Like many kids her age, Iris has her first- and second-person pronouns reversed. “Dada, pick you up,” is something I hear often. Hang onto this thought.

I’ve been enjoying Rick Bayless’s new book, Mexican Everyday. It’s an clever hybrid. Like most “weeknight” cookbooks, it assumes you don’t have a lot of time. Unlike most of them, it assumes you have access to fresh poblanos and tomatillos, dried guajillos and cascabels, fire-roasted canned tomatoes and cold-pressed corn oil.

Tonight I made chipotle meatballs and cucumber salad with guajillo dressing. The chipotle meatballs are pork meatballs, bolstered with mint, garlic, and panko bread crumbs, baked in a sauce of pureed canned tomatoes, chipotles in adobo, and garlic. They were excellent, and I’m already looking forward to a sandwich of the leftovers, if Laurie and Iris don’t scarf them all.

For the dressing, I toasted a couple of guajillos and some garlic cloves in cold-pressed corn oil, then pureed them (including the oil) with white wine vinegar. I halved an English cucumber lengthwise and scooped out the pulp with the spoon, then sliced it into thin half-moons and tossed it with the dressing. Iris loves cucumbers, and I miss the days when she couldn’t quite pronounce the word and would say “cumbers.” The corn oil is pretty strong stuff, and I couldn’t swear I tasted the chiles in the dressing, but it was a good foil to the rich meatballs.

Iris helped me put the dressing on the cucumbers, and I explained that sometimes a sauce is called a dressing. Later as I was spooning some chipotle sauce onto my meatballs, I said, “Dada loves sauce.”

“No. Called dressing,” corrected Iris.

Obviously this dinner required beer, so I had a bottle of Shiner Bock. After dinner Iris got down from her high chair and headed off to play with Brio trains.

> **Iris:** Come play some trains.

> **Me:** I’ll come play as soon as I finish my beer.

> **Iris:** Dada, bring my beer in the living room.