memories

Dec

28

The Sound of Music

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This post has nothing to do with food and everything to do with Doña Lupe’s Kitchen.

It’s about The Sound of Music.

You know, that movie with Julie Andrews as a singing nun who falls in love, gets married to a guy with a ton of singing kids and then escapes from Nazi Germany?  That movie.

Why is it so important to DLK?

I’ll tell you…

I don’t remember my Grandma Lupe doing ANYTHING for herself.  EVER.  She devoted her life to her family, her God and religion.  She gave back to her community.  She rallied the Guadalupanas at her church into providing a communion dress for a poor girl in the area.  She baked bread for the church bake sales, cleaned the church, and gave, gave, gave.  Never once did I ever see her do anything that wasn’t completely selfless, except for the occasional moment she took out in the patio to eat an orange.

She never just sat still.  Always there was needlework in her hands, she was embroidering pillow cases for someone, edging towels with crocheted lace, making baby blankets even while watching T.V.  I don’t remember her ever just doing something because it was FUN.

Til the Sound of Music.

My grandmother had a library of Catholic books in her home.  You know, things like the Lives of Saints, the Bible and not much else except for the books by Marie Killelea ( a Catholic author who wrote about her daughter Karen’s cerebral palsy and faith) and The Sound of Music.  My grandmother LOVED the story of the Von Trapp family and I think, in some way found it related somewhat to her own life.  She, like Maria Von Trapp, had wanted to become a nun and instead married.

She loved the message of the book. She loved that Maria Von Trapp had chosen duty – serving God even though she wouldn’t become the nun she’d thought she’d be.  She loved the faith of the family and that they prayed often, had their own chapel built on their property when they finally settled.  She loved the book.

I found the book because I was desperate.  I was and am an avid, hungry reader.  I’d already been through the Lives of Saints and had read about Saint Maria Goretti’s stabbing like 900 times.  There was nothing else and then I found it, this little book.  Grabbing an apple and heading out to the patio, I buried myself in the lives of the Trapp Family Singers for a couple of hours.  I fell in love with the book too, not for religious reasons, but because it was an adventure.  That same summer that I’d found the book, the movie came out and my grandmother decided we’d all go see it.

I take my grandkids to the movies all the time, no big deal.  MY GRANDMOTHER GOING TO A MOVIE WAS AS IF THE WORLD HAD STOOD ON END AND TIPPED US ALL OFF IT!

IT WAS HUGE!

She didn’t go to movies.  She didn’t do fun stuff.  She went to markets, J.C. Penny’s to get sensible underwear and pajamas for us.  She didn’t go to movies!

It was the one and only time I ever sat in a movie theater with my grandmother.  We laughed, we cried, we had a good time.  We went home and talked about the movie for days.

To this day, when I see the movie on television, I think of my grandmother and miss her.

It was on this Christmas Day.  “Merry Christmas in heaven Grandma”, I whispered as I saw the opening credits.  I watched the movie and remembered my Grandma.

 

Dec

12

Celebrating the Virgen de Guadalupe

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Today is December 12th, which means it is the anniversary of the day that the Virgen de Guadalupe appeared to Juan Diego on the sierra de Tepeyac.  For Mexican Catholics, it’s HUGE.  For Mexican non-Catholics it’s still huge.

For me, growing up with a grandmother named Guadalupe who had an absolute and firm devotion to the blessed virgin, this day is not only sacred, holy and special; but it is also wistful, a little sad and filled with memories of a wonderful grandmother.  I still remember the huge framed painting of the Virgin’s appearance to Juan Diego that had pride of place in my grandparent’s house.

As an Aztec dancer, this day also meant I’d be at Placita Olvera at midnight in a press of people, dressed in a traje de gala (Aztec regalia), waiting to dance/pray at 2:00 a.m.

I didn’t dance this year, but I dragged myself across town to watch and say hello to my fellow dancers.  As usual, there was a huge press of people. Banda, Aztec huehuetl drums and mariachi music filled the small plaza.  I didn’t stay long because I’m getting over a cold and couldn’t handle being out.  Still, I pushed my way through, said hi to a few people, knelt down and said a prayer.  It wasn’t the pilgrimage of thousands that Tepeyac sees every year and it wasn’t my usual start dancing at 2:00 a.m. and don’t stop till the next day at 9:00 p.m. odyssey, but the day was observed.  My grandmother would have liked that.

