or on a comal, heat a corn tortilla. (Optional: warm the tortilla in a bit of oil here).


9. Using tongs, place the hot tortilla in the pan with the refried beans.


10. Dredge and/or coat both sides with the bean mash.


11. Using a spatula, remove and place on a plate.


12. Crumble the queso fresco on top and add avocado.


13. Serve hot.

Mother Love

My son, Alex, and me

Mother's Day did not originate as a bonanza for florists and restaurants. It is a little known fact that it began as a Proclamation by the social activist Julia Ward Howe in 1870 after she lived through the atrocities of the Civil War as a wife and mother. She believed that mothers ultimately bring to bear a sense of responsibility regarding the destruction that war brings upon society:

Arise, then, women of this day!
 Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!
We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. 

Her words from across almost a century and a half ring with particular poignancy to me, as this Mother's Day will be the fifth year since I lost my son, Alex, to the war in Iraq. The pain that the war has brought me affects my life in ways that are difficult for those who have not experienced it to understand.

Alex on his wedding day

Arlington National Cemetery

This Mother's Day, then, is a day in which I gather my thoughts and think of the women who throughout my life influenced me and gave me the strength and clarity of purpose to rise each morning since that day.

I've had the good fortune of being surrounded by a multitude of resilient, resourceful women in my family, women who were unfazed by the incredible obstacles they faced growing up.  These women were products of families uprooted by the violence of the Mexican revolution, the ensuing diaspora, the Great Depression and the intense discrimination against Mexicans in Texas where their families settled. These women left an indelible impression on me.

Two of these women were my father's sisters, Tía Oralia and Tía Gloria. When my grandfather died unexpectedly of typhoid fever in the 1930s, my grandmother returned to Mexico with my tías and left the boys behind to be brought up by relatives. I can't imagine the pain shared by the family at having to make a decision like this in order to survive economically. Hence, my father was raised in Laredo by an uncle and aunt, and his brother, Fernando, in San Antonio by other relatives. The tías were raised by my grandmother in the little town of Villaldama, Nuevo León where the family originated.

Tía Gloria

The sisters, Oralia and Gloria, were brokenhearted at having left the country without their brothers, but from the stories that I heard growing up, the two brothers and two sisters were often reunited either in Laredo, San Antonio or during long summers in Villaldama. Later, as my sisters and I came into the world, these tías doted on us, showing up at our door loaded with tamales and other delicacies such as membrillo, pan de huevo from Sabinas, candied pumpkin and dulce de leche de cabra from Saltillo.

My mother's sisters, Tía Romanita (the tall, slender beauty shown in the photo above with my grandmother and great-grandmother) and Tía Lupita, were other ever-present women in my life who modeled hope, love, generosity and humor. Both of them, magicians with a needle and thread, could a create a dress out of a folded piece of cloth with an idea born in their imaginations rather than with a sewing pattern on paper.  To wear their creations was to be literally wrapped in their unconditional love.

My mother

But it is my mother to whom I owe so much of what I am today and to my ability to survive. It is from my mother that I learned to challenge, to question, to be brave, to demand justice, to seek clarity in a world of ambiguity. It is from my mother that I learned life goes on, in spite of unspeakable tragedies. And that it goes on only through an understanding of our shared humanity, in the giving and forgiving that is part of our existence.

This year, for the fifth year, the little flower shop in Bethesda that my son, Alex, used to call to order a delivery of Mother's Day roses will not receive a call from him. But today, I inhale deeply and am certain I smell the unmistakable scent of roses in every room of my house, our mother-son bond unbreakable across the cosmos. My aunts, my mother, and everything that made me are part of the embrace with which I reach out to my precious child. I will continue to attempt to live a life of grace as my mother and aunts did, as Alex would have wanted.

Tacho's Ceviche

The summer of 1969 my best friend, Susan, and I decided to take a vacation to what was at that time a remote part of Mexico: Isla Mujeres, off the Yucatan peninsula. We had already experienced life away from home that year as college students in Houston. Working as waitresses to help defray our college expenses, we had heard about the island from other students who worked with us. So, on a shoestring budget, we embarked on our trip. Starting out in our hometown, Laredo, we set off on trains and buses, stopping in Monterrey, Mexico City and Merida.  We finally made it to Puerto Juarez where we took a ferry to Isla Mujeres. We were two 19-year-olds, mesmerized as we arrived by the sight of white, powdery sand, crystalline water and the smell of the sea. We played like children along the water's edge with a kaleidoscope of fish that surrounded us.

