Cocina de la Familia/the Family Kitchen : More Than 200 Authentic Recipes from Mexican-American Home Kitchens

Forget about the food you eat in what pass for Mexican restaurants in America; cleanse your palate, then come to this book. For Marilyn Tausend reveals the truth, the whole truth: within these pages are the foods eaten in Mexican American households throughout the United States. After years of traveling all over Mexico (she coauthored Mexico the Beautiful Cookbook), meeting the best Mexican cooks and cooking teachers, and years of leading cooking tours to Mexico to share all that she had discovered, Marilyn Tausend came home, back to the U.S.--back to her roots, which include a childhood spent shoulder-to-shoulder with Mexican fieldworkers on farmlands throughout the West, sharing their food.

Of the 13 million Americans who think of themselves as Mexican Americans, what, Tausend wondered, are they cooking at home today? And what she discovered as she crisscrossed the U.S. was that their roots run deep; these families stick together and trace their heritage back to the regions of Mexico from which they sprang, and the food tells the story. Mind you, a little Coca-Cola might get mixed in with a dish today, and canola oil might well be used instead of lard; after all, times change, and people change with them. But some elements, Tausend discovered, stay basically the same: a strong sense of family and a delight in bringing a big family together to eat. Crack open this book, use the recipes, and fill your house full of the love that comes from serving--and eating--real food. Let Marilyn Tausend show you how; you couldn't be in better hands.