This book of stories and recipes introduces two eccentric families that would never have eaten together, let alone exchanged recipes, but for the improbable marriage of the author's parents: a nuevomexicano from Taos and a painter who came from Texas to New Mexico to study art. Recalling the good and the terrible cooks in her family, Anita Rodr guez also shares the complications of navigating a safe path among contradictory cultural perspectives. She takes us from the mountain villages of New Mexico in the 1940s to sipping mint juleps on the porch of a mansion in the South, and also on a prolonged pilgrimage to Mexico and back again to New Mexico. Accompanied by Rodr guez's vibrant paintings--including scenes of people eating on fiesta nights and plastering an adobe church--Coyota in the Kitchen shows how food reflects the complicated family histories that shape our lives.