One of my “brothers” whom I have adopted grew up in Laredo, “Down on the Rio Grande” , as the song says. We enjoy cooking together, and I’ve learned a lot from him about South Texas and Mexican home cooking. One of our favorite sayings is “we don’t trust people who don’t cook with garlic!” Turns out that garlic is more than a seasoning it is a medicine! It keeps your blood pressure down and enhances your immune system (he says maybe that’s because your breath keeps people away and they are where you get high blood pressure and infectious disease). In any event, this weekend we made calabacitas (Little squash) with fresh yellow squash from the garden.
Cut up a half a big black iron skillet full of small fresh yellow squash, drizzle olive oil over it and crank the heat up to high. Chop in a puño, (a handful) of onion, chopped potatoes, and a whole clump of chopped garlic. Sauté this, and add garlic salt, a good shake of comino (cumin powder) a touch of Mexican oregano, and some pepper. Even a little chile powder could be nice here. We threw in some chunks of already cooked chicken “fajitas”.Then we turned the heat down to simmer. You could put some small strips of Bell pepper in it but we didn’t have any, it was the weekend and it’s been too hot in the garden for the peppers. Oh, well, manana! The Calabacitas was Sabrosa!