My Goal in the Blog is....

I want to share the love of Southern and Mexican food with anyone out there who wants to try food that maybe isn't always the healthiest but is ALWAYS good. I want people to prepare these foods and enjoy the taste, the simplicity of them. To know and understand how to make things from basic ingredients. If there is anyone who knows how to make something from nothing, it would be mexican people and southern people. Both though very different in their tastes, they both can make something from what little  is available to them. I am not talking about right now, I am talking about during the depression and back when people survived on what they raise on their own farms. Back when if you didn't grow it yourself or trade something you have for what you need you just didn't get it. When people traveled from the east to the west they carried basics like flour, cornmeal, salt, bacon,and beans. They towed cows along so they were able to have milk, make butter. There is alot of food that can be made from just these simple ingredients.

No I am not trying to be like Paula Dean! haha though I do love alot of what she makes she doesn't always show southern food in the most basic sense. My mother cooked breakfast for us every single morning of my childhood. Sometimes biscuits and gravy, sometime oatmeal or biscuit and syrup but always something. There were alot of things we ate in the morning that isn't a normal breakfast food. Tomatoe gravy is one of them, or peanut butter and syrup (one of my personal favorites). I will post all of the foods that I ate as a child and alot of the foods I now prepare for my family that I have learned from my husband and Suegra (mother inlaw).

Oh where to start?! so many recipes and so much I want to tell you about the cultures of southern and of mexican food. Well I think I will start with the mexican food because I think its becoming so popular in our little town of Red Bluff and I think if more people knew what stuff was they would be a little braver and try something different. Ok so how many of you have seen the vendors sitting in front of the catholic church? or have you seen them pushing carts around town? These vendors are selling foods like Alotes (corn) and fruit cups or raspas (snowcones). This stuff is fantastic! if you ever ate the corn on a stick... you would be hooked. Its a ear of corn with mayonaise, queso seco (dried cheese which is their version of parmesan) and chili. The fruit in a cup is cubes of pineapple, watermelon, cantelope, cucumber, mango, and jicama. Their snowcones are basically the same but with some different flavors they put on them. They have the normal strawberry, raspberry, bubblegum but they also have rompope which is very sweet and rich.

And when you buy something to drink in mexico, you don't get it in a cup like up here. They put it in a plastic bag, pop a straw into it and hand it to you. Very simple and very easy to throw away.

Well I am going to end it here and start tomorrow with my first recipe for you. I think I will post my recipe for albondigas since I had such a great response to my picture of them on my facebook. It's the perfect weather for them right now and very easy and quick to make.

Please take a minute and let me know if you have any questions about anything I post on here or if there is something you want me to post the recipe for. Have a great day!