The simplest soup in the universe — split pea — is one of the most delicious

This is the simplest soup in the universe, and one of the most heart-warming when it's cold outside. 

I try to keep its ingredients on hand all the time during the winter, so if a craving strikes, I can put it together without going shopping. If you buy the ham hocks two or three at a time, you can throw the extra(s) in the freezer. Of course if you happen to have a leftover ham bone, you can use that instead. Besides the ham and the split peas (which keep forever), all the ingredients are things a cook usually has on hand anyway: an onion, three or four carrots, a little olive oil. 

And it smells so good while it's cooking. 

Making it couldn't be easier. Just sauté diced onion and carrot in a little olive oil, add water, split peas and the ham hock, and let it simmer till it starts looking like soup. Take out the ham, discard its bone and fat, cut up the meat and toss it into the soup. Correct the seasoning and that's it – very little effort; time (about an hour and a half, maybe a little more) does all the work for you.

Start it in on a weekend morning, and you can eat it for lunch. Or make it in the afternoon and serve it on Monday or Tuesday night – with some good crusty dark rye bread and sweet butter, and maybe a salad – for a zero-effort dinner. 

Our first guest cook: Yasmin Halima whips up her family's wonderful thummi letho – Burmese chicken curry

The table is set for thummi letho, Burmese chicken curry, with all its garnishes.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story about Yasmin Halima, her daughter Seema Yasmin and their family was originally published back in January 2016. We are republishing it now because it has been one of our most popular stories over the years, and it feels particularly relevant at this moment.

Yasmin Halima, the mother of my young and brilliant colleague Dr. Seema Yasmin, was eager to get back into the kitchen. During the holidays, she and her family lost their house in one of the tornados that tore through the Dallas area – so devastating. When they came to dinner on New Year's Eve, I told Yasmin she was welcome to come cook in mine whenever she liked, and Seema emailed me a couple days later: Her mom really missed the kitchen and would love to come — and she’d share a recipe as a guest cook here at Cooks Without Borders.

Yasmin sent me a list of ingredients to pick up. She would be preparing (and teaching me how to make) her family's favorite comfort dish, thummi letho – Burmese chicken curry.

Yasmin and Seema respect Muslim dietary restrictions and only eat halal meat, which poses no problem at all, as there' s a halal butcher in a wonderful Asian grocery, Indo Pak Market, not far from our house. It's super fun doing the shopping there, hunting down chick pea flour (labeled as besan) and coconut milk and tamarind purée, which comes in a plastic-wrapped block. 

Yasmin arrives, and we chat for a while. Though her daughter is my colleague, Yasmin is a year younger than I! Then we head into the kitchen. Once we start chopping peanuts and slicing garlic and stirring and sautéing, she relaxes and tells me her story – a remarkable one. 

Born on India's west coast, near Surat in the state of Gujarat, Yasmin moved with her family to England when she was six. She grew up there, in a tiny industrial town near Coventry, in the Midlands, with a conservative Indian Muslim upbringing. (Her grandparents and father were born in Rangoon, Burma, where they had textile factories.) Yasmin had an arranged marriage, and when she was only 19, gave birth to Seema. 

Yasmin lightly sears cubes of chicken coated with chopped garlic.

The marriage was not a happy one, and when she was 26, she made an unfathomable decision: She would leave not only her husband, but her community. "I wanted an education, and I wanted my daughter to have an education," she tells me, as she stirs a pot of chicken, lightly searing the pieces, which she's tossed with chopped garlic. Such a thing – leaving, or even making any kind of life decision – was unheard of for a young woman of her upbringing. Yasmin did it anyway.

Her family supported her as she left for university and then moved to London as a researcher for the national department of health. She raised Seema on her own, but credits her sister with ensuring her daughter was educated about her faith and culture. None of it was easy.

Yasmin tells me she succeeded in getting her undergraduate degree in educational research and psychology and Seema – a star pupil (who by the way met her husband Emmanuel when they were both 17) – managed to achieve her own dream, gaining admittance to Cambridge University to study medicine. While Seema was at Cambridge, Yasmin – who was working for a non-profit aid organization – realized a dream of her own, to study at an Ivy League university. Admittance to a graduate program at Columbia brought her – and later Seema and Emmanuel – to the United States. Yasmin spent three years in New York, then seven years in Washington, D.C., running an international non-profit organization called Global Campaign for Microbicides followed by a few years working in public relations, before moving with Seema and Emmanuel to Texas. 

