I guess I really miss writing reflective essays for school, because I wrote one last week.

I have a deep and abiding love for salsa. Our relationship dates back to elementary school, when a younger, pickier me sat in a kitchen in Cleveland delicately soaking my tortilla chips in my mom’s homemade salsa. The chunks of tomatoes disgusted me, but I found that dipping a chip for a minute or two left the perfect amount of fresh spiciness. My dad’s mom imparted her salsa-making abilities to my mom when they were all living in San Diego in the eighties. My parents moved back to their native Ohio right after my sister was born, bringing an acquired taste for true Mexican with them. Enchanted with the idea of the birthplace I was too young to remember, I periodically begged my parents to move back to California throughout the nine years we spent on the shores of Lake Erie.

In third grade, our independent study project topics were limited to subjects relating to the state of Ohio, which I found cruelly ironic, seeing how as I desperately wanted an excuse to research my milk-and-honey San Diego. Imagine my delight when my fourth grade teacher told us we could choose any topic at all for that year’s independent study projects. I bought Fodor’s Guide to San Diego with my saved birthday money (more often than not, I could make that fifty dollars or so last the entire year, until my next windfall. Coupled with the change I made selling my old toys to my sisters, my stash gave me a delicious feeling of financial security), checked out all the books I could find at the library, and commissioned my mom to make enough of her salsa to feed my whole class. We got extra points for bringing food in.

My teacher loved my presentation, and she loved the salsa. “You could package that and sell it,” she gushed to my mom. I remember thinking, with the self-satisfaction that comes from knowing more than someone else, that if my teacher had tasted real San Diego salsa, she wouldn’t have been so enthusiastic. I’d never tasted it myself, but I had it on my parents’ good authority that the real stuff was incomparable.

And so it is. We finally made it to California the next year. I touched the Pacific Ocean for the first time since I was two years old, quickly began a romance with fish tacos, and acquired a penchant for year-round sunshine. Good salsa became a way of life. The first time my mom and I walked into Cardenas, the local Mexican market, I’ll admit to a bit of trepidation. I don’t know if I’d ever been the minority, let alone the only, in a group of people. My reservations didn’t last long, though. The chips, crema fresca, guacamole, carne asada, and, of course, salsa were unbelievable.

I flew back East with my grandma one year for my seventeenth birthday. Wanting to recreate our favorite meals, she and I unsuccessfully scoped out the “Hispanic” section of the local grocery store for pico de gallo seasoning and drove all over the greater Cleveland area in search of carne asada. We found a worthy version in Willoughby, and shared a pleasant dinner. We got a good laugh out of a woman at the table next to us. Pucker-faced, she was entreating the waiter: “Do you have some sour cream or something? This salsa is way too hot.” The salsa, actually, was incredibly mild, at least to my grandma and me.

When I started college, I wanted to maintain my fruit and vegetable intake, but the cafeteria salad bar often left quite a few things to be desired. The salsa bar, however, was straight out of my fourth-grade fantasy. Most of the kitchen workers drive up from Mexico every day, since my school is so close to the border, and they bring their traditional methods with them. On any given day, they feature three or four different salsas, and I eat it with eggs, salad, chips, beans—whatever I can tastefully pair it with.

It’s funny; I am doing exactly what I wanted to do as a little kid in Cleveland: going to college, living in San Diego, and eating authentic salsa. You know what, though? My mom’s is actually just as good.