Irina Gonzalez

I'm a food & health staff writer for Mamás Latinas, with a blog devoted to Healthy Latin Food and maintaining a 100lb weight loss.

Creative from a young age, I fell in love with writing early on and have never looked back. My education took me from journalism classes at NYU to an internship at Latina magazine, working in magazines and finally to MamásLatinas. Here I write about anything and everything but I'm a passionate foodie devoted to healthy eating and learning to enjoy exercise as I work on maintaining a 100lb weight loss.

I know I'm Latina when...

I wear bright, vibrant colors in any season, for any occasion. Oh, and lots of animal print!

Irina's Latest Posts

Latin ingredient of the week: How to roast your own pepitas (RECIPE)

I have a confession to make: Until this past year, I had never actually tried pepitas. Pumpkin was just not something my family ate very much, and so I was sadly lacking the roasted pumpkin seeds in my life until I finally decided that I just had to try them. Since then, I have fallen in love with pepitas in recipes like our ruby salad with crumbled feta and spicy pepitas, the spinach, radish slaw with crispy chiles and pepitas and the pumpkin pie with pepita nut and ginger topping.

My only regret so far is that I typically depend on store-bought pepitas and have yet to make them myself. Well, after discovering just how easy it is to roast your own pepitas, I don't know what I was waiting for!

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The 4 craziest diets of all time!

Have you ever tried an extreme diet? I did. A couple of weeks ago, I tried to go on a 5-day cleanse where I drank only juice. I thought I would be fine, since most of the juices were pretty healthy (low in sugar, filled with nutrients and plenty of veggies), but after a day I just didn't feel great and decided to quit. Although I think the 1-day juice cleanse actually helped me in the long run, it got me thinking about some of the other insane diets out there. Juicing aside, here's our collection of the 4 craziest (and most dangerous!) diets of all time. These will scare you--don't ever try them!

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Latin slow cooker: Chicken enchilada stack to make your mouth water (RECIPE)

I love me some slow cooker enchiladas. I mean, who wouldn't? I love my slow cooker because it's great to prepare something in the morning and have it freshly cooked and ready for you when you come home at night. And I love enchiladas because, well, they're just delicious. One thing I've never tried, though, is an enchilada stack--a dish easily prepared in the slow cooker where you stack the tortillas instead of rolling them. Who ever heard of such a crazy thing?! Well, now I have and now you have, so let's start! Making this slow cooker chicken enchilada stack is going to be easy and delicious. I'm betting that it will be a family favorite in no time!

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National Margarita Day: Our 7 favorite recipes ever!

PHOTOS

Happy National Margarita Day!

You all probably already know how much I love food holidays and, even better, cocktail holidays! Well, with today being a celebration of one of the most iconic Latin drinks, I can't think of a better way to celebrate than with our 7 favorite margarita recipes EVER. We all know the classic margarita or even some variations, but these recipes are going to shock and delight you more than you can possibly imagine. Want a spicy margarita? How about a low calorie margarita? Or what about the cutest little margarita Jell-O shooter? Check them out and let's drink up!

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Save or splurge? Frizz-fighting serums that leave hair luminous

I have a pretty serious frizzy hair problem and I know I'm definitely not the only Latina with the same issue, so when I was asked to test some new frizz-fighting serums, I positively jumped at the chance. As part of this week's Save or splurge? column, we've put two of the best to the test: John Frieda Frizz-Easy Sheer Solution ($10 in the save category) and Kérastase Cristalliste Lumière Liquide (the $42 splurge version). The neat thing about both of these serums is that they both claim to be lightweight and to give your hair a special luminous shine. I couldn't WAIT to try them out!

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