Most of my creative process starts with one single hungry thought. It usually comes at the least expected time... when the belly is full and I am relaxed. Funny enough, never when I am actually physically hungry (I get impatient and cranky when I'm hungry). When mam and dad were here in October, we were discussing Mexican traditional sweets... and candied pecans, or nueces garanpiñadas, came to mind. They are an expensive enough edible gift in Mexico as pecans are never cheap, but very, very tasty and Christmassy.  

A couple of weekends ago, we commemorated what would have been my dear friend John's 50th birthday, with a charity weekend, which included an amazing nature trail in Clonbur, in the beautiful Connemara region in Ireland, in and out of the border between County Galway and County Mayo. We left Dublin later than expected and then got lost on the way out from Dublin...

Today I was feeling a little run down and tired. I've been struggling with a headcold for a week and I couldn't hack it any more. I headed to the kitchen determine to make something tasty that would make me feel better.

Salsas are at the centre stage of Mexican Food. A taco is not a taco without a good salsa, so there are so many recipes for them it will make your head explode! One funny thing I discovered last year is that a lot of people seem to think that chopping fresh tomatoes and adding onion, chilli and other raw stuff makes a salsa... In Mexico, mostly all our salsas are cooked. What Irish people refer to as 'salsa' is really a salad for us, a sort of pico de gallo that we use to garnish or accompany a dish with.

As you know, I'm trying to blog more regularly these days, at least once a week. Friday is usually the day I can get to do that, but when I have a busy week and there's little or no time to go food shopping, I try and come up with something I can blog about and which I have ingredients to make and photograph before all light is gone. Like many bloggers, this is a hobby for me, a passion and a pastime, this means that the day job, and in our case, the night job, have priority over everything else.