Kennedy's stories drive the book's organization, which is divided by regions (e.g., the Gulf Coast) rather than any particular kind of recipe. With Google's new Maps features, we've plugged in some of the towns in which Diana dined with both friends and strangers to draw inspiration for the recipes in My Mexico. You can click on the location pins in the maps and glimpse the variety of recipes found in the book. After the excerpt below, you'll find a recipe for a delicious snack from Michoacán.
Warning: Navigating these Google maps may lead to increased appetite for the likes of torrejas de frijol (bean fritters in chile sauce), hongos guisados con yerbabuena (mushrooms cooked with mint), or mole de iguana negra (yes, it's what you think it is).
Access the Google map below here: mapsengine.google.com >>
Access the Google map below here: mapsengine.google.com >>
From the book:
San Pancho—How I Got There
It is the beginning of May, and the hottest month of all, as I sit down to write this book in my ecological house in San Francisco Coatepec de Morelos, known locally as San Pancho. The sky is hazy with heat and the dust stirred up by the sudden gusts of high winds, with occasional palls of smoke from a forest fi re in the mountains to the east. Oft en these fires are purposely started by clandestine agents scouting timber for the greedy timber merchants who can then go in to clear and to cut or by farmers’ unattended burning of last year’s stubble to prepare the land for planting. The hills to the south and west are brown and bare in sharp contrast to the brilliant green valley, where the dam provides irrigation to the low fields around it. This is the month when tempers flare and explode, when young blades and old machos drink up a storm and give primeval screams or shoot off their rounds of ammunition as they saunter through the lanes of San Pancho. There is a heaviness in the air and a sense of foreboding. Will the rains come on time? The signs are anxiously awaited. Heriberto, my nearest neighbor, says he has seen the first aludas, winged ants, that are a sure sign, but the mayates, June bugs, hovering around the lamps and bombarding me at night are still too small. André down at the hotel says the swifts have not yet finished their nests (of course it is hard to know, since he drives them away with a broom because their droppings off end his sense of order—inherited from his French colonialist father). Occasionally the sky will threaten rain toward evening, and the next morning there is a delicious scent of damp undergrowth from the tree-clad mountains above. But when the bullfrogs begin their first intermittent raspings, you know that rain is near. On the other hand, if the rainy season starts too early, the last of the coffee berries will burst and spoil, the tomatoes will rot and never ripen, and too often August, the month in which the ears of corn are filling out, will be dry. At this time of year I bless my adobe house, despite all its drawbacks. It keeps pleasantly cool while the water from the primitive solar collector gives me piping-hot showers. People who live in harsher climates tend to think that there are no seasons here in the semitropics of 5,900 feet. Yes, there’s no snow, and just a very occasional frost or brief, gusty hailstorm. January is a bare month, cool and sunny, and if we are in favor with the gods, the first days of February bring welcome rains, cabañuelas, which encourage the plums and peaches to bloom and help top up the tanks for the hot, dry months ahead. The weeks that follow bring the most brilliant-hued flowers of the year: bougainvilleas of all shades, geraniums, amaryllis, cacti, and tropical climbers contrasting with the pale blue masses of plumbago, while citrus blossoms perfume the air and my bees are satiated with these aromas. The vegetable garden is at its best. The first delicate peas and fava beans are harvested, and the nopal cactus rows come alive, shooting out their tender and succulent paddles. Carlos, who is in charge outside, cuts the vegetables and collects the blackberries and strawberries a little too early, but, as he explains, we have a host of eager and cunning winged sharecroppers who would leave me nothing if they had their way.