In previous years, when I danced we’d go from Olvera Street; splitting up the group to accommodate all the different Catholic churches that had requested us to dance; to various churches/masses.  I used to laugh and say I got all my churching in a twenty-four hour span because before we’d dance, we’d have to stand in the back of the church or the aisles and listen to the whole mass.  EACH TIME.

After each mass, the church people would offer up menudo, tamales, champurrado but we were always in too much of a hurry to make it to the next mass to take them up on it.  Sometimes, we’d have a chance to grab a tamale for the road but mostly, no.  We were packed into cars or vans with drums, feathers, beads and regalia fighting us for space and headed over to the next place.  Tummies growled, but we didn’t care.  We were dancing for Tonantzin, the Aztec diosa that the Guadalupe represents to the indigenous.  With each mass, we got hungrier, colder, more tired but we kept at it.  We danced in parades, in church aisles, in a driveway where someone had seen an image of the Virgin, in front of statues and altars.  We danced.

For us, dancing is a prayer and we’d always start with the special one for that day Tonantzin.  Our rattles kept time with the drums and our rapidly stomping chachayotle clad ankles did too.  We danced Cruz (cross) and we danced to the four directions.  Antigua, the dance to the ancestors was always my favorite next to Tonantzin.  We danced through the dawn and all the next day.  Late that night, we’d end up at Zamora Brothers in East Los Angeles.  All us dancers would turn up, the circle completed.  No more masses, no more parades.  This was the end and we were all together; exhausted, hungry, tired and cold.  We proudly showed off our blisters and talked about how beautiful the churches were we’d seen.  We’d gather the last of our reserve strength and dance one more time, for the Virgen de Guadalupe.

Then we’d eat.  Zamora Brothers always put out a great spread for us.  Menudo, carnitas, chicharrones, ponche, champurrado and tamales.  We’d don our serapes or wearable blankets, put shoes on our cold and tired feet and eat.  We’d eat, talk, laugh and eventually, go home and sleep till noon the next day.

Feliz dia de la virgen!

Jun

19

Father’s Day Memories

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My grandfather, Salvador Medina Camarillo was the strongest father influence in my young life.  My parents were divorced and I rarely saw my father – the divorce was bitter and combative.  Eventually, the other grandparents faded into the background because to my mother, they were sources of great evil, having given my father life.  Hey, I said it was a bad divorce, si?  It fell to my maternal grandparents to step in and do the best they could to raise us in the middle of a family war.

I spent a lot of time at my grandparents house, every weekend, school vacation, summers…all were spent in the creaky old house on Goodwin Avenue with all the gardens.  My time inside was devoted to my grandmother Lupe and her magical kitchen, but outside I spent my time with my Papa Chava (my grandfather).  Papa had tons of wonders in his domain hay afuera.  He had a dusty workshop in the garage/el garaje.  There were jars of every kind of nail, tools, circular saws, gardening equipment, big MJB coffee cans full of canicas (marbles).  He loved to carve things and often sat out on the patio carving stone monkeys.  Sometimes he’d take cherry pits and carve those too and hand them to me, while I played with the big can of marbles.

Papa made cutting boards for my grandmother.  He’d use his machine saw thingy and make it in the shape of a pig.  I loved those pig-shaped cutting boards.  They were comforting, homey and showed his love.  He had this ingenious irrigation system in his garden too.  He’d rigged all these old glass coffee jars (the original eco-recycler) within the rows of vegetables and chiles and place the hose in one of the jars.  The water would flow and work its way around the rows through the jars of water and everything would be irrigated evenly.  My job was to walk around and make sure all the jars were placed just so so that there was no damming of the water.

For picking lemons or guayabas up high on his fruit trees he’d fastened the hook of an old wire hanger into an old broomstick, taking time to carefully drill a hole, add the hook and cement it in, then wrapping it with duct tape.  With those re-purposed broomsticks you could reach the highest fruit, wrap the hook around it, twist and it fell into a basket easily.  I loved doing that.

Once, when all the family was together making tamales and my grandmother wasn’t satisfied that the masa was beaten enough, he got together with some of my bis-tios (great uncles) and managed to attach something to one of his power drills that became a powerful beater for those huge buckets of masa.  The smile on my grandmother’s face lit the room and I knew then why she loved him so.  He was a miracle man, a problem solver and someone you could count on no matter what.

