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This afternoon my mother-in-law and I took a cooking class down here in Houston. Since we don’t have such great Mexican or Tex-Mex food in Boston, I’m all about eating as much as I can of it while I’m here. This class focused on Mexican breakfasts, a meal I don’t normally associate with Mexican food. (That said, one of my favorite egg dishes is huevos rancheros and I pour hot sauce on my scrambled eggs. Huh.)

We took the class at Sylvia’s Enchilada Kitchen, just south of my in-law’s home. Sylvia Casares is in her 50s, although she looks more like 40. Hailing from Brownsville, Texas, down on the U.S./Mexico border, Casares learned to cook from her mother and grandmother.

I was curious to learn the difference between Mexican and Tex-Mex cuisine. As I suspected, I’m more of a fan of Mexican food than I am of Tex-Mex, after I learned Tex-Mex includes more beef, flour tortillas, and yellow cheese. (Mexican food is generally more pork, corn tortillas, and white cheese.)

Casares made a half-dozen breakfast recipes for our group: atole, which is like Cream-of-Wheat made with corn flour and flavored with cinnamon (yum!); flour and corn tortillas; gorditas, which were absolutely delicious on their own, but are typically filled with beans; salsa ranchera; quick refried beans; a tomatillo-based salsa; and migas con huevo. At the end of the demonstration, students could practice their tortilla-making. I’d not planned on doing this, but when I could see students eating their practice tortillas, I went for it. Afterwards we were served a delicious lunch that included some of the dishes “we” created, along with some potent margaritas. (I had to take a nap when I came home — I can’t hold my tequila like I used to!)

Here I am, rolling out a flour tortilla.

It was a fun afternoon, and it rekindled my interest in cooking more Mexican dishes. I’ve been reading Discover Your Inner Economist, and one of the things I agreed with is that one should learn to cook a cuisine that’s not readily available in one’s neighborhood. His example is LA — it would be best to learn to cook German or Scandinavian cuisine if you lived there, since great Asian and Mexican foods are readily available. Thus in Boston, learning to cook fabulous Mexican food is a good investment of my time. Hey, I’m game!

My son and I are flying to Houston in a couple days, so I’ve been trying to empty out the fridge before we go. This weekend I made several quarts of chicken stock with the assorted chicken necks, backs, and gnawed over bones in our freezer. This also got rid of a 5-lb. bag of organic carrots, a bag of ramp trimmings, and assorted onions. Then I had to figure out how to preserve two weeks of CSA veggies. I turned the broccoli, red onions, and kale into soups and will shred zucchini and kohlrabi for vegetable fritters. We have about three pounds of beets in the veggie bin: if I have time, I’ll turn those into beet jerky. (Don’t knock it — I can put away a pound of beets this way in about ten minutes, flat.)

Tonight I served up a humble meal. We had a pound of grass-fed beef in the fridge, which I mixed up with a pre-made seasoning mix for tacos (my 6-year-old’s favorite meal). These were served with shredded lettuce (from CSA), chopped beefsteak tomatoes (ditto), and shredded Mexican-style cheese (Trader Joe’s — cheese needs to disappear by Wednesday!). I boiled up four ears of corn (today’s CSA basket), and sliced up chilled watermelon and Asian melon, both from last week’s basket.

It was a simple meal, but delicious. The melons were sweet and juicy, the corn flavorful, and the tacos, well, what can I say, were beautiful because I didn’t have to slave over a hot stove for too long.

Sorry I haven’t posted much — I got another case of nasty strep, my third infection this year, and am only recently starting to feel back to my energetic self. My mother-in-law has some food-related sites mapped out for us while we’re in Texas, so I plan to blog during our trip.