Walking along the beach one day, an old fisherman approached us.  I still remember his name: Tacho.  For a modest fee, Tacho offered to take us snorkeling. We accepted and found ourselves trying to dive for conch without much success because we couldn't hold our breath long enough. But the object of our desire lay tantalizingly clear below us, as we could see all the way to the bottom. For Tacho, age was not an obstacle.  He effortlessly dived and came up with conch. Then, he took us to another side of the island where he prepared a conch ceviche with the tomatoes, red onions, lime, serrano pepper and cilantro that he had brought along. Now, this was the first time either Susan or I had eaten real ceviche and it was nothing like the ceviche back in Laredo.  The ceviche back home consisted of tired, microscopic shrimp in a cocktail glass, doused with a little ketchup and lime juice. Nothing like the real thing I discovered on the beach that day...Funny how a song can resurrect such long-ago memories. Songs like Harry Nilsson's Everybody's Talkin' at Me remind me of the innocence of those years, of my youth and of that trip.

Nowadays, I wonder about that clear water, about the living coral. I wonder about the turtles and the fish that swam at our side.  I wonder whatever became of Tacho.

Anyway, this is how I've made ceviche for friends ever since then, although I always use tilapia or shrimp since conch is not widely available on the East Coast.

Tacho's Ceviche

Recipe Type: Appetizer

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Ingredients

• 2 or 3 filets of tilapia


• 1 quart of cherry tomatoes cut in half or 1 large, ripe tomato, chopped


• 1 medium sized red onion, chopped


• 1 serrano pepper


• Sea salt


• 10 limes


• About 1 cup (or more) or cilantro, washed, dried, and chopped roughly

Instructions

1. Chop the tilapia into little pieces and put into a bowl where you will squeeze all the limes and add salt to taste.


2. Let it sit for ½ hour.


3. Add the chopped tomato, onion, finely minced pepper, and cilantro


4. Toss and serve in small bowls.


5. Taste for salt.

Merienda Alarm Clock

In the hard drive of the brain are buried the myriad experiences of a lifetime, irrepressible memories ready to spring like a jack-in-the box, surprising us with their unpredictability. For example, around 3:30 on any afternoon at school when I'm not buried in work, when there is an unexpected lag in the usual mad teaching schedule, when the door of my classroom is closed and the rest of the world is on the other side, there is an alarm clock that goes off somewhere in my mind. Suddenly my memories turn to the routine (and the glories) of the merienda hour of my childhood.

A chilly, rainy afternoon like today reminds me of how by this time, my mother would have had the table set with hot cinnamon tea or a glass of milk and a plate of hojarascas, semita, campechanas (her favorites) and conchas for her three daughters. Sometimes we were joined by aunts from across the river or señoras who we knew and whose 'merienda alarm' was propelling them punctually across town in the direction of our welcoming table. We never learned to make these breads and cookies because, ¡qué idea!, who could make them better and more regularly than La Superior, the bakery in Laredo that had the best Mexican pastries? Going there to pick them out was just part of the ritual.

One afternoon, at a merienda at the house of my cousin, Hilda, (yes, I know, there's a confusing amount of Hildas and Gildas in this picture) in San Antonio, I tasted her hojarascas and got her recipe. I was reminded of Hilda's hojarascas when I was in Florence, Italy two weeks ago enjoying my favorite breakfast cookie with a cappuccino at Cibreo's. It's called occhio di bue (bull's eye) because it's a crumbly sablé cookie like the hojarasca except it's made with butter, has no cinnamon, and it has a raspberry jam center that looks like a bull's eye.

In the pure delight of the moment of sitting at a table under the spring sun, watching Italian grandmothers intermittently sipping their coffee, cooing to grandchildren in strollers, and bantering with the barista, I remembered Alex, my son, wishing I could share this precious moment with him.

As a child, Alex loved making cookies with me, the two of us up to our elbows and noses in flour.  His job: to do the cookie cutting.  Mine: to keep him from pinching off two much raw cookie dough to "taste test."  Often, he and I made Hildas' hojarascas. This recipe is a very old northern Mexico recipe which is most probably a new world descendent of European sablés. But in the family recipe, I've substituted the lard with shortening, realizing that's not much better health-wise, but the thing about cookies is that hopefully you don't eat them everyday and making them has the very redeemable feature of luring children into the magic of the kitchen.