On quiet days, he’d play cards.  Lay out solitaire on the big dining table.  Piramidas or pyramids and other games I learned watching him.  He’d talk to me sometimes about his life before meeting my grandmother.  How he left Mexico during the Revolution (he was born in 1900).  He’d told me he’d been to Chicago and worked hard in the stockyards there.  He once told me he was stuck in Vegas (before it was even the Bunny Seigel Vegas – just some beat up old places with one armed bandits) was hungry, broke and desperate for work.  He sat for hours with his belly gnawing at him watching people play the one armed bandit slot machines and noticed a pattern.  After someone played for a certain amount of time, they’d leave disgusted and someone else would sit there and hit the jackpot after a few tries.  He realized that they gave out money when they were full.  He dug deep and found a few nickels or pennies, I don’t remember which and watched the machines.  Sure enough someone got up and left.  Taking his few coins, he slid one in and didn’t win.  On the second try he did.  He got something to eat and then stayed watching and won a few more rounds.  He then had enough money to make his way back to wherever he needed to get.  That’s the type of man he was: diligent, patient, watchful and smart.  I like to think he passed some of that on to me.  I know I have his persistence and determination.

My grandfather died in 1986 after a long bout with cancer and the loss of his beloved wife two years before.  He’d been battling cancer since the ’60s and being the man he was, he never complained.  I miss him every day and I wish he had been here longer to teach my boys about his incredible life.

Jan

27

My Grandmother’s Aprons

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She's wearing an apron :)

You can't see it, but she's wearing her apron.

The only times I remember seeing my Grandma Lupe without her apron on was on Sundays when we walked over to the little church Cristo Rey on Perlita Avenue.  On those days she looked elegant and wore lipstick.  As soon as we got home though, she would change her church clothes and put on an apron.  I loved those aprons.  To me, they represented warmth, plenty, love and goodness.  They were part of my grandma and I learned to love those worn aprons almost as much as I loved her.

The aprons were handmade, usually by my Auntie Jessie who was a whiz with the sewing machine.  They were made of flour sack or plain cotton, old sheets, whatever material they found.  They had large pockets and sometimes were embroidered.  My grandmother did the most beautiful, delicate embroidery.  Even the sheets, dish towels and pillowcases were edged in her lovely crochet and decorated with embroidery.  Sometimes those big pockets had sweet treats for a much-loved grandchild, the same way mine do.

On bad days at home away from my beloved grandparents, I would cling to the apron she gave me and remember hers.  It comforted me much like a security blanket comforts a toddler.  That apron told me someone loved me, that there was a creaky little house near Los Feliz filled with warmth, laughter and puro amor.

She called me her Reina del cielo (queen of heaven) and when I walked in the door fresh from being picked up by bus (my grandfather would take three buses to where I lived and then bring me back on three more) on school vacations, there she was: that sweet, loving woman who would open her arms wide and I would run into them feeling safe, loved and finally home.  Her apron smelled of her unique scent – rose petals, herbs, chilis, onion, garlic and the sweet smelling furniture wax she used on her wood. The smells from the kitchen were more tantalizing and delicious.

I was home.  Really home.  This was where I belonged and the home of my heart.  It still is even though she’s been gone over 20 years.  That home she gave me lives on in my heart and is my biggest sanctuary however far I roam and against any challenges that arise.

I loved folding her aprons after they’d been laundered.  She had an apron drawer in her kitchen.  Piles of neatly folded aprons lay there waiting to serve her.  The stories and recipes they could tell if only they could speak!  My grandmother was THE cook of the neighborhood and as you turned down the corner on Goodwin Avenue, you could smell whatever she was cooking all the way down the street.  Everyone loved her.  She and my grandfather were known in the neighborhood for their kindness and generosity though they had little.  They’d never dream of accepting money for help and always, always would come of the words of my Papa saying, *“no cobramos por ayuda.”  They were loved.

Yesterday, a UPS man knocked at my door with a package from Foodbuzz.  I opened it and there was a coupon for a free Alexia Foods entree and yes, you guessed it, an apron.  As I held the apron up to show my son, the memories of my grandmother’s aprons came flooding in and brought me to tears.  I told my son the story about my grandmother’s aprons and he said to me, “Wow Mom, she sounds amazing.  I wish I had known her.  Thanks for writing about her.  Make sure you write about the aprons.”

This is the apron Alexia Foods and Foodbuzz sent me

Disclosure:  Alexia Foods sent me a free apron and a free coupon.  The apron is the awesome by the way and I haven’t cashed in the coupon yet to try their product but I will and I’ll write about it with another Federally mandated disclosure that I got stuff for free.

