Cinco de Mayo is coming already. There will be tacos, and maybe some good Mexican beer. I have to confess that I came to the taco party late. When I was growing up our cooking spices were limited to Christmas egg nog nutmeg, cinnamon for cinnamon toast, black pepper and baking powder. Garlic was an exotic commodity. Red pepper was on the tables at Italian restaurants. I doubt if my mother was acquainted with cumin. We never had Mexican food. My mother’s idea of adventurous ethnic cooking was preparing corned beef for St. Patrick’s Day. And so my indoctrination came from my peers, as do so many seminal youthful experiences.

The first tacos I ever had were at my friend Sheila’s older sister’s house, down near the beach. Margo was sophisticated and modern. We adored her and the string of characters who wandered through her tiny house. She made tacos with regularity, and we mooched often. From her I learned how to shred the cheese and the lettuce and chop the onions that went on top of the taco meat, which we browned in a frying pan and then covered with a packet of Old El Paso Taco Seasoning Mix and a cup of water. I thought it couldn’t get any better than that.

Like Tim Walz, my introduction to Mexican cuisine came via “white guy tacos” which are “pretty much ground beef and cheese.” We must have had similar upbringings: “Here’s the deal… black pepper is the top spice level in Minnesota.”

Sheila and I graduated to platters of nachos and tacos at the Viva Zapata restaurant. (I think we were actually more attracted to the cheap pitchers of sangria, which we drank, sitting outside in dappled shade under leafy trees, enjoying languid summer vacations.) And then we wandered into Mama Vicky’s Old El Acapulco Restaurant, with its dodgy sanitation, but exquisitely flaming jalapeños on the lard-infused refried beans. Ah, youth.

True confession: my children were raised on tacos made with Old El Paso Taco Seasoning, but they always had vegetarian or fat-free refried beans. None of that deelish, heart-health-threatening lard.

Beef Tacos
45 minutes, serves 4

½ cup vegetable oil
12 small 5-inch corn tortillas
1 pound ground beef
Salt & pepper
1 medium onion, chopped
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 fresh hot chile (like jalapeño) seeded & minced, optional
1 tablespoon ground cumin
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 cup roughly chopped radishes for garnish
2 limes, quartered, for serving

Crumble the ground beef into a frying pan, sprinkle with salt and pepper, breaking up the meat as it cooks, until it starts to brown – about 5 or 10 minutes. Add the onion and cook, until it softens and begins to color. 5 or 10 minutes more.

Add the garlic and the chile (be sure to wash your hands thoroughly after handling the chile – I didn’t and rubbed my eye and wept for a good while afterward) and cook about 3 minutes, until they soften. Add the cumin and tomato paste and cook and stir until fragrant. I added a little water, perhaps a throw back from my Old El Paso training, but the mixture just seemed too dry. Experiment for yourself.

Warm the oil in another frying pan over a medium-high heat. Lay a tortilla shell in the oil, and let it bubble for about 15 seconds before turning it over, carefully, with tongs. Let that side bubble away for another 15 seconds or so and then fold the shell in half. Turn it back and forth until it is as crisp as you want. Mr. Sanders likes a softer shell, I like explosively brittle.

Divide the meat into the lovely, crunchy shells and top with cilantro and radishes. Squeeze some lime on top. Good-bye to grated cheese. Good-bye to too much sodium. (There are 370mg of sodium in a 1 ounce packet of Old El Paso. [I still have a packet in the spice cabinet, obviously.] Plus it costs about $2.59, so just imagine how much better this recipe is for you, sodium-wise and financially.)

Open beer, pour beer, drink beer.
Other topping suggestions:
 guacamole, chopped tomatoes, shredded cabbage, chopped scallions, black beans, salsa, shredded lettuce, chopped peppers, sliced radishes, sour cream.

When my children were little, I used spinach for their tacos instead of lettuce. I don’t think they have forgiven me yet. To keep up with current trends, you could try using kale for your healthy tacos.
But don’t trust my word for it, try these excellent healthy taco recipes: Celebrate Cinco de Mayo

How to turn leftover roast lamb into mouthwatering tacos – recipe

Happy Cinco de Mayo!
“On the subject of spinach: divide into little piles. Rearrange again into new piles. After five of six maneuvers, sit back and say you are full.”
—Delia Ephron

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Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.

