My first Wigilia in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, was one to remember.
Author: chijourno
I am a nomadic food and travel writer who cooks global dishes expressed in local ingredients, wherever I am. I enjoy traveling to new cities and eating food that uniquely expresses place. I like meeting chefs and farmers and winemakers and cheesemakers and browsing markets. My mission, and I choose to accept it, is taking home food memories and trying to recreate them.
Nun Too Believable: Doll Sisters of Indian River, MI
INDIAN RIVER – I’m not sure what I was expecting when I stopped to walk through the Hall of Sisters, a collection nun dolls on exhibit in this tiny Michigan town, but there was a lot to disconcert. Several hundred dolls, most nuns but some priests too, are really a sideshow to a massive six-story…
King Cake Recipe: Last Piece!
Bakers throughout Louisiana are breathing a sigh of relief, hiding their King Cake recipes away till next year.
Some Thoughts on Blogging & ADHD
One of the pleasurable things about writing – and fine arts like painting and ceramics – is that you have tangible evidence of your work at its height, unlike cooking, where once the meal is eaten there is no way to go back and truly taste it. To know with certainty that was the silkiest…
The (un)Importance of Place: An Interview with Arizona Sake’s Atsuo Sakurai
HOLBROOK, AZ – In dusty Northeast Arizona, a Japanese import is behind the 8-Ball, cranking out international-award-winning sake not nearly as fast as people would like to buy it. People like the Japanese chefs in Tucson and Phoenix, diplomats at the Japanese Consulate in Los Angeles and sake connoisseurs alert to his influence in a…
Tourist Chocolate
Unloved by locals in Costa Rica and Mexico, dark chocolate is a bittersweet business in pandemic times.
My Smoky Pilgrimage to Helen’s BBQ
Fewer than 10,000 people live in dusty Brownsville, TN. It would be easy to blow right past downtown if you were, say, trying desperately to find anything at all worth listening to on the radio. But even if you did, you still wouldn’t miss the town’s biggest attraction, Helen’s BBQ, which sits a mile removed,…
Accidental Chef in the Wild West
PORTAL, AZ – As if we were all Wild West outlaws lowering our bandanas for the first time, my neighbors in tiny Portal, Arizona and I are finally seeing one another’s faces. Never having seen their mouths, I made many of them extravagant Thanksgiving and December holiday dinners, alongside my friend Zola, who’s pushing 90…
New Mexico Christmas Decorations: Chile Red and Cactus Green
New Mexico has ‘Christmas’ year round – that’s how you order half red chile, half green chile sauce. But this mostly very Catholic state goes all out with Christmas decor, from religious to irreverent.
Polish Donuts: The Finest Pączki in all of Chicagoland are at Polish Pączki Cafe
CHICAGO – Don’t feel bad if you didn’t sound it out. [Ponch’-key] wasn’t my first guess either, on my pilgrimage to what I was informed is the best place in Chicago to taste these delightful Polish donuts, the Polish Pączki Cafe. Made from a yeasted dough, hand filled with not-too-sweet plum jam and shaped by…
Traveling Between Meals 