*For Spanish or Spanglish words, I’m not going to translate them.  I used to get the “look it up” answer if I asked what a word was and i sure did learn, so si quieres saber, LOOK IT UP.

Dec

17

Christmas Traditions & Memories

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Grandma & Papa taught me the true spirit of Christmas

From my window far from home I can see snow on the rooftops.  The day is sunny and bright, but I can see the snow clouds closing in.  There will be more snow before I get home to family and friends for Christmas.  I’m nostalgic this morning, remembering old Christmas traditions, things I never did with my children and things we did do.  Through the veil of memory, the traditions I left behind now make me ache with a longing for another time, another place, those amazing people that are now gone who were the spirits of the season for me and everyone around them.  I am swept away remembering…

A creaky old frame house on Goodwin Avenue in Los Angeles, painted white with green trim and gardens everywhere.  My Papa’s (grandfather) garaje was set in the back and there he had a dark and dusty workshop, magical to a kid like me where he had jars of nails, screws and seeds for the garden.  The stable he made for Christmas also lived there and he’d touch it up each year, if not rebuild it.

At Christmas time, my grandmother Lupe would send me and my Aunt Jessie down to the basement to rummage amongst the boxes of lights, decorations, ornaments and most importantly, the nativity scene.  I loved picking up the tiny sheep, the large camels, the donkey and other animals.  I was too small to lift the huge Italian-made Mary, Joseph and the three wise men.  One majestically rode upon his camel and I loved to touch it.  The folds in his robes were so real looking, I kept expecting fabric not plaster. Most beautiful of all was the life-sized baby Jesus, in his little blue satin dress with the gold trim my Aunt Jessie had made him.  He was so real looking.  His beautiful little glass eyes and his open mouth with tiny teeth made him look just like a real baby.  We loved him and always reverently touched his outreached hands or stroked his plaster curls and made sure his little socks covered his feet so he wouldn’t be cold.  We would bring him up from the basement, but he wouldn’t go into the stable.  Not yet.

My Papa would bring in the hand made stable he had built.  We’d lay pine boughs over the roof so it smelled good and kept Mary and Joseph dry and warm.  My grandparents were determined that if they must be in a stable, it would be a well covered one.  We’d spend hours laying down hay, determining where the animals all went, making sure the star above it was always lit and carefully placing the cradle basket for Baby Jesus to lie in.  My Auntie Jessie would make sure the blankets and pillows in it were perfect, if not she went and made more till it was perfect.  And there the cradle sat, waiting for days in anticipation of the Christ child.

At midnight on Christmas Eve (Noche Buena) we would all bundle up and walk to the parish church for midnight mass.  I loved going and being able to stay up late.  When we got back, my grandmother would gently lay the Baby Jesus into his cradle.  We’d line up and each of us would give him a kiss and welcome him to the world anew.  I always whispered, “Happy birthday.”  It was always a joyous night.  We’d be given hot champurrado and a little pan dulce, then scooted off to bed to dream of Santa Claus and presents. The whole family was together then, aunts, uncles, cousins all spending the night scattered all over the house, waiting for Christmas day.  Christmas day was a bustle of presents, food, lots of people and noise but to my mind then and now it didn’t compare with the magic of Noche Buena and the welcoming of the little Lord Jesus.

Sep

20

Caldo de res and Memories

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Don’t you just love rainy days? I do. I am not a fan of summer with the exception of luscious summer fruit. I’m the type of person that likes to curl up with a steamy mug of coffee, a hand-made afghan and my laptop. Occasionally, I replace the coffee with hot chocolate, tea, atole or cider and the laptop with a book or notebook to write in. Maybe it has something to do with me being born in December. I love waking up in the grey, chilly morning wrapped in my blankets with my little jalapeno-eating dog at my feet. I wake up brighter somehow in spite of the gloom of the day. If there is rain, thunder and lightening I am positively glowing. Those are the days I wake up singing, my head full of memories, recipes, words that beg to be written down and a poem in my soul. Those are the days I make hearty soups, caldos, stews and those are the days I bake bread.

One of my favorite soups for a chilly day is caldo de res. It’s a vegetable laden soup with rich, falling apart tender bits of beef in a positively nourishing beefy broth. It’s served in a big bowl with Mexican rice, steaming hot tortillas, bright yellow sliced lemons and a freshly made salsa sitting in a squat basalt molcajate.

