For the first time ever I attempted flour tortillas last night*. They tasted tortilla-like, I made a big mess and wonder how the hell you get them to be nice and round, but I was encouraged to try them again, this time with lard. See, I made them with evil-EVIL Crisco this first time, because I was not brave enough to try the less easy to work with fat. Or so I'm told! My mom made some with olive oil or (UGH) canola oil, but they never tasted anywhere as good as lard. But lard was verbotten at in my mom's kitchen, to the weird point where she actually used Crisco sometime for tamales, thinking Crisco was healthier than lard. Oh mom, the bastards lied to us :(

Anyway, yes, I feel bad about using Crisco, but now I have some lard in the fridge and think next weekend I'll make another batch and see if I can make tortillas that are closer to a round shape.




*My parents are from Jalisco (central Mexico), where corn tortillas are king. Flour tortillas are more of a staple in the northern part of Mexico. So, mom never learned to make them until she was about my age. I remember her first attempts not producing round and fluffy results, but she learned to do them over time.

I don't know exactly how I feel about last night's episode. It had a lot of stuff that I adored, while at the same time the writing kept throwing in stuff that made me cringe. I'm going to let it simmer for a while and not rewatch for a long time, maybe until the S5 DVDs come out.

Speaking of DVDs, thanks to razielsoul I have a shinny new set of S4 DVDs. This weekend might involve some marathon viewing of my favorites, as I plan out food shopping and cooking for the next week.

Tax season is starting, so at home this means I take over all food planning and preparation, break out the bento boxes and try to keep both me and Mr. L healthy until April 15th. I made mole this morning for our lunches, using the paste that I bought in Tlaquepaque. I really like this Oaxaca brand, Mayordomo, and will probably buy more online once I figure out the best place to place an order. According to my mom, the local Tijuana open air market (Mercado Hidalgo) has smaller name brands of Oaxacan chocolate, which I haven't tried, but I tried their pinole and it was amazing. It makes me hopeful for other yummy stuff that I can't get at my local Mexican markets in San Diego.

Just said goodnight to friends we had over to share Three Kings cake. It was special this year since one friend was in town on holiday from Dublin and came with her boyfriend, who is from Lithuania. So I got to share a bit of Mexican tradition with some very lovely and warm people. Of course they wanted the plastic baby (a stand in for baby Jesus), even as I explained that normally people don't want the baby. In Mexico, the person who usually gets the baby has to make tamales on February second, so no one wants to go through that again so soon after Christmas.

I'm so full of cake and hot chocolate (and by that I mean I'm on a serious sugar high) that a steak or any kind of animal protein sounds quite delicious right about now.

Just had another wondeful lunch at the hole-in-the-wall place that serves the best guisados and Mexican homecooking in town, Super Cocina. Inexpensive too! Give me more of that green chile pork thing that I can't remember now what it was called! Yum!

Started up a list on my Yelp! account of places that I really like for local Mexican food. Considering that San Diego has hundreds of Mexican restaurants and taco joints, my list so far consists of 5 places. Sad, no?

http://www.yelp.com/list/good-mexican-food-san-diego

Even after being at it for a few years, it's so weird to be gardening. ( Notes from an accidental gardener. )

Reading another of the "scary food books" I keep buying, this one called The End of Food by Paul Roberts. One more reminder to myself to cut down on our meat consumption. It's just so easy and satisfying to eat meat, but the amounts of meat we eat in this country (and back home in Mexico) are insane.

Oh dear. My stomach might not be too happy that I overindulged in some aguachiles today.



But I found a place near home that makes it pretty good and so I bought more than I could possibly eat with some of the best home fried tostadas I've had in a long time.

I usually can handle a lot of spice, but without fat and with the extra acid from the lime juice (and without having to share, since Mr. Logovo opted for the more sedate shrimp quesadilla) my stomach feels a bit like it's on fire.

Need beer!!!

Self, fake Lucky Charms are still Not Food in our book, so stop it with the buying of crap, even if they came from Henry's. They're still crap, no matter freakin organic they are. Yes? Yes.