By some chance I just bumped into Like Water for Chocolate: A Novel in Monthly Installments with Recipes, Romances, and Home Remedies
on my bookshelf. In its old paper cover it's been lost and forgotten there for several years. I opened it to recall what it was about and I ended up reading all it night. What a beautiful food and love story! I just have to have my say on it.Tita is the youngest daughter in her large and strictly traditional Mexican family. She spends most of her time with Nacha (family cook) in the kitchen and learns all the pre-Columbian Mexican recipes. She is making Christmas cakes when a young men she loves comes to propose her. That's when she finds out that she will never be allowed to get married. As a youngest daughter she is expected to take care of her mother till the latter passes away.
She makes chabela wedding cake when Pedro marries her sister instead. The glaze for the cake takes in all her tears. When a bouquet of beautiful blood-color roses she received from Pedro is about to die she cooks quails in rose petals to save it.
Tita's little niece dies when she's taken away from her as nobody else can feed her properly. Blinded by pain Tita lives her mother's house and loses contact with reality. Oxtail soup cooked by her friend brings her back to life.
He sister, lost of sight long ago, comes back home exactly to have a cup of traditional Mexican hot chocolate diligently beaten by Tita on the Epiphany day. Believe it or not, but the day I finished reading David Lebovitz published Mexican hot chocolate recipe, which looks absolutely delicious to me.
What if I just could let my whole life pass by in the kitchen, making beautiful food and watching those I love enjoying it? Wouldn't it be the happiest life I could possibly live?
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