Whenever I make it, it takes me back to that little kitchen on Goodwin Avenue where I spent most of my formative years. My grandmother is always present in those memories, her apron and those tiny, gentle hands that seemingly had magic in them. She was magical with spices, herbs, plants and cooking. Anything that came from her kitchen was redolent with aroma, absolutely delicious and the kind of food that begs for yet another bite even if you can’t eat another one.

My Grandma Lupe was a genius in the kitchen. We are alike in a lot of ways and oh so different in others. I rarely remember her measuring, unless it was a new recipe. She loved watching food TV shows, The Galloping Gourmet and Julia Child with the same intensity that I watch Food Network.

I remember her pantry full of baking supplies, kitchen gadgets and cookbooks. You could find magic in that pantry: bright spices, cans of baking soda, big clear acrylic bins of flour, beans, rice. It was like Ali Baba’s cave of treasures in there to my younger self. A truly otherworldly and magical place. That tiny kitchen with it’s bright red little breakfast table, the old stove and creaky floors was heaven to me and my imagination and palate were fueled by it. It haunts me in a good way, the kind of haunting that makes me write stories about it, reconstruct recipes, share them and recreate smells and a place for my own grandchildren to weave their dreams in.

One of the things I remember most is her caldos. I loved those bright bowl full of celery, potatoes, carrots, meat, onion, corn on the cob, cabbage and zucchini. The herbs and garlic she put in were unseen because she’d pull them out before adding the veggies. My grandfather (Papa) hated biting into a piece of garlic and she made sure he didn’t.

The meaty broth was nourishing and perfect on those chilly days and it was fun food too for the child I was. Think about it. I got to scoop brightly colored rice into it, squeeze lemon and add a small bit of that yummy salsa. I got to dip my freshly made tortillas into it and eat my own creation. Everyone at the table made it their own, each adding either more salsa, no rice, less rice, more rice, rolled their tortilla and dipped it, made tacos out of it, etc, etc. Fun food and I never once thought it was healthy or icky with too many vegetables. It was just delicious and fun.

I miss those chilly afternoons around the small table, sitting across from my Papa, giggling at my Auntie Jessie and watching my Grandmother move around the kitchen as gracefully as a ballet dancer making sure everyone had warm tortillas, their glasses were full, the salsa was ok. I don’t ever remember her just sitting down and enjoying. She was the uber hostess, the caretaker, the matriarch and she waited on us lovingly. Even on big holidays when there was a table full of people she’d rarely sit. Everyone would try to get her to sit down but she was too focused on caring for us.

To me now, caldo de res equals comfort, happy memories and beyond that, it’s just plain delicioso. What are your best memories of food and family?

Sep

04

Mole & Potato Salad

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I'm waiting for my mole and potato salad

I know right?  It sounds weird.

Not to Mexican households, especially mine.  I love potato salad.  Not that sickening sweet pile of mush that they sell in the grocery stores and the slightly better version sold at deli counters.  No, I love the thick, chunky, tangy almost red potato salad my grandmother Lupe would make for picnics and bbqs.  She didn’t do fried chicken.  Hey we were Mexican.  There were always hamburgers and hot dogs for the kids, chicken on the grill that my Papa Chava or some uncle would do.  Maybe even steaks, but I don’t really remember what the grownups ate.  I was there for the potato salad and my grandma Lupe’s amazing purple punch with cherries in it.  If the mole was happening, that’s when I got really happy and excited.

My Grandma’s potato salad had big chunks of just firm enough not to fall apart potato, mustard, mayo, paprika, hard boiled eggs, big pieces of diced pickle, tiny bits of chopped celery, grated onion, and lots of pitted black olives.  One of my favorite parts of helping was that I got to wear the olives on my fingers and play with them before eating.  It was all she could do to keep me from eating them all.  I always got at least ten and pretended that they were my crazy witch fingernails or Swamp Thing or whatever my fertile imagination was running with that summer.

