Mexican Made Easy

This morning I happened across a TV show called Mexican Made Easy. The hostess and chef is a vivacious young woman named Marcela Valladolid. She’s cute as a button – maybe the cutest chef on Food Network. It’s a tossup between Marcela and Giada.

Her bio says she is a professional chef and cookbook author. How does someone who is so obviously about 16 years old get to be a professional chef and a cookbook author? I mean, did she start cooking school when she was 13? (I went to night school when I was 13, so it’s possible.) Her Wikipedia entry says she was born in 1978, which would make her 33 years old this year. Hah. No way. Look at her.

On top of having a TV show and a published cookbook, Marcela teaches cooking to 40 students at her home and runs a catering company.

I watched her make Mexican Rice. I thought it was interesting because I’ve made Mexican Rice many times, and she makes it differently. My Mexican Rice is really delicious – partly because I put bacon in it, and as we all know, everything tastes better with bacon in it, on it, or wrapped with bacon. Marcela uses chicken broth in her Mexican Rice. Chicken broth!

Ah well, she’s young. She’ll learn.