The concentrated cinnamon/anise tea that you pour into the dough is the touch that makes them unmistakably Mexican. This is a dough with very little sugar since you will add the sugar on the surface of the cookie. Putting a thin layer of raspberry jam between them would make them divine, in my opinion, since the tartness of the jam juxtaposes well with the cinnamon. But as they appear in this recipe, they are beyond special.

Hilda's Hojarascas

#ratingval# from #reviews# reviews

Print

Recipe Type: Dessert/Postre

Ingredients

• Cookie Dough


• 1/2 cup sugar


• 2 cups Crisco


• 5 cups flour approximately


• A pinch of salt


• Tea


• 2 cups water


• 4 sticks cinnamon


• 1 tablespoon anise

Instructions

Tea

1. Combine the water, cinnamon and anise and boil down to 1/3 cup.

Cookies

1. Heat oven to 375 degrees.


2. Beat Crisco to make it creamy.


3. Add sugar and then tea (cooled).


4. Add salt and flour (some flour may be left over).


5. Don't over knead.


6. Refrigerate for approximately one hour.


7. Then roll out, cut with a cookie cutter and place on buttered cookie sheet.


8. Sprinkle with part of the sugar/cinnamon mixture.


9. Bake for approximately 25 minutes or until they are golden.


10. When cookies are done, put them on cooling rack and then sprinkle them again with more of the sugar/cinnamon mixture.

For Cookie Dusting

1. In blender, grind roughly 2 cinnamon sticks with 1/2 cup sugar.


2. These roughly pulverized bits of cinnamon may also be added to the flour used for the cookie dough.

Planting Seeds and Promise

April memories of Laredo are of citrus trees, the creamy colored azahar (orange blossom) opening to the sun with the promise of glossy ripening oranges in the fall.  How fickle I was back then when I took for granted the proliferation of orange, grapefruit, tangerine and lime trees our father planted around the house. Is it any wonder that today I am so partial to food with a hint of orange or lime zest?  How could I have known then that I would spend the next 35 years in a place where these trees do not thrive?  This has not, however, stopped me from trying to grow them in pots in my sun room.

Three years ago, I was in San Miguel de Allende at the home of a friend, eating oranges and limes from her trees. I stashed some of the seeds in my jacket, intending to dispose of them only to find them in my pocket months later after I'd returned home. On a whim, I planted them.  And low and behold, three years later, I have a tree two-feet high growing safely in a pot indoors. It's still a mystery as to whether it will bear oranges or limes.

Were I still living in Laredo this April, I would not be craving Sopa de Lima, the recipe I am posting here. The weather there this time of year is too warm. Besides, I was not familiar with it as a child. I learned to eat this soup in the Yucatan when I traveled there as an adult. But here in Maryland, as in other northerly places, it is still chilly and a warm soup is welcoming, especially one with the fresh taste of lime.

I would have loved this soup as a child.  But I worry about children today. I'm always amazed when a child prefers a meal out of a jar over a good, warm, healthy meal.  As a teacher at a school for boys, I see this everyday.  A steaming platter of herbed roasted chicken on a bed of rice is brought to our table. And, yes, Dios mío! One or two boys at the table will turn it away, preferring instead to nibble away at peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or processed meats and cheeses.

We are grappling with a tremendous childhood obesity problem in this country for which there are many contributing factors.  I, for one, do everything I can to encourage my students to reject a diet of packaged, processed foods and jumbo-sized, sugary drinks. And while it may fall on deaf ears at the lunchroom table, I reserve hope that they will eventually develop a distaste for junk food.  It's up to us to teach our children well, as the song goes.

What strategies do you use to encourage your children to eat homemade soups or more fruits and vegetables?

Sopa de Lima

#ratingval# from #reviews# reviews

Print

Recipe Type: Soup

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 30 mins

Cook time: 1 hour

Total time: 1 hour 30 mins

Ingredients

• 1 ½ qts. chicken broth


• 3 chicken breasts without skins


• 3 corn tortillas cut into strips and fried to a golden brown


• 2 bell peppers


• 2 onions


• 5 sprigs cilantro, chopped


• cup (approximately) corn oil for cooking the bell pepper and onion


• 2 or 3 limes (preferably Mexican or Key Limes)


• A slice of Meyer lemon, for garnish (optional)


• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Boil the breasts in the broth until they are completely cooked.


2. Remove them and cut into small, bite-sized pieces.


3. Finely chop the onion and bell pepper and cook in the oil until they are soft.


4. Squeeze the juice of a lime into the soup and drop in the other two limes, sliced thinly. Assemble fried tortilla strips, chicken bits, cilantro, and onion/bell pepper mixture in the plate.