Amazing how you can get a know a person when you're cooking together. Before the evening is through, I learn that she'd like to start catering – on a small scale: cooking Indian and Burmese dishes for private dinner parties. 

So. It was Yasmin's sister who taught her how make thummi letho, the dish we're putting together. "Part of what we do to heal is we cook," she says. "And we feed. We make this dish that makes you feel good. We have emotions attached not just to food, but to dishes." Thummi letho, Yasmin tells me, "is such a basic, homely dish. We eat it to make us feel warm and safe." She sees food as a connection back to her family, too, along with observing certain Muslim traditions – praying and eating halal. "It's my umbilical cord back to my family and community." Neither she nor Seema wear the veil.

Seema, Emmanuel and Lily will be here in a bit, along with Yasmin's sister's son, Luqman, who just flew in last night from his home in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to help the family through their crisis. "They're very close," Yasmin says about Luqman and Seema. "Like brother and sister." 

Yasmin Halima

When she makes thummi at home, Yasmin takes her time. "In the morning I might do a couple of things" – preparing some of the garnishes, say, and making the Basmati rice – "and in the afternoon I might do a couple of things." 

The dish has several parts: what she calls the "base dish" – rice, cellophane (mung bean) noodles and linguini, all tossed together and garnished with sliced potatoes and eggs and chopped peanuts; a coconut milk-based chicken curry; and a variety of garnishes, to be passed at the table. 

It's a lot of elements, but the curry itself is very simple, taking less than a half hour to make. If you want to simplify it, you can serve the curry on plain Basmati, or on plain cellophane noodles, and serve it with just a garnish or two – maybe lime wedges and chopped cilantro. 

Yasmin sprinkles a couple teaspoons of chile powder onto the chicken, then thinks again and adds another. "You don't want it bland and boring!" A can and a half of coconut milk goes in, then it simmers till the chicken is just cooked through. While it bubbles, she toasts the chickpea flour in a dry pan till it's fragrant and it changes color slightly to pinky-gold. ("Can you see how it changed?" she says. It's pretty subtle.) That gets stirred into the curry, along with a couple spoonfuls of peanut butter, and voilå. 

Thummi letho

The garnishes have been prepared and put in small bowls: crushed, roasted peanuts; the limes and cilantro; fried garlic chips; fried chile flakes; tamarind paste. 

Seema, Emmanuel and Luqman arrive, followed by Thierry and our friend Habib: thummi letho party! Seema has brought a galette des rois for dessert, given to her by Marina, another colleague. I'm glad Thierry and Habib will be handy to explain that tradition (they're both French). 

Seema's excited about the thummi. "When else can you eat noodles and rice in the same dish?" she says. "It's not fancy food; it's comfort food, and it tastes so good. There are so many ingredients!"

Yasmin puts the plates together for us, as if she hasn't done enough. First the noodles and rice, then she spoons some curry over, topping it with a slice of potato and one of egg. Then the garnishes: limes, cilantro, a drizzle of sweet-sour tamarind paste, some chopped peanuts. It's wonderful: coconutty and tangy and hot and rich with peanuts. I can see why it's a family addiction. 

Naturally we all go for another round.

Later, Thierry and I take the galette to the kitchen to insert the small ceramic king figurine inside, then bring it back to the dining room and explain the game: Whoever gets the piece with the king inside wins the crown – and chooses a queen. I slice it, happy that my knife doesn't hit the ceramic piece. It's much more fun if you don't know where it is. We taste the cake – puff pastry filled with almond frangipane (thank you, Marina!). Bingo – Luqman gets the king! 

He places the glittery paper crown on his head, and we ask, "Who's your queen"?

"Emmanuel!" he cries. How lovely: Burma meets France to bring a little sweetness, a little spice, into the new year. 

RECIPE: Yasmin’s Thummi Letho (Burmese Chicken Curry)

Emmanuel Farrugia (left) and Luqman Vorajee, le roi.

Easy dishes to bring to a New Year's Day lunch with great friends

For the second year running, our dear friends Nicola and Habib (she's from England; he's Tunisian by way of Paris) invited us to ring in the new year with a lunch at their townhouse in downtown Dallas, next to the farmers market. Nicola and Habib served a couple of gorgeous poached Arctic chars they had made the day before, along with a zingy tarragon sauce – with duck-fat potatoes and white and green asparagus. Our friend Georges, a Belgian ex-chef, brought a rustic port pâté he'd made, along with some beautiful cheeses. To round things out, I brought a cucumber-dill salad to go with the fish, a log of goat cheese marinated in olive oil and herbs and some leftover Sevillian marinated carrots, a tapa I'd served on New Year's Eve.