Grandma always made tons of potato salad early in the day so that all the flavors would meld while it was still hot and have plenty of time to be cold by the time we were ready to eat.  We’d help make her purple punch (still trying to find the recipe for that one), her green limeade one and the punch she put rainbow sherbet in.  YUM.  I seriously need to find those recipes.  There’s be fruit salads and the melon ballers would be rocking in three different sizes, green salads, chile salsa, her mix of tomatoes, onions and cilantro with the pretty cilantro flowers in it and a hustle bustle of activity.  The picnic table in the patio my mother’s cousin Jackie had helped built (I still remember being scared of his hammer), the patio with our baby hand and footprints embedded into the dark green cement where shelves of potted plants were everywhere and the sweet scent of Grandma’s flowers and the bay laurel tree would drift in.  God I miss that patio.  There was nothing like sitting in it playing marbles with my Papa or embroidering dish towels with Grandma and Auntie Jessie.

If there was mole, it was one of my favorite things.  The spicy, chocolate thickness of dark red mole on tender, falling off the bone chicken meat mixed with the coolness of the potato salad was perfection.  The mole was spicy enough for the adults and we kids made sure to put lots of lemon to cut the spice and mix in the potato salad that would turn red and taste absolutely delicious.  The tang of the pickle went well with the lemon cutting through the spice and the occasional bite of egg, celery or olive added texture, crunch and interest.  It was a party on a plate.

It’s Labor Day weekend and I’m planning on making potato salad for my own grandkids today.  Will there be mole?  Absolutely.  Hot dogs too, grass fed beef hamburgers (hey it was on sale at Whole Foods) maybe some fish and definitely some icy cold fruit salad.  There will be a fig tart with ice cream and most of all there will be memories of mole and potato salad.

Jul

30

A Perfect Pot of Beans

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Some things are just meant to be simple, delicious and evocative.  My earliest memories of food and cooking always have the gorgeous aroma of beans simmering on my grandmother’s stove.  She made a fresh pot almost every day and the smell is woven into all my memories of her, the house with the creaky wooden floors and the smells of her flowers.

Every time I make a pot, it is like she is right back front and center, larger than life with her gentle little hands, showing me how to pat a tortilla, measure something out for baking, how to chop finely, how to pinch up the sides of a sope and a million other life lessons.  I miss her as keenly over 20 years since she’s been gone from this world as the day I lost her, but the scent of beans cooking in the pot always makes me feel her presence and it comforts me.
Beans seem like simple fare, maybe even bothersome or peasant food to some but to me they are necessary.  They go with just about any meal, are loaded with nutrients, are economical, versatile and filling and I couldn’t imagine life without them.  My favorite though is just out of the pot topped with chopped onion, tomato and cilantro.  It’s like a soup, absolutely delicious and with a freshly made tortilla dipped in, pure ecstasy.

To my mind, nothing is better than that first bowl of beans fresh out of a clay pot before they get re-fried or used for other things like tostadas, burritos, etc.  I still love them however they are cooked, but that first bowl of soupy pinto beans with the bright Mexican flag colors is just special.

I often get asked, “how do your beans come out so good?” or “what did you do to make them so good?” and it always surprises me, because to me beans are beans and no work at all.  I do remember my mother couldn’t make a pot to save her life.  We’d come home from school to the smell of burnt beans permeating the house and think, “Jeez, mom forgot to put water in the beans again.”  That never happened at Grandma’s house.  When I go over the steps in my head to my Grandma Lupe’s perfect pot of beans, its almost zen-like to me.  Maybe other Mexican cooks have different ways of preparing them but I only know hers and they’re always, always perfect so I thought I’d share the steps.

My grandmother never used just pinto beans.  She had this beautiful, big acrylic container my Uncle Adam had made for her that was filled with a mixture of large white beans, kidney beans, pintos, small lima beans, navy beans and pink beans.  The varying colors and sizes were beautiful and to me as a child, like little gems in a treasure box.  I loved sticking my hands into that clear container and picking up handfuls and letting them stream back in.

First step to a pot of good beans is cleaning them.  This is where the zen comes in.  My grandmother would pile in front of me little hills of beans and my job was to carefully inspect each one.  Broken ones, little dirt rocks and ones with the skins peeling were swiftly scooted off into a discard pile.  Good ones went into the keep pile.  I always found it very soothing to sort the beans and still do.

Once you’re done sorting the beans, put the good ones into a colander and wash them throughoughly in warm water then set aside.

In a large pot* fill just about an inch below the rim with cool water and bring to a boil.

Once you have the water at a rolling boil, add salt (no measurements here – depends on taste and how much you are making), two cloves of garlic and one golden onion, peeled and quartered.

Next add the beans and lower the flame/heat to very low.  Cover with a tight fitting lid and let simmer (no peeking) for three hours.  You do need to keep adding boiling water every so often to keep the water level an inch from the rim.  Don’t forget to put water in the beans!!  My grandma always kept a small pot simmering on the back burner so she could add in water and keep the temp the same.

