New York Times T:Travel

“You’re going to Cooke City?” an acquaintance in Livingston, in south-central Montana, asked. “That’s where all the varmints hide out!”

Unlike many immigrant parents, Olga Rivera, who moved from Guatemala to New Orleans in 1965, wanted her son Cesar to become one thing and one thing only — a barber. Cesar, growing up amid the culinary splendors of the Big Easy, wanted to be a chef.

Mothers know best…

“Ten to six, Saints — second quarter,” our server at Elizabeth’s said by way of greeting. “I’ll be right back with your menus.” A lady of a certain age, she wore construction boots, cargo shorts and an oversize Saints T-shirt beneath a pixie crop of salt-and-pepper hair.

You’re going to be part of an experiment tonight,” Justo Fernández Garibay said. “We couldn’t find chestnuts for the stuffing, so we’re using macadamia nuts.” I was about to sit down to Thanksgiving dinner at the Posada Coatepec, a beautiful inn owned by Fernández’s family on the outskirts of Xalapa, the state capital of Veracruz.