Does your mouth ever just water for a food that you just love and just isn't available anywhere around. My mind and my taste buds just started to wander back to Utah and visions danced in my head of my favorite place, Cafe Rio. Oh, if I could just have one of their big salads or burritos.
Well, thanks to the aid of Google and the internet, it wasn't long before I had more recipes all claiming to be the authentic, or just as good as authentic, or even better than authentic Cafe Rio dishes. I scanned over them, and to my dismay a few ingredients just were not available down here--especially tomatillos and flour tortillas. So back to the computer. What do you substitute for tomatillos, nada. Oh well. What do you substitute for ranch dressing mix--lo and behold, homemade recipes for ranch dressing. How do you get flour tortillas--lo and behold you make them yourself.
So to the store I go. Let's see, pork- check; cilantro-check; avocados--check; coca cola-check; Nope, no tomatillos, but we're going to do this. Away to my kitchen. Got my apron on! Cafe Rio here we come. I cooked, and I made substitutions, and lo and behold , it worked. The Green chili rice was scrumptious. The Pork Barbacoa-superb. The creamy tomatillo dressing (renamed creamy cilantro dressing) delicious! The homemade tortillas-yum!
The reason for the dinner was to celebrate and honor three of our office elders who will be transferred out this next week. It took many trips over to the office, but it was finally all set up. There was a sign--Cafe Mision Mendoza--thought we might have franchise problems if we called it Cafe Rio. There was a menu posted! There was a line you had to stay in as you went to the long table and made your dishes--burritos and salad.
The comments made all the work worth it, 'This is awesome! Just as good as Cafe Rio! Better than Cafe Rio! This is the best meal I have had on my mission!" It was fun! A challenge! and now just have to wait until my taste buds start dreaming again.
On the day of the Cafe Rio party, one of the Elders very thoughtfully gave me this most unusual plant. As he handed it to me, there was one of these very unique blooms. It looked just like a purse, complete with a flap on top. I noticed there were many little "purses" ready to to open and bloom. Well, lo and behold, I have a plant now loaded with many, many purses. Hence the name "Polly Pockets". 