The whole trick was to find a couple things to bring that wouldn't take long to put together, as I was busy cooking for friends the previous night (and we went to bed without having done the dishes!). The cucumber salad was easy – I just whisked together some rice vinegar, Dijon mustard, dill, salt, pepper and a little sugar, dropped in sliced red onions, let them quick-pickle while a sliced hothouse cucumbers using a mandolin, then tossed it all together. 

The goat cheese was even simpler – I just steeped fresh thyme and oregano in warm olive oil a few minutes, added lemon zest, poured it over the goat cheese with cracked pepper and Maldon salt, and it was ready to go. Impossible to get a fresh baguette, as it was New Year's Day, but I brought one along from the night before to cut into toasted rounds to scoop it up.

I was feeling a little guilty, as Habib had asked me to bring a dessert – I didn't have time to manage it. One of their friends brought a make-your-own sundae set-up (fun!). And another, Alicia (a Mexico City-born border-free cook!) brought a remarkable apple cake. 

It didn't look like much, but it was wonderful: Super vibrant with apple flavor, it had a marvelous texture, sort of crisp-tender-chewy on the edges and almost custardy inside, not overly sweet, with a gentle backdrop of rum. It reminded me of something. But what?

I asked Alicia about the recipe, and she recited ingredients: apples, rum, flour . . . .Where'd she get the recipe, I wondered? From a magazine a few years back, she said.

"What kind of apples did you use?" 

"Different kinds."

Suddenly it hit me: It was an apple cake I fell in love with from a cookbook Dorie Greenspan had published in 2010, Around My French Table. I'd written about it on Eats, the food blog The Dallas Morning News had at the time. I called up the old post on my phone and showed it to Alicia.

"Is this the recipe?" I asked.

"It is!" she said.

Mystery solved. Dorie, your recipe has legs!

Flavors of Spain and Morocco on a most unusual New Year's Eve

It has been a difficult and even terrifying holiday season – thanks to several tornadoes that tore through North Texas the day after Christmas – for many of our neighbors and friends around Dallas, where we live. 

For my friend and colleague Seema Yasmin, her husband Emmanuel, and Seema's mom, Yasmin Halima, it was truly an ordeal, as their house was completely destroyed by a tornado. Emmanuel and Yasmin, unable to get to the safest part of the house, huddled in front of the refrigerator, clinging to Seema and Emmanuel's two-year-old pit bull, Lily, as their kitchen was hit. Seema, a medical doctor-turned-journalist who specializes in infectious diseases, was away in Liberia, reporting on survivors of the ebola epidemic there, when she had news of the disaster. She cut short her trip and arrived back in Dallas – but not home; that was gone – four days later. Emmanuel, Yasmin and Lily were staying in a hotel. 

My husband Thierry and I had planned to spend a quiet evening at home for New Year's Eve, so we invited them over New Year's Eve dinner. What to cook for friends who've been through (and are going through) such a traumatic experience? Seema and Yasmin don't eat meat unless it's halal; "consider us piscatarians," says Seema. When I mentioned the restriction to Thierry, he had one gleeful suggestion: paella! 

Perfect. We'd start with tapas and a bottle of Cava (for those who would partake). I whipped out my favorite Spanish cookbook – Anya von Bremzen's 2006 volume, The New Spanish Table – for tapas ideas. For a first course, maybe I'd whip up something involving piquillo peppers, tuna and allioli – lemony, super-garlicky Spanish mayonnaise, which is also great stirred into seafood paella. For a sweet, I turned south, reaching for a lovely dessert of poached pears and prunes scented with bay leaf and orange from Paula Wolfert's The Food of Morocco.

I found some beautiful organic red Bartletts at Whole Foods, with a couple days during which I could let them ripen in a paper bag. I poached them New Year's Eve morning. It's a great dessert for a dinner party, as it can be made completely in advance. Wolfert's recipe calls for 12 prunes, but I say the more the merrier and double them; they're so good with the pears – which I planned to serve with some thin almond crisps I picked up at the store.