One thing I notice is if you want nice, pink beans you limit the lid lifting.  One of my friends is a compulsive lid-lifter and her beans, while they are delicious come out very dark.  Some weird chemical reaction (oxidation?) happens when you lift the lid.  I’ve also found that people who soak their beans before cooking them also get the dark thing going on.  I am not a fan of soaking them.  Why bother when you can put a pot on in the morning and have delicious beans in the afternoon?

Ok – so everyone is gonna ask but, but, but Gina you didn’t give us measurements and we don’t know how many beans to put in so I’ll attempt to gauge the amount I put in this morning. I’m using a large soup pot (stainless steel because my olla broke and I have to go back to Mexico and buy another one because I’m so not buying an olla from here but you can that’s just me) and it holds 18 cups of water just an inch below the rim, to those 18 cups I put in about 4 cups of beans.  Salt is to taste so no measurement there.  I start with about hmm three tablespoons and go from there.

So that’s it my grandmother’s secret for a perfect pot of beans.  Love, care and some patience.

*When I was growing up, beans were cooked in a clay olla or pot.  Nowadays, there is a concern with the lead content in Mexican ollas so I won’t tell you to use one even though I do.  I love the flavor my olla imparts to the beans.  If you want to use a traditional clay olla, please find one that is lead-free.

Mar

06

Rain

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The rain beats against my window with no rhythm, no rhyme.  At times it is unrelenting, vicious in its determination to get inside.  It batters the windows, rattles them; then frustrated, it takes a breath and prepares for the next assault.  It’s been raining five days now in Los Angeles.  There have been tornado warnings, 65 mph gale winds, hail and rain in buckets enough to generate a Twitter hashtag called #theendoftheworld.  At times the rain is gentle, soothing; the kind of rain that makes one long for Sunday papers in bed, a good book, a cuddle with a loved one or the smell of bacon and coffee drifting upstairs to waken you.

I love that kind of rain, it always propels me to the kitchen, to bake or make soup – the vegetable rich, lemony caldo de pollo that my grandmother made so often.  Brimming with color from corn on the cob, translucent green cabbage, dark green zucchini, bright orange carrots, the pale quarters of onions and the earthy dark of unskinned potatoes.  She’d serve it in a deep bowl over a scoop of red Spanish rice with warm corn tortillas wrapped in a cloth to keep them warm and a half slice of lemon to squeeze over it.  She always did hers a little different, a way I thought special.  To hers, she’d slice up a regular banana, not a plaintain but a banana and add a sprig of mint.  It gave an unusual sweetness to the soup that was distinctly Grandma Lupe.  No one else ate it that way, it was Grandma’s soup.  Sweet, distinct, unusual with a gentle touch, just like her.

Always on the table was the fresh salsa de molcajete she made and my grandfather, Papa Chava would pile it up on his bowl.  It added a smoky, spicy flavor to the soup that I loved and still do now with the added flavor of memories.  I make it often, roasting the tomatoes on the comal till their skins burst, wrapping the roasted chiles in a damp cloth so their skins can steam off and gently removing the cilantro leaves from their stems to add whole to the salsa.  I am recreating my grandmother’s steps, I am keeping her memory alive in my kitchen.

My grandmother’s salsa had little cilantro flowers in it because my grandfather grew cilantro in a way to ensure she never ran out.  He’d stagger the planting carefully so that there were soft earthy mounds with tiny stems poking their heads out, the next with the cilantro a little bigger, the next in full cutting mode and the back mounds were left to go to seed.  He gathered those round seeds and dried them carefully, saving them in an old glass baby food jar that he kept in his garage/gardening shed.

When the cilantro flowered, my grandmother loved to put the tiny white blossoms in her salsa and in the tomato relish (I guess you can call it that) that she made for tacos and tostadas.  The blossoms were surprisingly flavorful, that sharp green tang of the cilantro intensified.  You’d never know such a tiny, wispy flower would pack such a punch.  Store bought cilantro just isn’t the same.  The leaves are so much bigger, the flavor not as intense and of course, there are no delicate, lacy white blossoms to beautify and flavor your dish.

The rain is calming now and I’m still making up my mind whether to go out, bake or make soup.  For now, I’m content to snuggle in, pet my dog and remember a kitchen where love what the secret ingredient.