Cooking with Baja Magic: Mouth-Watering Meals from the Enchanted Kitchens and Campfires of Baja [Paperback]

"Celebrate life with Ann Hazard's long-awaited Cooking With Baja Magic! This collection of 175 mouth-watering recipes contains favorites from 20 of the most famous restaurants in Baja. Read about the author's travels and savor the beautiful, colorful illustrations by Bob Bonn." -- Hugh Kramer, President of Discover Baja Travel Club

"No faux-Mexican, Americanized recipes here -- Hazard's magic is la verdad comida, inspired by her family's extensive travels in Baja since the 1930's." -- Corinne Lynch, San Diego Magazine

"Ole! Pass the salsa! Pop the cervezas! Ann Hazard's Cooking With Baja Magic is the best Baja cookbook ever!" -- Gene Kira, author of King of the Moon and co-author of The Baja Catch

The most comprehensive Baja California cookbook ever! This 240-page book contains 175 easy-to-prepare recipes in 15 categories, 20 from famous Baja restaurants. Try Confetti Dip Mardi Gras, Cabo's Restaurant Pancho's Tortilla Soup, "The" Original Tijuana Caesar Salad, Bay of L.A. Lobster Tacos, Expatriate Pepper Steak and Citrus Flan Extraordinaire from Caffe Todos Santos. A cookbook, storybook and art book all in one, it showcases 22 whimsical, colorful illustrations by Laguna Beach, California artist, Bob Bonn. Author Ann Hazard, a third generation Baja Rat, guarantees that this book will inject you with a lasting dose of Baja Magic! "In fact," she says, "I promise it will tip your perspective slightly to the south, lighten your heart and transform your outlook on life!"

Pick up Cooking With Baja Magic and thumb through it. Join author, Ann Hazard as she leads you through four generations of historic Baja adventures and shares not only her family's favorite travel tales with you -- but also the delicious, easy-enough-to-prepare recipes that they collected and created on those trips.

Check out one or two of these recipes and feel a great big smile spreading itself across your face as you read the stories that go with them. Let yourself get lost in Bob Bonn's delightful, whimsical paintings of Juan Carlos, the Margarita-guzzling gato from the Wild West and his renegade buddies.

Before you know it, your mouth will be watering. You'll be in your own home, but your shoes will be off and your toes will be tapping as you rummage through your CD collection, searching for Mariachi music. Or something Latino with a lively beat. Or some Jimmy Buffett. Come on, crank up those tunes. Cast off the cares of our crazy world and imagine yourself in a simpler, gentler place -- a place of endless empty hills, sunny skies and see-through aquamarine water teeming with tropical fish. You've been transported to Baja. Tonight you're serving dinner under a palapa by the Sea of Cortez. Tonight you're celebrating life with people you love.

The selection of over 170 recipes is representative of Baja's unique cuisine. For starters, try Ann's Confetti Dip Mardi Gras, Pancho's Tortilla Soup from the renowned Cabo restaurant, "The" Original Tijuana Caesar Salad, Palapa Azul Stuffed Clams on the Grill, Snowbird Chicken in Tomatillo Sauce, Swim-up Bar Pi-a Coladas and of course, the world-famous Imperial Valley Carne Asada.

By the time you've cooked a meal or two and finished reading the book, you're guaranteed to have been injected with a lasting dose of Baja Magic. It will tip your perspective slightly to the south, lighten your heart and forever transform your outlook on life!

Ann Hazard and is a third generation Baja Rat. She began traveling the Magnificent Peninsula with her parents and sister, Nina Hazard Baldwin, collecting recipes, when she was nine years old. They flew into remote places in old World War II bombers and landed on dirt roads. They camped on deserted beaches and in lush palm oases where they were the only group of gringos for miles around.

In the intervening years, Ann has traveled to Los Cabos, Todos Santos, La Paz, Loreto, Mulege, San Felipe and all the other hot spots the tourists frequent. While she enjoys the resorts, she has a deep, abiding connection to the more remote, out-of-the-way spots in Baja -- left over from her youth no doubt! Of course, she still spends as much time south of the border as possible. In addition to traveling the peninsula frequently, she shares a weekend getaway in La Bufadora with her sister and brother-in-law -- just a few miles south of Ensenada in Northern Baja.

Ann is a graduate of U.S. International University in San Diego, CA who spent the first two decades of her career doing corporate communications. She now writes and promotes her work full-time. She and lives in Solana Beach, CA with her children, Gayle and Derek and an assortment of pets.

Look for her second book, Good News for the Newly Single -- Devotions for the Recently Separated and Divorced, which will be released by Vine Books in September, 1998. Current writing projects include a novel about four gringas (female Americans) traveling without gringos (men) for a month in Baja and a children's book called The Tres Amigos in collaboration with Bob Bonn, illustrator of Cooking With Baja Magic.