A little taste of Guadalajara

My Mother-in-law has come from Guadalajara to visit us, and when  she comes to visit she will make my husbands favorite foods. It is always a treat to taste new foods. Now this is Mexican food at its finest in my opinion. She prefers to make it as close to the way it would be made in Mexico. I have watched her spend hours preparing meat or salsa for supper. I see why my husband has become such a great cook, it's because he learned from his mother. She taught him to cook with love. In the first years of our marriage he would tell me to cook it right/good or not at all. To cook with love, I was clueless, but recently I have figured it out. She says that one of the best ways to show your love for someone is to cook their favorite foods.

The first thing she made us was is called Ensalada de Sopa de Codito, which was translated as elbow macaroni soup.

 In all honesty I was skeptical of it because it looked and sounded like regular old macaroni salad, and that is something I am not a fan of. This tasted fabulous. It had mayonnaise, elbow macaroni, chicken, lettuce, onion, tomato, sour cream. I really wish there was a way for my readers to sample this, it was awesome. She served it with Mexican chips and hot sauce.

She also made Pan Casero which translates to homemade bread. This one also had me shaking my head because she used 4 1/2 cups of flour, 4 sticks of butter, 2 tablespoons of baking powder, two eggs, and 1 teaspoon of vanilla. I was thinking that it was a lot of flour for bread, but it turned out lovely.

She started with the flour and sifted it by hand so it would be very fine. Then she added the baking powder.

in a separate bowl she mashed all of the butter.

Then she added it all together and did more mixing by hand.

Finally she used a hand mixer to get it completely blended. Next she poured the mix into two small loaf pans and two large loaf pans and sprinkled walnuts onto the top of the mix.

The final result was four very yummy loaves of bread.

It is always a blessing to have her visiting because she teaches me little tricks to make my food taste better, and she is always willing to share and learn as much from me as I am from her.