Vida En El Valle Blogs: The Latin voice of the central valley.

I cooked and ate menudo – the traditional Mexican soup made with tripe –  for the first time on Sunday! Okay, I’m bending the truth a little bit – but there’s a story behind my fib, I swear.

I woke up at 7 a.m. on Sunday morning to find my darling roommate bouncing around the house, cleaning and washing dishes. An enormous pot took up most of the stove and emitted steam and a hearty aroma. As it turns out, she had been up since the early morning hours preparing menudo for her family for breakfast.

As she blended chiles and fretted about the soup not being “red” enough, I washed more dishes and ran to the grocery store to buy more garlic. When her family arrived, my roommate declared, “Rebecca cooked half the menudo!” (That explains Fib #1.)

I should have photographed our menudo. This bowl was served at a Virgen de Guadalupe ceremony.

We sat down to breakfast a while later. It was a cozy breakfast, with six adults squeezed around a little table that was covered with cans of Coke, bowls of limes and chopped onions, and a plate of steaming tortillas. My roommate served me a small bowl of menudo – and while I enjoyed adding condiments to the tasty broth, my vegetarian instincts prevented me from sampling the tripe. (That explains lie #2.) I’ll try it next time, I promise!

Oh, and I’m planning on making my own paletas this week! Okay, I’m lying again. I’m making popsicles out of blackberries and yogurt, but the recipe is not from Tocumbo, Michoacan – considered the birthplace of the Mexican fruit popsicle – it’s fromYoga Journal.