Fairy Godmother

My dear friend, Wenirs, has two children. They are wonderful "kids," now in their mid-twenties and all grown up, with responsible jobs and independent lives, but every now and then they check in with me and it always makes my day/week/month. They are as close to a son and a daughter as I have.

I have even changed their diapers, once upon a time, so you know my love for them is complete and selfless.

We have always had such fun together - learning to juggle, taking glass blowing lessons, baking cookies or making eggs in a frame, dressing up to go to the theatre - just a few examples of the memories we have over their lifetime.

They have always called me "Aunt Pam" although I'm not any blood relation to them. For years, we struggled to define with an easy term the calabash relationship we have always enjoyed. Yes, I am a friend, but really more than that. No, I'm not a godmother, as none of us is religious in any accepted sense. Then, one day, out of the blue, probably while we were watching some Disney fantasy, popped the term "Fairy Godmother."

Perfect!

That's what I am to them, their Fairy Godmother. I swoop in every now and then, bringing presents and laughter, then swoop away again while they return to normal life. If I'd had more money, I'd have been like Auntie Mame.

My Fairy Godson is named Mark. He lives in Los Angeles but every now and then he braves the chill of the north to visit us, as he did last week. We had a marvelous week; we swam together in the Plunge, shopped and poked, yakked and watched TV, hiked the Tennessee Valley trail and, after the hike, stopped in Mill Valley at Joe's Taco Lounge. We were ravenous at 2pm, neither of us having had breakfast before starting the walk to the sea. (By the way, if you have never done that walk, put on your beetle crushers and go - it's a gem!)

Joe's wasn't too busy at that time of day, with just a few other diners in the joint. We placed our orders and sat outside in the shade of their big tree, reviewing the wonders of the hike as we waited for lunch. I had two tacos, one carne asada and one carnitas. Mark ate most of a giant burrito. Mark introduced me to Cholula hot sauce; I unscrewed the wooden cap and sprinkled it sparingly on my tacos. The first bite was wonderful - it has some heat and more flavor but it's not overwhelming. It's now my go-to when I want hot sauce.

Pleasantly tired, we stopped at the Mill Valley Market for dinner provisions, knowing that dinner would be late after such a filling lunch. All in all, a lovely day and a super week for a fond Fairy Godmother.

El Taco Retro

We don't make a big deal of Cinco de Mayo but we usually like to honor our Mexican Americans in some small way and to thank them for their heritage of great chow. America would be sadly poorer without Mexican food.

So, when I awoke to find that Cinco de Mayo had sneaked up on me while I was celebrating a wedding, I decided to make margaritas and tacos. Not exactly authentic, but my heart was in the right place.

Sprinted down to my local market, which was bought a couple of years ago by an Hispanic family and has been transformed by them. I found all the makings for the kind of innocently joyous tacos we used to think were "Mexican food," and brought them home. Ground beef, tomatoes from Mexico where they are already ripe, pre-shredded cheese mixture, iceberg lettuce, limes, taco sauce in a bottle, pre-folded corn tortillas, margarita mix and tequila - in short, the whole enchilada.

Called our friends Janie and Jack for a spur-of-the-moment party. Janie has been working too hard, so she begged off in favor of napping on the couch but Jack came, bringing red and orange roses whose colors sang of warmer places.

I already had some nice, ripe avocados, so I made some guacamole as an appetizer, mixed up a large pitcher of margaritas and fluffed the chair cushions on the deck. We sat outside pretending to be in Mexico (until it got too chilly) and got a little tipsy drinking margaritas before sitting down to retro tacos.

Mexican Melange

I'm not sure what you'd call this but it was delicious. I had some pinto beans already cooked and waiting in the freezer so I busted them out as the foundation for a Mexican soft taco/burrito/sort of thing to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. Cinco de Mayo may not be a huge deal in Mexico (contrary to popular belief, it is not Mexican Independence Day) but up here in Alta California, we relish a chance to celebrate just about anything.

Here's what else went into our quickly heated whole wheat tortillas, clockwise from the top:

-shredded leftover garlic roasted chicken
-minced red onion
-sliced red and yellow sweet peppers
-chopped green onion
-guacamole (I made it with ripe avocado, diced tomato, minced red onion and two dashes of hot pepper sauce, all smooshed together)
-shredded Romaine lettuce
-pinto beans, previously long-simmered and thawed
-Old World Portuguese cheese

I just put it all out on a board and My Beloved and I built our tacos according to our preferences. The guacamole was a little too fiery (that hot sauce is potent!) by itself but tucked into the tortillas with the rest of the fairly bland ingredients and alternated with sips of beer, it was perfect. It left me with softly burning lips, just the way I like it.

We owe a lot to our neighbors to the south, whether from Mexico or even further south. Not only do they offer a delicious and inventive cuisine, in California they are often the people who grew, weeded and picked the food for us as well, doing backbreaking jobs for very low wages. It's the immigrants' story in this country, whether we came from Ireland or Italy or China or wherever. We start small and work our way up. Our labor, our foods, our customs and our languages enrich this nation with each new wave. Hear me, Arizona?

It Starts Early

My sister's granddaughter has begun cooking and, apparently, inventing recipes already at the tender age of ten. Kelly and her Dad, assisted by little sister Milla, made a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting the other day and in a letter from my sister today came this recipe for Spaghetti Tacos handwritten on a paper towel.

To wit:

Spaghetti Tacos

Get taco shells
Get spaghetti w/ meat sauce
Get a BIG spoon
Use the BIG spoon to put the spaghetti into the taco shells
Eat
Burp

It will be interesting to see if this budding foodie continues to invent and tweak her recipes or moves on to other interests. I hope Kelly keeps writing them down - it's a bummer when you've made something yummy and can't recall how you did it, especially something as scrumptious as Spaghetti Tacos!

There was another recipe included for Tapenade but it lacked the specific directions about what to do once one has eaten. Apparently, Tapenade doesn't produce burps.