I love the fact that February is short. Conversely I hate the fact that it’s yet another month that has an in-your-face holiday nigh impossible to escape unless you crawl into a deep pit. Which I’m tempted to do, anyways, because this is also my birthday month. (Another year older but not necessarily wiser….) Luckily I’d rather spend with chipper face and not a sour face by sending valentines to one of my absolute most favorite foods: cheese.
I was a queso fundido virgin until a former Virginia Highlands hotspot called Sala.
Sala, it should be noted, had killer mojitos to match the canapes. We toddled home many a Sunday afternoon after having ignored vows for mojito/fundido restraint made earlier in the day. Unfortunately Sala went the way of the Dodo bird a couple years ago. Still, this dish triggers a little homesickness.

Ah, home. Home, sweet home. Used to be a place with central heat and air, and with a tumble dryer that didn’t cost a fortune to use. Until recently it was relatively tidy, and not where I meet the morning with grit beneath my slippers.
We’ve entered the next leg of our renovation project. The builders are back for phase two, a much bigger ado of dust and demolition than phase one. Renovations are wonderful to experience in the abstract…retrospect scores even higher.

Oscar, having "a moment".
When we were an Atlanta household populated with three cats, one dog and one man, we were a hairy household. Sunbeams showed me when it was time to sweep. In the springtime we might have also been a pollen-ous household, what with yellow clouds of the stuff billowing off the pines. A yellow coating on the windowsills showed me when it was time to wipe.
That sort of dirt I can live with. It’s quiet dirt. Cleaning according to the decibel of crunch is a change-up I could readily live without.
Rescue eats, such as this queso fundido (melted cheese) with chorizo piquante and jalapeno pepper provide some comfort that we’ve brought this mess upon ourselves.
For many reasons I crave something smoochy like a queso fundido in stressful times.
Let’s start with the shopping list: just a few ingredients – cheese, sausage, pepper, and tortillas.
No flatware beyond digits+ thumb.
Only one pan.
A cooking time kind to short attention spans.
Double and triple-dipping of tortillas into queso are appropriate manners
As is eating the queso with the pan still on the stove. It tastes as good standing up as it does sitting down, so why risk the cheese getting cold because we forgot to wipe the bits of concrete off the dining table?
If you want a recipe recipe – as well as a good backstory – mosy over to the Homesick Texan blog and peruse the Queso Flameado. Same concept as what I’ve mentioned here but with a variant name and an optional fireball.