Menudo, Music, and the Pols

It's 10 days to the first big event of the new year in Laredo--The 13th Annual Menudo Bowl on Jan. 19! Menudo, a soup dish found in both Ecuador and Mexico, is a special dish for many on the weekends(it is also rumored to be an almost cure for the occasional handover). The culinary basis for the dish is tripe--you don't need to know what that is if you don't already know. The Menudo Bowl is a fund raiser for the Laredo Crime Stoppers and features, not only great menudo "cookoffs", but music and politicians massing about the grounds.



Ten years ago, on a bright but chilly day, the Menudo Bowl featured a then unknow country group--Lonestar." If you had been there, you could have stood on the fairgrounds listening to this group play what later became a #1 hit on the Country Charts--"You Walked In". At the time, however, there were only about 30 in the cold audience. Another musical connection is the famous "Menudo" Boy Band from Puerto Rico, who's most favorite former member, Ricky Martin, finally performed in Laredo in 2007.



The musical performance by Ricky Martin had been promised to Laredoans by our then Mayor, Betty Flores, in 2000, to help convince voters to build a new entertainment complex. Even if Ricky had never come, the Laredo Entertainment Center brought us our championship hockey team--the Laredo Bucks!



So get on a plane, train, or bus and get to Laredo for the Menudo Bowl; see you there.