MeXscape

I love corn. Always have. Fresh, roasted, sautéed, corn bread, corn chips, corn dogs, tortillas, hush puppies, pancakes, soufflé, pudding, soup, popped, fried, ice cream – you name it. If corn is a main ingredient, I am going to love it. Living in Mexico, where corn is the main grain, is tasty bliss. And here in Mazatlan, corn is actually a street food! I can stroll the Malecón and nosh on roasted corn, on the cob or in a cup.

I have been really curious about piloncillo, but also really intimidated by the large, brown cones. The sugar I have bought all of my life has come as fine, pure white granules. Or sometimes soft brown in a bag. I had no idea what to do with a hard brick of sugar. But, finally, my curiosity got the best of me and I brought a few cones home.

Over the past three years a lot more American products have become regularly available in the stores here. I can go and buy Blue Bell ice cream, Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies, and now even Wheat Thins any time I want. But there are still a lot of things that are difficult, if not impossible, to find, like canned pumpkin, which really throws a wrench in Thanksgiving and Christmas preparations. I even have a hard time finding pie pumpkins to make make a pie from scratch. Carving pumpkins are plentiful around Halloween, but pie pumpkins, well, no. How can it be Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie?

I woke up from an afternoon nap the other day with a craving for something sweet. For some reason whenever I nap, I usually wake up with a sweet craving. I wish I knew why that was. It seems so strange. Whatever the reason, it was there, and this one was stronger than most. I lay in bed and pondered my options, trying to put a point on my desire. Peanut butter cookies? Toffee? Fudge? No, none of these were quite right. Then it hit me: chocolate pudding.

I realized as I was finishing up the Chicken Fried Steak post that I should probably include a recipe for cream gravy as well, and I almost added it then. But as I started to think a little bit more about it, I decided that cream gravy deserved to stand on its own. Plus the CFS post had already gotten pretty long. I never knew I had so much to say about Chicken Fried Steak.