5. Pour the steaming soup over each bowel.


6. Garnish with avocado slices and a slice or lemon or lime.

Notes

This soup has a wonderful zesty punch. To make it more appealing to a child's palate, add small alphabet pasta or their favorite seasonal vegetables, chopped finely and boiled into the soup at the last minute.

Food is Bond

Food binds us to each other on an intimate level.  This is undeniable.  So-called “comfort foods” remind us of our childhoods when we felt safe, perhaps enveloped in a grandparent’s affection.  Sometimes the dishes we prepare remind us of loved ones we’ve lost, their once palpable enthusiasm for a homemade meal now relegated to a bittersweet memory.

When we spend the day kneading dough together or drawing a new family member closer by sharing an old family recipe.  When we puzzle over a recipe and wonder how the art of cooking came so easily to those who came before us.  Well, these are the ways in which we deepen our relationships to one another and uphold our traditions.  Food lies at the heart of it all, as something we need for both physical and spiritual survival.

Case in point.  I’ve spent the entire day making empanadas.  The recipe is simple but the assembly arduous.  Gilda (la Madrina) and I made the first few together while we sipped wine and contemplated the chemistry of pastry.  But this recipe belongs to an auntie I acquired, along with several other lovable and adoring family members (most of whom hail from Argentina), when I married The Saint.  My Tía Raquel and her sister (my mother-in-law) recently treated me to a talk about their childhood memories of Argentina:

Like the gift that keeps on giving, a discussion about food resulted in my Tía Raquel sharing her recipe for empanadas, a “comfort food” staple in many Latin American countries and Spain.  Now, forever a food that will remind me of her and of this moment.  The gesture of remembering together, sharing a recipe, cooking and talking — these are profound ways we strengthen our ties to one another, almost without even noticing we're doing it. Beautiful, isn't it?

Raquel's Beef Empanadas

#ratingval# from #reviews# reviews

Print

Recipe Type: Appetizer

Ingredients

• Filling


• 1 pound ground beef


• 1 cup chopped onions


• 1 cup chopped tomatoes


• 1 cup chopped green peppers


• 1 clove finely minced garlic


• 1½ teaspoons corn starch


• 1 teaspoon salt


• 1 teaspoon sugar


• 1 teaspoon black pepper


• A “touch” of red pepper


• 1 cup of water


• 2 hard boiled eggs (optional)


• 1 egg yolk, beaten (optional)


• Dough


• 3 cups of flour (I used whole wheat flour here)


• 1 teaspoon salt


• 1 teaspoon baking powder

Instructions

Filling

1. Brown the beef over medium heat.


2. Add the onion, green pepper, tomato and garlic.


3. Cook for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally and until the onions are transparent. Stir in the corn starch, salt, sugar, and pepper.


4. Continue cooking for another 5 minutes. Remove from heat. Here, I also added two chopped, hardboiled eggs, something I really like in empanadas.

Pastry dough

1. Stir together the unsifted flour (I used whole wheat flour, different from my aunt's recipe.), salt and baking powder.


2. Combine ¾ cup of olive oil and ½ cup of water and add to flour mixture.


3. Stir until dough is soft and cleans the side of bowl. (Note: I used a food processor to mix the dough.)


4. Roll the pastry and use a cookie cutter to cut out circles more or less the size of your palm.


5. Place about 1 tablespoon of the beef mixture in the center of each circle (more if circles are larger) and fold the dough over, gently pressing the dough at the seam.


6. Seal the edges (In a pinch, use the tines of a fork, as I did here.).


7. Place the empanadas on an ungreased cookie sheet and brush each with a beaten egg yolk.


8. Also, don't forget to poke a few small holes or make small slits in the dough to allow the moisture inside to vent.


9. Bake at 425 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes or until golden brown.

Google Recipe View Microformatting by Easy Recipe

1.2.4

If and when you embark on the mission of making homemade empanadas — well, let’s just say there’s ample time for bonding.

Postscript:

After my Tía Raquel read this post, she sent me these additional tips:

I should have mentioned you can add almost anything you like to the filling.  In Argentina it is common to add eggs (as you did) as well as olives and raisins.  It’s just a matter of taste.

I always roll the pastry between sheets of waxed paper instead of on a floured surface.  You will find that by not adding additional flour the crust is crispier and flakier.  The olive oil in the dough mixture is not absorbed with additional flour which makes the empanadas “fry” in the oven.

If you like a juicier filling, don’t cut slits to vent; enough vapor escapes from the edges to prevent them from splitting. You do need venting slits if you make a pie instead of individual empanadas.

