Juan of Words

Juan of Words does Salsa Verde

After taking your votes on Twitter, everyone wanted salsa verde instead of salsa roja, which I guess makes sense because everyone prefers green salsa to red salsa on their tacos, well most people anyway.  The process is very simple.  All you need to get started are a few green tomatoes (tomatillos), the peppers of your choice – I chose chile piquin because it is a personal favorite – a skillet or flat iron, and of course a molcajete.

My goal is to make this recipe as simple as possible for anyone to make, or at least get an idea of how to make salsa verde.  For red salsa you would basically change the color of your tomatoes – and remember folks the more chiles you add to your salsa the spicier it will be.  If it comes out too spicy people might accuse you of having been angry when you made the salsa.

Your comments are always welcome – thanks for watching!

Frijoles Fried with Juan of Words

Refried Beans

So for Fourth of July what better way to commemorate our diversity in people and cultures than to highlight one of my own cultura’s most exportable recipes.  In the Great State of Texas refried beans, or frijoles refritos, are the perfect companion to any number of Tex-Mex dishes, as well as the main dish itself.  Wether with rice on the side, cheese on top, chile verde or rojo, eggs, or anything else your little pancita desires, this treat is all of one word, all the time: delicious.

Now for you professional cooks, both domestic or otherwise, you’ll have to forgive my methods in this how-to video.  I am cooking from the perspective of a pseudo-machista Latino male who very rarely cooks…mas bien, who doesn’t know how to cook much at all.  I know.  I am working on that.  But anyhow, the beans used are Goya Pinto Beans and the video is meant to show that if a guy like me can do it so can anyone else.

Please enjoy, share your recipes for this and other dishes, and let me know what other foods you think a guy like me should attempt.

Project Give Back

At the age of 15, working for free in a homeless shelter for an entire week was not even within my radar of things to do.  Maybe that would have been different if I could have done it in place of school.  In fact, I know it would have. 

Katie and Alice are ninth graders at the Houston British School and they were lucky enough to skip a whole week’s worth of classroom instruction by volunteering at a place of business for one week.  They don’t get counted absent or reprimanded for not being in class.  Instead they are congratulated and tested on what they have learned in their real world work experiences.  

The British teens tell me this a tradition most schools in England adhere to!  Somehow, Take Your Child to Work Day is beginning to look like a rip off!

Anyhow, I digress.  These young ladies could have spent the week at the Houston Zoo, a law firm, the Mayor’s Office, or anywhere else…more uhm fun, but they didn’t.  They chose to work with the dozens of local homeless women and children who have been displaced in the fourth largest city in the United States, and who live at The Salvation Army’s shelter, Family Residence.  Very cool!

Hear from them why they chose this assignment:

Young People With Big Dreams

Until she heard her name called out last Tuesday night at The Salvation Army’s third annual Youth of the Year Scholarship Awards Banquet, Eliana Perez didn’t have any true higher education aspirations. 

The high school student admits she wanted to go to college, but because of her family’s limited resources she had all but given up on her dreams.

Instead Perez foresaw a future for herself of helping her family make ends meet after graduation.  That all changed when, to her surprise, she was awarded third place and a $3,000 scholarship for her entry in this year’s Youth of the Year speech competition put together by The Salvation Army Greater Houston Area Command and the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. 

Immediately her eyes welled up and the idea of attending a four year university became a more plausible reality.