My recipes are so nostalgic for me. I’ve always been addicted to my history, culture and where I come from.
It’s an exciting day for Highlands Ranch cookbook author and food blogger, Yvette Marquez-Sharpnack. After months of work, her latest love letter to her cherished El Paso family and culture is finally live.
Ysleta Mission History and Festival is Yvette’s new video production on her YouTube channel that tells the story of the vibrant (and delicious) festival to benefit the Catholic church she grew up attending, the one for which her beloved grandmother and mother devoted their lives.
Yvette of Highlands Ranch runs MuyBuenoCookbook.com, where she posts her Mexican-inspired recipes and YouTube travel videos that honor her Tejano roots. She started the blog in 2010 as a way to put into writing all the amazing food she remembered her mother, Evangelina Soza, and her late grandmother, Jesusita, making—recipes that had never been written down. Things that include gorditos, chiles rellenos and tamales.
“When I was growing up, we didn’t call it Mexican food, we just called it food,” Yvette says.
Yvette says she never could have imagined her career as a food blogger, video producer and on-air personality when she moved to Colorado from El Paso more than 20 years ago. Her Muy Bueno blog had already started to gain momentum when she was laid off from her job as a graphic designer. Yvette says she told her husband she was going to take a chance and make the blog full-time, and she’s been going strong ever since.
This past summer, Yvette also traveled to Mexico City for the first time to explore regional food and culture to get ideas for her blog.
"It was incredible. I've been to Mexico many times, but never to Mexico City. Mexico City has so much history and culture, and street food is literally on every corner."
Every Muy Bueno recipe and video is a love letter to her family, one she feels blessed to continue to write—if nothing else so that her children will carry on with family traditions.
“My recipes are so nostalgic for me,” Yvette says. I’ve always been addicted to my history, culture and where I come from."
About Yvette Marquez-Sharpnack:
Yvette Marquez-Sharpnack is the blogger, YouTuber, and recipe developer behind MuyBuenoCookbook.com. She is the co-author of Muy Bueno: Three Generations of Authentic Mexican Flavor and Latin Twist: Traditional & Modern Cocktails. Find her at MuyBuenoCookbook.com, her Muy Bueno YouTube Channel, and @MuyBuenoCooking.
Muy Bueno Tip No. 1
Yvette Marquez-Sharpnakc's Highlands Ranch kitchen is filled with treasures from her travels to Mexico and her hometown of El Paso, Texas. And she also scours Denver-area thrift stores and estate sales to find colorful textiles, Mexican pottery and cookbooks.
Muy Bueno Tip No. 2
For authentic guacamole, Yvette recommends using a molcajete, or Mexican mortar and pestle.
Muy Bueno Tip No. 3
Yvette serves up her Agua de Jamaica, or Hibiscus Tea with Cinnamon Sticks, in hand-painted glasses that she found at a thrift shop in Denver.