Our mother used to make a beautiful braided edge to seal. I can flute the edges but I haven’t been able to master the braid. When I was little, I used to eat the crust only. I wasn’t interested in the filling and to this date the crust is my favorite part.

I Heart Mercados

One might assume that growing up in Laredo, Texas gave me the experience and pleasures of the open air farmers' market. In fact, the grocery shopping experience was sterile in Laredo; even H.E.B., that big Texas chain that seems to have every Mexican ingredient you can think of was just a small, sleepy, supermarket back in the day. The forbidden delights of ripe stacked mangos, wild avocados, chirimoyas, guayabas, canteloupe, and watermelon sweltering in the Nuevo Laredo market heat across the river from Laredo, was a temptation to bear stoically. What you could eat on the spot was all you were going to get; naturally, you couldn't take fruits and vegetables across the Rio Grande. But the luscious taste and smell of this fruit in the midst of the clamorous Nuevo Laredo market on a warm summer day with my parents was knowing that all was right in the world.

[caption id="attachment_1106" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="A typical mercado in Mexico"][/caption]

I'm fascinated by markets, in fact, I don't ever want to live too far away from one, as crazy as it may sound. I love the shouting, the bantering, the smells, the colors. I love not knowing what will surprise me and get my attention. I love knowing about the lives of those that grow my food. I'm lucky to live in the Washington, D.C. area, which has excellent access to locally grown food. And I'm especially fortunate that I travel extensively to two other places that have incredible markets: San Miguel de Allende, Mexico and Florence, Italy. When I arrive at either of these two places, I drop my bags and head for the market.

[caption id="attachment_1110" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="A mercado in San Miguel de Allende"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1109" align="aligncenter" width="640" caption="A mercato in Florence"][/caption]

This week I am in Florence, ogling the spring vegetables that the old familiar farmers bring in from the hillsides of Tuscany here at the Mercato di Sant'Ambrogio. I have known many of these characters for years now and they know me...no matter how dumpy I might look as I head bleary-eyed to the market...I'm “signora bella” to them and I'm worth an extra sprig of basil or parsley thrown into my bag with a friendly smile and advice as to how to prepare my purchases. Today there's wild asparagus, harvested from the hillsides. Tiny round zucchini with flowers still attached. Wild strawberries (fragole di bosco) and baby artichokes. I could go on, but you get the picture. What really catches my eye today is that kind of green bean that is called Italian bean in the U.S. But it's the kind of green bean my mother used to make a dish she called ejotes con carne de puerco.

[caption id="attachment_1111" align="aligncenter" width="640" caption="Italian green beans"][/caption]

I wanted to buy only a small quantity of the beans but there was no way this was going to happen. In the interest of freshness, some of the farmers here don't like to take the produce back at the end of the day. They would rather practically give it away. So, one of my favorite farmers packed up a two-kilo bag for which he charged me only one euro; he knew it was late and the chances of selling it were dwindling. Not bad. But I'll be eating green beans for a while.

[caption id="attachment_1108" align="aligncenter" width="640" caption="Farmer at the Mercato di Sant'Ambrogio"][/caption]

So here I am, mixing it all up, keeping alive my memories of my mother and Laredo. Thinking of all the roads taken and not taken, as I quietly stir my ejotes here in Florence.



Ejotes en Carne de Puerco

Ingredients:
2 pork chops cut into small cubes
1 lb. Italian beans chopped ½ inch wide approximately (regular green beans will work too)
4 medium sized ripe tomatoes, chopped
5 cloves garlic, peeled and whole
1 onion, chopped
1 tsp. freshly ground cumin
salt and pepper to taste
corn or canola oil to cover ¼ inch of pan
corn tortillas to accompany this dish

Preparation:
Heat the oil in a pan and add the cubed pork along with the garlic cloves. Cook at medium heat until the meat and the garlic cloves are a golden brown, add the onion and cook for another 10 minutes. Add  the tomatoes and green beans and continue to cook for another 5 minutes, add salt and pepper to taste and the freshly ground cumin. Lower heat and cover, cook until the green beans have softened and the tomato has dissolved.

Note:  For a vegetarian version of this dish, simply leave out the pork.  The cumin gives this meal a fragrance that allows it to stand on its own simply made with vegetables.

Unfortunately, my dinner guest devoured the meal before I had a chance to take a photo of the finished product.  Perhaps this will inspire you to shop at your local farmers' market this weekend and make this recipe!  Let us know!