May Day is upon us— that should put a spring in your step. I want to retire the crockpot, stash the Dutch oven, put the lasagna pan out to pasture and start digging into light, healthy, crispy fresh green salads. With crusty French bread and sweet butter and a glass or two of cool Chardonnay. In my bare feet. In shorts.
Now is a good time to get outside – whether in your own garden, or wandering around the farmers’ market. Lots of fruits and vegetables are in season again – and we should be supporting our local farmers!
In Season

We have bought four humble tomato plants, and have planted them in the raised garden bed in our side yard. There are a couple of blossoms already, which is nature’s clever way of encouraging us to believe that we will have a bountiful harvest of tomato sandwiches later this summer.

That is always the best part of gardening, seeing everything in my mind’s eye in the gauzy Technicolor future. Somehow there I am always wearing a float-y white outfit as I drop my bountiful harvest into my antique English garden trug, clipping merrily (and with surgical precision) with the vintage secateurs sourced from an obscure French flea market. Reality won’t elbow that fantasy out of my malleable brain for a couple of months…

But back to the matter at hand – salad: as usual, we are hoping that the basil container farm will be busy and bushy this summer, as well as the annual tomato exercise, which I hope won’t wither on their burgeoning vines. We are also considered trying to make our own fresh mozzarella cheese. Maybe it would be easier to just move to Italy. But that depends on the lottery officials, and I am sad to say that we don’t know anyone at the Texas Lottery Commission. Texas Lottery Scandal https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/23/us/texas-lottery-ryan-mindell-resignation/index.html We are just homegrowns.
Tender Green Salad ideas!

This will be perfect for the Friday nights when Chef Tomasso doesn’t want to fire up the oven for our weekly pizza night:

Pizza Salad
Exactly the same way you would choose your pizza toppings, free to add in your favorite toppings INTO the salad to recreate the classic flavors. Use all the extra toppings you love: olives, tuna, capers, meatballs, Nduja, onions, peppers: whatever your go-to pizza order is.

Single serving — you can do the math for more

1/2 small eggplant, diced
Handful of cherry tomatoes
1/2 red pepper
1/2 teaspoon oregano and 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
Sliced pepperoni – your call
2 slices sourdough bread or day-old French bread, cut into cubes
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan
Handful of torn basil leaves
1/4 cup shredded mozzarella
3 ounces shredded chicken breast (if you are concerned about protein)

Garlic herb dressing
2 tablespoons Greek yogurt
Pinch oregano
Pinch garlic powder
Salt and pepper
1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
Preheat your oven to 400°F.
Toss the diced eggplant, cherry tomatoes, red pepper and pepperoni with oregano, garlic powder and salt. Spread on a baking tray. Roast for 12–15 minutes, until softened, sticky and slightly caramelized.

Scatter the diced bread cubes and a little grating of parmesan over the top, then return to roast for another 4–5 minutes until the croutons are crisp and golden.

While that’s roasting, stir together the yogurt, garlic powder, oregano, vinegar, salt and pepper for the garlic and herb dressing. Add a splash of water if you want a looser consistency.

Once everything is out of the oven, toss with the basil, shredded mozzarella and cooked chicken so the warmth starts to melt everything together. Serve warm with a generous drizzle of dressing. Take a plate, with your glass of Chardonnay, out onto the back porch, and plant yourself in the plastic Adirondack chair. Enjoy a cool Friday night, eating your veggies, smelling the breeze, and enjoying a tasty al fresco meal. Have fun streaking on May Day!

Here is an air fryer version: Pizza Salad with Garlic Herb Dressing

Fancier Salad

“A salad is not a meal. It is a style.”
—Fran Lebowitz

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Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.

Early spring brings us delicious young vegetables: peas, asparagus, garlic, and radishes. Radishes are the pink darlings of early spring. Cherry red, fuchsia, magenta, hot pink, carmine, crimson, scarlet, carnelian, vermilion, coral, cardinal, cerise – I could go through my art supply catalogues picking out the names of vivid reds and pinks all day long – radishes are deeply satisfying to look at, and to gobble up. And they grow fast – plant seeds 30 days after the last frost and you, too, can enjoy pink spicy goodness.

I remember sitting on the back porch on summer evenings when I was a girl, watching my father transform four uniform pink hamburger patties into charbroiled hockey pucks on the tiny black hibachi. We would snack on the raw, red-skinned radishes that my mother doled out to us in small Pyrex bowls, filled with bone-chilling ice water. How could anything so cold have such a spicy kick?

How can we resist the lure of fresh radishes? Especially when we get fancy, and doll them up with butter and a hint of Maldon salt? The butter truly tones down the peppery, hot flavor of radish and turns it into an indulgent treat. Dorie Greenspan says, “It’s a little trick the French play to bring foods into balance, and it works.”

