Today, July 6, marks the 103rd birthday of one of Mexico’s most famous female artists of all time: Frida Kahlo. Born in Mexico City in 1907, this talented woman is also one of the most influential artists of Latin American descent of the twentieth century. Frida, who became well-known in her teenage years, would later marry another famous Mexican artist, Diego Rivera – who was also 21 years her senior.
I know I haven’t posted lately, mostly due to technical glitches that have prevented me from moving my site over to a self-hosted space and implementing a new design to make your experience at The Other Side of The Tortilla a much richer one. But I couldn’t let dear Frida’s birthday pass without any kind of fanfare.
You see, to me, Frida is much more than just a painter. Among many other things, Frida was also a cook. On my last trip to Mexico City, I visited a local bookstore where I scored a copy of a book I’d been trying to find for more than a year, to no avail. After I was elated to find not one, but several, copies of the book I had been coveting for so long, I began perusing the shelves for other books that I’d undoubtedly be unable to find at home in the U.S. or on Amazon. I spotted a navy blue spine in the stack that said “Las fiestas de Frida y Diego” – and given my curiosity and lack of a schedule to be anywhere any time soon, I sat down among the stacks of books and paged through what was to become one of my favorite cookbooks. I sat there paging through it, soaking up the images and the stories for more than a half hour.
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