Writing the book on the food culture of the border seemed like a good challenge...
"she quickly ducked* around and found out." *not an autocorrect, apple now let's us cuss.
Food/ history/ human stories are my thing, I love exploring and discovering connections that aren’t common knowledge.
I wanted an outlet to bring you all into the process of this new book project of mine.
My book writing journey is different than some of my colleagues. I have loved writing and having the ability to have my story, a story that so many people could possibly relate to drove me to submit a proposal for a border kid’s 1/3 life memoir. What the hell does that mean?! you ask… At the age that I am now, I have stacked up enough life experiences, peaks & valleys, etc. that if I wait until it is socially acceptable to write a memoir, I’ll probably have forgotten half of this shit (sorry for the language ma*). Though that particular book wasn't received as well as the idea of a cookbook, apparently the publishing world understood something about me that I didn’t. I needed to write my cookbook first. This scared me more than the memoir. A cookbook is so final in its creation and will live on past you, in a world of a million cookbooks, what do I have to say that hasn’t already been said? How do I create a timeless piece of kitchen literature? Why am I thinking about this as if I am writing The Iliad? “Get over yourself!” you say?, “write the ducken book”. Well, over I went & writing is what I am doing.
My Border Kid story will come out one day, but for now you all will have to help me sell so many copies of my rookie cookbook, Borderlands, that the publisher wants another 20 books from me. no seriously, do you know how expensive two college tuitions are in a single mother, income household?!
Do you want to learn how we came to eat the food that is famous along the ENTIRE US/MX border?!
I don’t particularly love the word ‘Traditional’ when it comes to food so I wanted to show you the ‘classics’ within my bubble. The project was meant to cover my particular border kid food life within the context of the San Diego/Tijuana + Mexicali/Calexico sides.Then, I realized that I wanted to go further, and head east. The Texas border is enormous and includes many of the most polarizing dishes/ protagonists in the border’s food history.
Still with me?
For my paid subscribers, every week I will chronicle my process on the theme of each of my Borderlands chapters. You will get a front row seat to the stories that were cut out because I needed to edit. Recipes that have never been published and hopefully an understanding of how rich our culture truly is.
Plan on traveling through Mexico? I will also sprinkle in my favorite food spots all over the country and what you should see while you are exploring.
I promise…
That as an ESL first generation Mexican-American, there will be plenty of typos and sentences structured as if Yoda were speaking. This is a raw, unedited version of me and my creative process. Do not feel the need to send me corrections. I am in my loving my flaws phase and the fact that I speak three 1/2 languages is pretty awesome to little me.
xx Chef CZ aka Clau.