For the data driven – radishes are high in fiber, riboflavin, and potassium. They are low in calories, and have lots of Vitamin C. They are a natural diuretic, and have detoxing abilities. Radish facts

I prefer to dwell on the spicy flavor and the crunch.

Have you tried sliced radishes on buttered bread? They will jazz up your next tea party the way cucumber sandwiches never have. Although, if you were French, you would have been eating radishes on buttered slices of brown bread for breakfast for years. Mais oui! Radishes on Brown Bread

And if you’d rather not be picking up disks of radishes escaping from your sandwiches, try this easy peasy radish butter. Yumsters! Radish Butter

Consider the cocktail, and how easy it is to add some sliced radishes to your favorite Bloody Mary recipe. I’m not sure that I would go to all the trouble that this recipe stirs up – I would have to make a separate trip out to buy sherry, after all. Easter Cocktails Radishes will add a kick to the bloodies you might need to add to your Easter brunch menu – making all those jelly beans palatable. (Don’t forget – Easter is April 20th – it’s almost time to start hiding those Easter eggs.

For your next book club meeting, here is a cocktail with literary aspirations: Radish Gin Cocktail I haven’t been able to find the Cocchi Americano at our liquor store, though. So I have left it out, and no one seems the wiser. Nor has it been noted by my well-read blue stockings that I also used Bombay instead of the requisite Dorothy Parker gin. (For the crowd that is used to extremely cheap white wine, this is an eye-opener, just like Uncle Willy’s in The Philadelphia Story. It packs a punch.)

Here’s one for Mr. Sanders to perfect: grilled steak with grilled radishes. Grilled Steak 
It makes me sad, though, to cook a radish. There are some vegetables that are meant to be eaten gloriously simple and raw – like fresh peas, carrots, green beans and celery. Luke the wonder dog agrees.

I think I will just mosey out to the kitchen now and cut the tops off some fresh, rosy red radishes. Then I’ll slice off the root ends, pretend that I can carve the little globes into beauteous scarlet rosettes, and plop them into a small bowl of ice water. Then I will sprinkle some crunchy Maldon salt flakes over the clumsy rose petal shapes I have created, and eat one of my favorite root vegetables.

“Plant a radish.
Get a radish.
Never any doubt.
That’s why I love vegetables;
You know what you’re about!”
—Tom Jones

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Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.

Eggs are the great equalizer: everyone needs them, and everyone has the same horrified reaction to their current sky-high prices. Yikes. I look forward to the days when I can push the shopping cart past the Food Lion’s refrigerated case, and keep on tooling down the aisle, past the eggs, toward the yogurt and the butter. I can bypass the rubberneckers who stand gawping at the signs posting prices, and the scrawled apologies for limited egg supplies.

Egg prices are now vertiginous, as I am sure you have noticed, by a minimum of 30% and most can be up about 60%. I see Facebook photo posts of $15 eggs – not around here – but I still find six and seven dollars for a dozen eggs pretty pricy. It’s time to rein in some of our spending. Waffle House has instituted a 50¢ per egg surcharge in their restaurants. New York City bodegas are selling “loose eggs”: 3 for $2.99. Food Business News says, “Nearly 7 million commercial chickens and turkeys were scheduled to be euthanized following outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) the week of March 28, according to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service of the US Department of Agriculture.” Which can only mean that the prices will be going up again.

And then there are the shopping days when I need to buy eggs. Do I want large, extra-large, jumbo, free-range, cage-free, pasture raised, brown, white, certified organic, Omega-3 enriched, vegetarian fed, cardboard carton, foam cartons, a half dozen, a dozen, eighteen? (I found quail eggs the other day, at the tonier grocery store. I thought about staging a Brideshead Revisited moment.) It used to be easy shopping for eggs. I would stride with confidence to the egg case, pick out a cardboard box of extra large brown eggs, examine them briefly for cracks, place carton carefully in my cart, and move along briskly to the rest of my grocery shopping.

Now, in our new golden age, after having survived the COVID pandemic, we are facing a devastating and avian influenza, which is infecting whole farms and millions of birds nationally. We are being encouraged to acquire our own flocks of back yard birds. And while the prospect of raising steamingly fresh, hyper-local, bespoke eggs might tempt some folks, I think I will continue to be thrifty, and buy the eggs we need, that I can afford, and make some substitutions where I can.

It is easier to make replacements for eggs in baking than it is to replace them as the centerpiece of your morning meal: some mornings you just need a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich. In baking recipes eggs have two roles: as a binder, holding the recipe together, and as a leavening agent, which helps the recipe to rise. Half a banana, 1/4 cup of applesauce, or ground flax seeds can all be used as binders in simple drop cookie recipes. For a leavening agent you can try 1-1/2 tablespoons vegetable oil mixed with 1-1/2 tablespoons water and 1 teaspoon baking powder per egg.

