For three years, Marilyn Tausend traveled across the United States and Mexico, talking to hundreds of Mexican and Mexican-American cooks. With the help of chef Miguel Ravago, Tausend tells the tale of these cooks, all of whom have adapted the family dishes and traditions they remember to accommodate a life considerably different from the lives of their parents and grandparents. In these pages you will find the real food eaten every day by Mexican-American families, whether they live in cities such as Los Angeles or Chicago, the border towns of Texas and Arizona, the farming communities of the Pacific Northwest, or the isolated villages of New Mexico and Colorado.