For tapas, I settled on Sevillian marinated carrots – zanahorias aliñadas – that I'd set out with fleshy, green Castelvetrano olives and smoked almonds. Then we'd have a passed tapa inspired by one I saw in Anya's book: slow-scrambed eggs with wild mushrooms (I was hoping to find some chanterelles), to be served in brown egg shells. I took the eggs in a more French direction, using butter (lots!) rather than olive oil and shallots rather than garlic, as we had so much garlic going on in the paella, carrots and allioli. I couldn't find chanterelles, so instead I snapped up some beautiful cultivated beech mushrooms and small, fresh shiitakes.

Just as Seema and company rang the doorbell, blam!!! I dropped a glass bowl filled with eggs that I was pulling from the fridge. Eggs and broken glass went flying all over the kitchen and beyond – landing in the dining room, the living room, the breakfast nook. Brilliant! Thierry scrambled (hah!) to clean it all up (bless his heart!) as I welcomed our friends, apologizing for the chaos and putting up a fence of chairs to keep Lily from stepping on broken glass in the kitchen. 

Later, as we sat at dinner, Emmanuel and Yasmin – still pretty shellshocked – recounted their terrifying ordeal; they didn't have time to get to a safe room, which was probably a good thing, as the room they thought safest was bisected by a garage door torn from its hinges. Emmanuel was barefoot when the tornado hit, and there was broken glass everywhere; he stepped on a nail as they were walking the streets looking for help. He was carrying Lily at the time, all 65-pounds of her. Yasmin had shards of glass hit her face.

We knew it wouldn't exactly be an evening of revelry, considering all they been through and all they had lost, but I was hoping – with food cooked with love, and good cheer and the warmth of a fire in the fireplace – to make their holiday just a little bit less dreadful.

Lily, a sweet creature who is in training to be a therapy dog, was quite nervous, but they had brought her bed – which we set up in the dining room so she could be next to us. Once she settled in, we broke out the tapas. While everyone nibbled on the carrots – garlicky, lemony and fragrant with herbs – and the olives and nuts, I put the finishing touches on the eggs, scrambling them slowly with sautéed mushrooms in butter till they were custardy. (Fortunately I had eggs to spare!) I had just the thing for serving them: a fabulous ceramic egg carton my friend Michalene brought me as a gift from South Africa a few years ago.

Seema seemed to melt."Oooh," she said when I brought the egg carton to the table and offered her one. "I love anything with eggs." There were only five of us and half a dozen eggs, but it wasn't hard to find a taker for the last one.

Next came the peppers with tuna. I wasn't able to find piquillos – those slender, pointed Spanish red peppers with a lovely bite you can buy (if you're lucky) in a jar already roasted. Instead I found jars of whole roasted Spanish Morron peppers. Not as nice as the piquillos, whose shape is perfect for filling. I spooned some allioli onto of our salad plates, set a pepper on each and tucked in fillets of fancy tuna I'd bought in jars, packed in olive oil, into the peppers. The combo was actually pretty good – especially with some crusty baguette to sop up the extra allioli. 

Seafood paella was the main event, of course. Our recipe is based on the one from Anya's book, though I've tweaked it over the years. This time I found some beautiful baby octopuses to use in place of the squid Anya's recipe calls for. About 20 minutes before our friends arrived, I'd started cooking the paella, knowing I could prepare it up to a certain point, then leave it off-heat on the stove. I popped it into the hot oven, letting it bake while we had the tapas, and pulling it out to rest while we had the peppers and tuna. 

Some red wine – Garnacha from Spain (for a few of us) – those poached pears and prunes, and before midnight, the exhausted trio (um, woof! quartet) was ready to head back to their hotel. But not without an invitation to come back soon and cook: Yasmin, who was born in India, has lived in South Africa – where she worked for an international non-profit aid organization – and has roots in Burma, is already missing the kitchen. 

Judy Rodgers and her New Year's Eve Gougères

My favorite thing to do on New Year's Eve is cook for friends – because I love to cook, I love my friends and I don't really like going out on New Year's Eve, especially to a restaurant. If I entertain at home I can spend a luxurious day in the kitchen chopping and slicing and baking, enjoying the smell of something warm in the oven and the sizzle of onions and shallots on the stove. Then I get to enjoy the company of people I love best, spending hours at the table, sipping wine and eating and talking and laughing, and of course popping a bottle of Champagne at midnight. 

It has to be Champagne. It just wouldn't be New Year's Eve without it.