And then there is Aquafaba – the liquid you find in a can of chick peas. An amazing miracle liquid, it can be whipped to a stiff froth – like egg whites. New York Times egg substitutions

Canned coconut milk, yogurt, buttermilk: Swap in 50 grams (about 3 tablespoons) for 1 large egg.

And here is one I never would have guessed: use instant mashed potatoes as the binding agent in meatloaf.

And here is one I will never in a million years touch: tofu. Ickpittooee. But I think Nacho Cheese Doritos are fine dining, so you do you. Tofu

Our smart friends at Food52 have lots of suggestions: Food52

Vegan chocolate cupcakes from the New York Times

Vegetarians and people with food allergies are wise to the ways of egg substitutions: The health food store can be your new best friend.

It’s going to get tricky around Easter and Passover. Start saving your pennies.

(The Slate Money podcast has a weekly egg watch: Slate Money Egg Heist! )

Everything you ever wondered about eggs

Be creative, and save your best fresh back yard eggs with the orange yolks for a nice leisurely weekend breakfast. It is finally spring, after all.

“Probably one of the most private things in the world is an egg before it is broken.”
― M.F.K. Fisher

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Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.

Ah, broccoli is having a resurgence in popularity. Every where I turned this week I ran into another story, another recipe. It’s probably food writers yearning to be set free into the garden – we crave greens and sunshine again. This morning Mr. Sanders commented that even the New York Times was going to town with a slew of broccoli recipes – which is all well and good for him. He delights in broccoli, broccolini and broccoli rabe. Give me a simple, raw head of iceberg lettuce and I am a happy camper. New York Times

The most basic methods for cooking broccoli are to blanching, steaming in the microwave, steaming on the stovetop, sautéing, and roasting broccoli. Fun facts to know and tell: broccoli has as much calcium, by weight, as milk. It is also loaded with fiber. Broccoli transforms to brighter, spring-y-er green, after steaming. You can steam broccoli in a mere five minutes —which leaves you plenty of time to go back to streaming The Pitt. Fact #2: the longer you steam broccoli, the more nutrients you lose. Which means we shouldn’t follow our mothers’ rules for boiling broccoli into submission.
Listen to Martha and her experts: Martha and Broccoli

You can grill it, too. Which will take it outdoors. In our house, cooking outdoors means that Mr. Sanders takes over the cooking responsibilities. Grilled and roasted broccoli are his new passions.

The smarties at Bon Appétit have a recipe that he just loves for steak and roasted broccoli: Bon Appétit I have found him reading recipes online, which he enthusiastically abandons in favor of his gut instincts about these matters. Mostly he pulls off his experiments, for which I applaud him. (I do my fair share, washing up behind him. He generates a lot of dirty pots and pans in his creative cooking frenzies.)

Mr. Sanders’s Spicy Hot Grilled Broccoli

INGREDIENTS
(Mr. Sanders eyeballs all of these measurements, and you should, too.)
3 – 4 crowns fresh broccoli
2 – 3 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 – 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 tablespoon Tabasco sauce
1/2 tablespoon Maldon salt flakes
1/2 tablespoon black pepper
1/2 tablespoon garlic powder

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
Clean the broccoli and remove from the stalks. Put broccoli in large bowl and add olive oil. Stir lightly to coat the broccoli with oil. Add Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco, salt, black pepper, red pepper flakes, and garlic powder. Stir again.

Set the grill temp to high. Use a sheet of aluminum foil or we have a perforated pan for grilling vegetables. Lay the foil (or pan) on the grill, and spread the broccoli. Close the grill lid, and cook at high heat for 8-10 minutes. Voilà! C’est bon!

When they were little it was hard to persuade our children to eat broccoli. They had a sixth sense about avoiding steamed broccoli, but sometimes we could persuade them to try it with a tasty side of ranch dressing. They are too sophisticated now to fall for bottled salad dressing, but I bet they would try these dips:

Basic Vinaigrette

3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 garlic clove, minced
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
Maldon salt
Pepper

Combine the vinegar, garlic, mustard, salt and pepper in an old mayo jar. Cover and shake to dissolve the salt. Add the olive oil and shake to blend. Taste for seasoning. Keep in the fridge for other salad and vegetable needs.

Greek Tzatziki
Mix Greek yogurt with olive oil, chopped cucumber, minced garlic, lemon juice, salt, and pepper. Wowser.

