LIME CITY —The big easy smile from Becky Ramirez, as she removed her Tomato Bread from the oven, shows her love for cooking and sharing good food.
“This is based on the Myles Pizza recipe, with a few changes. Their tomato bread was a favorite,” she said. “It’s just delicious and it’s so fun to make. I make it three or four times a year, when I get a hunger for it. Bowling Green was my stomping ground, back in the day.”
Ramirez worked at and loved the former Myles Pizza Pub in Bowling Green, and this is her take on the Myles Tomato Bread.
“The best way to eat it is hands on,” Ramirez said.
She prefers to top it with the Costco Chihuahua Shredded Quesadilla Cheese, by Supremo.
“I go a little crazy with the cheese,” Ramirez said. “It’s wonderful. It makes really good tacos, quesadillas and whatever Mexican food you like.”
She also recommended Churchills’ French bread and Roma tomatoes, but will use whatever is in season and fresh. When the cherry tomatoes are fresh, Ramirez will also make her own pico de gallo.
She likes to cook with a glass of wine.
“With this, I would recommend a red,” Ramirez said.
Many in Bowling Green will recognize Ramirez. She’s a retired barber who worked for many years at the Colonial Barber shop. She and her two partners had five very successful years with “The Barber’s In,” of Perrysburg.
It was a recent Facebook post of her cooking that resulted in her recommendation for the Cook’s Corner, by her friends Mark and Rachel Weber. She and her husband Alfredo, or Freddy, have been friends with the couple since they were all together at the Perrysburg schools.
She said her kids call her “The Mexican Martha Stewart.”
“I post a little too often (on Facebook),” Ramirez said, but Weber disagreed, saying that her postings and recipes are very popular.
She graduated in 1975 and fondly remembers a family trip to Mexico, to her grandfather’s house. They car-camped at KOA campgrounds along the way.
“My mother spoke Spanish. She was fluent, from living with my grandmother,” Ramirez said.
She said she can speak Spanish, “ a little bit. I can get by. I’m not that fluent. My husband is. He’s from Laredo, Texas.”
Becky and Freddy have been married for 46 years. They have two daughters who both went to Perrysburg High School, where Becky went, and four grandchildren.
They built their current house next door to their previous house, 17 years ago.
“I worked really hard, cutting hair, to get this house going,” Ramirez said, laughing. “It’s not even half a mile from my parents home, maybe half a block.”
She’s lived in Perrysburg Heights since the age of 8, when the family moved to Perrysburg Heights in 1962. She’s lived in the community at three different houses, all within the same block. Her 94-year-old father still lives in the house she grew up in and she is the only one of her siblings still living in the Heights.
“I’m blessed. My father is 94 and still driving,” Ramirez said. “He’s also from a big family, and grew up in Louisiana.”
There were nine kids in the Mendieta family.
The name may be familiar, as her brother Bobby Mendieta sold “Mama Mendieta’s Salsa” for 18 years in Perrysburg.
“He had a patent and passed away a year ago,” Ramirez said. “He was very successful.”
He used liquid heat for the jalapeno taste.
“We had it mass produced, through Hirzel’s cannery,” she said. “My sister did the labels. It was fun. We used to do parties. Bobby was something else.”
Fresh jars of the original salsa recipe are still available from her when she cans them in her kitchen, like she did last week. When she made the recent batch of 35 jars, it was mild, with “only 25 jalapenos.”
