Coyota in the Kitchen: A Memoir of New and Old Mexico (Querencias Series)

Winner of the 2018 Zia Book Award from New Mexico Press WomenWinner of the 2017 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for Best New Mexico BookWinner of the 2017 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for Multi-Cultural SubjectWinner of the 2016 Southwest Book Award from the Border Regional Library AssociationThis book of stories and recipes introduces two eccentric families that would never have eaten together, let alone exchanged recipes, but for the improbable marriage of the author's parents: a nuevomexicano from Taos and a painter who came from Texas to New Mexico to study art. Recalling the good and the terrible cooks in her family, Anita Rodríguez also shares the complications of navigating a safe path among contradictory cultural perspectives. She takes us from the mountain villages of New Mexico in the 1940s to sipping mint juleps on the porch of a mansion in the South, and also on a prolonged pilgrimage to Mexico and back again to New Mexico. Accompanied by Rodríguez's vibrant paintings--including scenes of people eating on fiesta nights and plastering an adobe church--Coyota in the Kitchen shows how food reflects the complicated family histories that shape our lives. Read more