Even Martha weighs in with a simple honey mustard dip for raw vegetables: Honey Mustard Dip

And these recipes are not just for the younger set, they are also good for cocktail hours, when you are having a drink with friends and want to lessen your existential angst and ward off cancer. The virtue of broccoli!

“Listen to your broccoli and it will tell you how to eat it.”
—Anne Lamott

I stand with the little girl in this 1928 New Yorker cartoon. She was correct in her assessment of broccoli, and spinach for that matter – no, thank you. Cartoon

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Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.

Shrove Tuesday, also known as Pancake Tuesday, is the last opportunity to use all the precious eggs and fats before starting on the Lenten fast. Pancakes are a perfect way to use up these ingredients. Choose your pancake wisely, as it’s 40 long days until Easter.

Are you all fattened up for Mardi Gras? Lent starts on Wednesday, you know. You’ve only got a few more days to parade around, strewing beads and misbehaving, and eating whatever your little heart desires. We are going to make stacks, and towers, and cascades of teetering, delicious pancakes ourselves.

Luckily it is almost time for the weekend! And weekends mean real breakfasts. Eggs, bacon, pancakes…Traditionally, eggs and fats were forbidden during Lent. On Shrove Tuesday, the day before Lent starts, pancakes were rustled up to make good use of any of the tempting sinful ingredients that were cluttering up the larder. Pancakes are the last indulgence before the forty days of slim pickings during Lent. We don’t often eschew pancakes. We tend to err on the side of pleasure – ascetics are not us. Tuesday is our last chance before we clean up our acts, and get pious. Or to at least step on the scale and realize Carnival has been rocking out just long enough. So in the scant time before Lent, let the pancake flipping begin!

Pancakes are weekend food. We tend to be grouchy crunchy cereal people during the week, barely looking up from our devices to make civilized chatter. Peeling a banana is about as fancy as we get in food prep on a workday morning.

Weekends are different. And glorious. It seems as if there is an abundance of leisure time; when it is pleasurable and we feel un-rushed, and we can actually talk and laugh and plan how many trips to the hardware store we think we are going to need to make. And will we be able to pencil in a nap? Or a movie? The endless possibilities that present themselves at the beginning of a weekend!

We have noticed that the meals over which the most time is devoted are the meals that get eaten in the shortest amount of time imaginable. Thanksgiving takes at least a day to prepare, and the meal’s temporal length is about 20 minutes. Pancakes disappear in a snap as they are transported from the griddle to the plate. A nanosecond is spent pouring the maple syrup and cutting a little square of salty butter. Then the pancakes vaporize almost as quickly as the dog’s kibble is scarfed up. Ten minutes to mix, 20 minutes to let the batter rest, 20 minutes to cook, equals about 3 minutes to devour.

There is a nice rhythm and tempo preparing the pancakes, though. (Assuming you square away the bacon before you start pouring pancake batter.) Measuring and stirring, testing the griddle with a drop of water, tasting the bacon, wasting the first batch, pouring out the second, third and fourth servings, watching the pancakes bubble, dropping one for the dog, flipping pancakes one-handed with Merrie Melody aplomb. Whoops. Another pancake for the dog.

Buttermilk Pancakes
3 eggs, separated
1 2/3 cups buttermilk
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tablespoon sugar
3 tablespoons butter, melted
Beat the yolks until pale and smooth.
Beat in the buttermilk and then the baking soda and mix well.
Sift in the dry ingredients mixing as you add; make sure the batter is smooth.
Add in the melted butter and mix well.
Beat the egg whites in another bowl until stiff.

Fold into the batter until no white bits are visible.
Let batter stand about 20 minutes before pouring out pancakes.
Make sure your griddle is really hot – do the water test.
Ladle batter onto griddle; turn when bubbles form across the cakes and allow to lightly brown on the second side.
Serve with lots warm maple syrup and sweet salty butter and lots of bacon. And tall glasses of cold milk. Yumsters!

Impressive vacation-worthy pancakes from our friends at Food52

Martha suggests trying the crowd-pleasing buttermilk pancake. I love the touch of lemon juice: Martha’s Pancakes

As this is the last week of Black History Month, it is fitting that we flip some of Rosa Parks’s Featherlite Pancakes. Dan Pashman, of the Sporkful, interviewed Rosa Parks’ nieces: Rosa Parks’s Pancakes

Rosa Parks’s Featherlite Pancakes
Sift together
1 cup flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar

Mix
1 egg
1 1/4 cup milk
1/3 cup peanut butter
1 tablespoon melted shortening or oil
Combine with dry ingredients, cook at 275° on griddle

“Everything can have drama if it’s done right. Even a pancake.”

-Julia Child