Life in Mexico

Mexicans love weird tacos. I passed a stand the other day and the sign said they were offering:

Tongue!

Brains!

Neck!

Tuesday special: two-for-one tripe!

That last one must really pull them in.

I’ve never eaten racoon, but I know for a fact that it must taste like monkey crap because if it was anything like fried chicken they’d be stuffed into tortillas across the country.

Recipe: Shrimp Tortillas

This is a great lunch dish; fast, easy to make, and delicious!

Ingredients

8 large shrimp, peeled.

1Tsp of butter

1/4 cup of flour

4 medium-sized flour tortillas

Sriracha sauce (or any mild hot sauce).

¼ cup of mayonnaise

Juice from ½ a lemon.

1 garlic clove, crushed.

½ tsp of salt.

Chopped cabbage

Chopped cilantro

Directions

Mix together the hot sauce, mayonnaise, lemon juice, crushed garlic and salt.

Lightly coat the shrimp with flour. Melt the butter in a pan and fry the shrimp until they turn pink. Set aside.

Place the tortillas, one at a time, in the pan and heat for 15 seconds a side.

Fill the tortillas with the shrimp, then drizzle on the sauce and garnish with cabbage and chopped cilantro.

Enjoy!

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Book Review

Three Wishes

By Liane Moriarty

I have enjoyed Australian writer Liane Moriarty’s novels for several years. In Addition to Big Little Lies, which was turned into an award winning series by Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman, I have been avidly entertained by The Last Anniversary and The Hypnotist’s Love Story.

Three Wishes focuses on triplets Cat, Gemma and Lyn. Now in their thirties, the three women are on different life trajectories: Lyn is the owner of a burgeoning catering business; Cat is a successful marketing executive at a chocolate company, and Gemma is drifting through an endless series of failed romances.

While the story is set in contemporary Sydney, the tale takes frequent flashbacks to their youth, where their young parents struggled to raise three girls all at once. Their mistakes have consequences that reach far beyond the nursery into their adult lives, causing them family calamities as they struggle to find happiness.

As always, Moriarty uses her profound insight and humor to create an engaging novel that compels you to read right to the very end – and then wish for more. I highly recommend Three Wishes!

TV Series Review

Restaurants from the Edge

Streaming on Netflix

I love just about any series focusing on restaurants and food around the world, including anything by the late Anthony Bourdain. But I wasn’t sure whether I would warm to Restaurants on the Edge.

The premise is simple; three experts travel the world saving restaurants that are about to go under. Karin Bohn is an interior designer, Dennis Prescott is an international chef and Nick Liberato is a marketing guru. Together, they figure out how to turn around the ailing restaurants’ fortunes.

But how can they succeed, given that they have to do it in one week?

Despite my reservations, I quickly became addicted. Traveling around the world, the trio take on challenges from Austria to Hong Kong (with a few from Canada thrown in).

The restaurant owners have got themselves in a jam for a variety of reasons, from naively opening a business they know nothing about, to overburdening their budgets with pricey items nobody eats.

Together, they set out to clean up tacky interiors, revitalize menus with local ingredients and tune up owners with hard-won wisdom. Along the way, they explore local culture and farms, giving the viewer a taste of each exotic destination. In the tradition of all makeover shows, there’s a final scene in which the grateful owners walk into their establishments and weep copious tears of joy.

What I enjoy most about the series, however, is the knowledge about the service industry imparted by Dennis, Nick and Karin. They use their expertise to open up the viewers’ eyes to what goes on behind the scenes to make a restaurant a success. As someone who enjoys eating at family-run establishments wherever I travel, it’s fascinating to learn how such decisions as ingredients, marketing and the dining room environment contribute to the overall dining experience.

In the end, I learned a lot about what can go wrong at a restaurant, but far more fascinating, I learned what can go right. I highly recommend Restaurants on the Edge!