And every New Year's Eve, I think of Judy Rodgers, the late great chef-owner of Zuni Cafe in San Francisco. Her Zuni Cafe Cookbook, published in 2002, is one of my favorite volumes of all time. One of the many recipes I love to cook from it is her New Year's Eve Gougères.

Gougères – French cheese puffs, served warm just out of the oven – are wonderful anytime, particularly with a glass of light red wine, maybe a village Beaujolais or a Côtes du Rhônes.

Sliced open and stuffed with great bacon, arugula and pickled onions, as Rogers suggests, they're a spectacular, and very festive, hors d'oeuvre – on New Year's Eve or any other eve.  Rodgers, who died two years ago this month, wrote in the recipe's headnote,"This was the most successful New Year's Eve hors d'oeuvre of the last decade, outselling foie gras, oysters, caviar, crab salad, and little truffle-laden pizzas."

There you go. They are a real treat – definitely something to consider whipping up on the last day of the year.

I treasure my copy of The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, not just because there are so many great recipes and ideas in it, but also because Rodgers signed it for me when I bought it at the restaurant many years ago. "For Leslie," she wrote, "always cook with heart." Rest in peace, Judy Rodgers. You will always live on through your recipes.

Happy New Year!

One of my favorite winter lunches: escarole salad with toasted walnuts and Roquefort

With all the feasting between the holidays, it feels like a perfect day for a salad. But I don't want to go all austere – it is the holidays, after all! Here's just the thing: one of my favorite winter salads – escarole with toasted walnuts and Roquefort. If you can't find Roquefort that speaks to you (maybe it's too expensive or over-the-hill, yellowy on the edges), or you prefer another blue such as Maytag, Fourme d'Ambert or Danish blue, go for it. The same goes for the escarole: The salad is just as nice with frisée or sliced Belgian endives (a combination of purply-red and pale green ones is really pretty). 

How to turn a humble celery root into a classic French salad, céleri rémoulade

Céleri rémoulade

This simple French salad – julienned celery root dressed in mustardy mayonnaise with herbs – is one of my favorite starters. And it's one of my husband Thierry's least favorites. That's because when he was growing up in France, céleri rémoulade was considered to be the worst of the worst: school cafeteria food. 

He always groans when I make it. And then he tastes it, and gobbles it up. 

Though you can use store-bought mayonnaise in this dish, making your own mayo for it transforms it into fabulous dinner-party food.

I think I've tried every possible way to make mayo – whisking it by hand, using a blender, a food processor and a mixer. Easiest and most reliable, I think, is a hand-mixer. My recipe for mayo makes about a cup, and you won't need that much for the céleri rémoulade; you can use what's left over to slather on sandwiches and make tuna salad. Or flavor it and pretend it's aioli, as so many restaurants do! 

Once that's done, prepare the celery root. Also known as celeriac, it's the ugly duckling of the vegetable world.

First, use a small, sharp paring knife to peel it. Don't worry if it seems like you're cutting too much away – you want to get rid of all the ugly hairy stuff. Then slice it into julienne matchsticks. You can do this using a sharp chef's knife by first cutting it into 1/8 inch slices, then stacking those slices up and cutting them into 1/8 inch julienne. 

The whole thing's much easier if you have a mandoline to get those first slices. (What’s the best mandoline? I love my Oxo, which is more than 15 years old; here’s a newer model. But friends swear by the much less-expensive Benriner brand.) Set it on 1/8 inch slicing, slice up the whole celery root, then make stacks and use your knife to slice into 1/8 inch julienne. If you have a hand-guard, be sure to use it. With their super-sharp blades, mandolines can be vicious!

Chop herbs and other flavorings for the sauce. Parsley, chives, tarragon and chervil are all nice in it, but even just parsley is delicious in the rémoulade. You can also chop up some capers and even cornichons, though those are optional. You'll want to give it a bracing dose of Dijon mustard, for sure. And sometimes I lighten it up with crème fraîche, though that's optional too. 

Once the sauce ingredients are combined, dress the julienned celery root with enough of the sauce to moisten it, then taste it and adjust the seasonings. Let it sit for an hour or two – or overnight – so the flavors meld and the sauce soaks into the celery root. Then serve it as a first course with a simple French dinner.

Ready to try it? Here's the recipe!

