Free Republic

If you’re traveling to a cook-off, be aware of the flavor profiles that work best in that region.(snip) “Florida likes a sweet chili, so I might use grape jelly,” she said. “Dallas likes spicy chili, but central Texas likes a milder chili. And in Arkansas, they like chili with ketchup.” Jennifer Billock is a journalist and author who has competed in the Medinah, Illinois, Shriners’ annual chili cook-off. “My team won three years in a row, including a People’s Choice award,” she said. “I don’t have a recipe,” she said. “We called it Garden Chili and threw in a ton...

Besides being viewed as "poor people's food," the bean’s “magical” quality has also contributed to the decline in consumption.Beans have been a dietary staple in Mexico for millennia, but their per capita consumption in the country has dropped by nearly 50% in recent decades, according to one food scientist. “It’s real sad because the average Mexican now consumes less than 20 pounds of beans per year,” said Amanda Gálvez Mariscal, a food and biotechnology researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). That figure is almost half of what it was in 1980, when the per-person consumption of the...

CINCINNATI - Hispanic leaders are demanding a public apology from a radio station that put up billboards showing a Mexican flag, a donkey, and a mustachioed man in a sombrero with the headline "The Big Juan." The Hispanic Chamber Cincinnati USA complained that the advertising by WLW-AM stereotyped Hispanics. The community leaders said at a news conference Tuesday that they plan to meet with station executives to talk about sensitivity training and creating a multicultural community advisory board. WLW, which calls itself "The Big One," is the Cincinnati area's radio ratings leader. The Hispanic Chamber and the League of United...

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's Congress was swayed Tuesday by a 7-year-old boy on a mission to save his mom. Second-grader Saul Arellano, a U.S. citizen, appeared in Mexico's 500-member Chamber of Deputies to plead for help in lobbying Washington to stop the deportation of his mother, an illegal immigrant who has taken refuge in a Chicago church. His efforts paid off with a resolution calling on the Bush administration to suspend the deportation of Elvira Arellano and any other illegal immigrant parents of U.S. citizens. If the U.S. agrees, it would "create a precedent that will benefit more than 4.9...