I have to admit I’m partial to Mexican cuisine.

Not Taco Bell Mexican, but the kind of food that takes hours or days and marries the wonderful flavors of the Southwest and Mesoamerica.

While I’m a fan of Diana Kennedy, many of her recipes require lots of effort and ingredients not readily available here.

Rebecca got me a simple cookbook and one of my favorite recipes is a simple fry of potatoes and chorizo, a kind of soft sausage. You can get decent chorizo from Isernio’s (Seattle) and Hempler’s (Ferndale), but they lack authenticity. The real McCoy is peasant food, made of such ingredients as (ugh!) pork snouts, lymph nodes and salivary glands.

But it tastes great.

Recently, in an effort to cut fat and cholesterol, I picked up a package of Soy Chorizo, $1.99 at Trader Joe’s. It looks and tastes just like the real thing. There’s also another brand, Soyrizo, that’s available at the Community Food Co-op for $3.49.

Best of all, it passed the firehouse test, drawing raves from Saturday night crews at Station 22.

I’ll post the recipe and its variations next week.

I hear through the grapevine that Joe’s Garden opened March 1. Now we know that spring is here!

I was told that they have vegetable starts and flowers for sale. I’ll have to get over there next week to see when the first produce is expected.

It’s at 3100 Taylor Ave., the part of Taylor that’s off 32nd Street, kind of behind the shopping center where the Sehome Haggen and REI are.

For all you Trader Joe’s fans, a reader sent me a link to a You Tube video of an unauthorized ommerical. Check it out here.

I’ve been having a lot of fun recently reading a relatively new cookbook, based on the posts at Lisa Lillien’s hungry-girl.com.

The book is “Hungry Girl: Recipes and Survival Strategies for Guilt-Free Eating, and it’s available at the Bellingham Public Library (after I return it, of course).

The L.A.-based Lillien’s attitude is fresh and friendly, with her Carly Simon smile and surfer-girl attitude.

She’s so much more fun to read than L.A.’s other popular cooking gurus, the potty-mouthed, smart-alecky Skinny Bitches at skinnybitch.net.

My wife enjoyed the Hungry Girl, too.

Rebecca’s favorite part of the book was the Hungry Girl’s observation that a doughnut often has fewer calories and fat than a muffin.

I haven’t made anything from the cookbook yet, but it did give me several ideas for simple meals.

I heard inaugural poet Elizabeth Alexander on the American Public Media radio show “The Splendid Table” last week reading her poem, “Butter,” about her mom’s love for the stuff.

You have to check it out. You can get a podcast and read a text verson of the poem here.

For you food lovers, “The Splendid Table” can be heard at 2 p.m. Sundays on KUOW-FM, 90.3 in the Bellingham area, or 94.9 closer to Seattle.