Cookbook review: A delicious passage with Madhur Jaffrey to Vegetarian India

It has been quite a rich publishing season for cookbooks that appeal to border-busting food-lovers, and when a review copy of Madhur Jaffrey's Vegetarian India: A Journey Through the Best of Indian Home Cooking landed in my mailbox, I could hardly wait to get cooking.  Jaffrey has legions of fans and admirers – seven of her books have won James Beard Awards. As soon as I started cooking from this one, I remembered why I'm such a fan: Her recipes are simple, they're delicious and they work. There wasn't a single problem in the three recipes I tested. The only tweaks I've made is calling for a medium-sized roasting pan or baking dish for the cauliflower, which would have gotten lost in the larger pan the book called for, and adding a note to adjust the seasoning in the recipe for spinach with dill, which wanted a little more salt.

If you buy Vegetarian India, take the time to read Jaffrey's introduction, which takes you on a mini-tour of vegetarian India: She traveled all around the vast country collecting recipes – from Uttar Pradesh and Benghal to Bombay and Hyderabad and back – for vegetarian dishes "that are both delicious and easy to make." So many things to discover here: dishes, regions, styles, ingredients. I'm particularly curious about poha, flattened and dried rice that's pre-cooked. Jaffrey raves about it, providing a number of recipes for it, including one with ginger-flavored green beans that sounds wonderful.

I love the way she wraps things up: "In India's ancient Ayurvedic system of medicine," she writes, "it is believed that the simple acts of cutting and chopping and stirring are graces that can bring you peace and calm. That is what I wish for you."

For me, Jaffrey's wish came true: I spent a glorious afternoon toasting and grinding and grating spices, which filled my kitchen with wonderful exotic aromas – ginger and coriander and cumin. "Whatever you're doing," said my husband, led by his nose to the kitchen, "it's going to be delicious." Thanks to Jaffrey, he was right.

Flipping through the book, which includes more than 200 recipes and beautiful photos by Jonathan Gregson, it wasn't hard to find three dishes I wanted to jump into: Everything looked and sounded so delicious. I chose Roasted Cauliflower with Punjabi Seasonings (Oven Ki Gobi), Peas and Potatoes Cooked in a Bihari Style (Matar Ki Ghugni) and Spinach with Dill (Dakhini Saag). All were terrific, definitely going into my repertoire.

Next time I cook from it, I'll heed Jaffrey's advice about menu planning: "Indian meals are always put together so they are nutritionally balanced: a grain is always served with a vegetable and a dairy product, not only because they taste good together but also because together they are nutritionally complete." This time around I hadn't chosen anything involving dairy. The ingredients were easy to find in my regular supermarket, the instructions were clear and the amounts and times were spot-on.

Vegetarian India: A Journey Through the Best of Indian Home Cooking by Madhur Jaffrey, Alfred A. Knopf, 416 pages, $35.

The kid comes home from college: guacamole time!

Funny story about my molcajete – the mortar and pestle, made of rough volcanic rock, that I feel is essential for making great guacamole. Grinding onion, chiles, cilantro and salt together to a paste in the molcajete makes a base that gives the dip superb, deep flavor.

I've had my molcajete for decades – so long, I can't even remember where I got it. I was definitely living in New York, and it was before I moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn, so pre-1995. Somewhere along the way, after moves to Los Angeles and then Dallas, I lost the molcajete's pestle. I continued making guacamole, natch, but had to muddle along improvising with a wooden spoon or the pestle that belonged to my smooth marble mortar. Not good with that rough volcanic stone. At some point, I found a molinillo — a wooden tool, with a broad bulb of wood on the end, used to mix champurrado, chocolate-flavored atole. Somehow I thought I'd live the rest of my life that way, smashing chiles and cilantro and avocado with a molinillo. Feeling stupid about it one day, I started nosing around online and in cook shops. But (holy guacamole!) – a nice molcajete can cost $40.

Last summer, I happened to be shopping in a Fiesta supermarket in Austin, Texas, and found reasonably priced molcajetes for sale. That wasn't a huge surprise: A gentleman working in a restaurant supply had pointed me in that direction. What was a surprise was that Fiesta also sold the pestle part individually – for about three bucks! Eureka! But how silly I felt: Doing without something that could have been so easily and inexpensively obtained if I had just used my brain!

So now I have both parts – mismatched, to be sure – but I'm happy every time I see them together on my countertop.

So. The kid -- who just started in college this fall in Southern California – is  home for winter break, and what does he crave? My guacamole – every few days. Easily done. I'm going through avocados like they're going out of style.