Our Pecan Tree

With the arrival of his firstborn daughter, a young father planted a nogal seedling.  The land was barren and stony but the nogal thrived.

Two more daughters were born and, over time, the three sisters grew to play in the shade of the tree's broad branches, climbing, jumping, and staining their clothes with its caramel-colored sap.  The girls gathered the tree's savory pecans, cracking them open and eating them as they played.

Memory in a Soup - Dia de los Muertos

I have lived seven Novembers without him and somehow survived them in different ways.

We knew that November 2005 could be the last with our son, Alex. He was about to deploy to a raging battleground in Iraq for the second time. Our hearts were heavy and so he asked that we celebrate Thanksgiving twice, once on the Thursday and again on Friday. So we did. We went around the table articulating our thanks for special things in our lives. When it came to Alex, he looked at us and thanked us for having been his parents and loving him as we did. Then he left, and we would never again be blessed with seeing this child, this man, whom we loved so much.  We would never see him grow old, become a father, raise children and teach us things only our children can teach us. Our lives would change dramatically.

Last year I began to practice a remembrance of Alex through the Día de los Muertos tradition, finding comfort in the connection to this prehispanic ritual. I made pan de muertos and set up an altar with ofrendas arranged with things Alex might have liked. In fact, I have begun doing this with the children I teach. They also set up altares to their loved ones in my classroom, gaining a hands-on understanding of the spirituality of this day and the mystery of life.

This year I've made the usual things in remembrance: empanadas, hojarascas, capirotada, and pan de muertos. The empanadas, especially, are for my mother, who comforted me in this loss through her profound understanding of my sorrow. But today I'll post something that can't be put in an ofrenda: a soup I began to make for Alex after he started eating solid food as a baby.

Last night I ate this soup, savoring slowly the taste and texture of the alphabet-shaped pasta, the flavors of the vegetables, and I was transported back to those days that went by much too quickly.

Memory in a Soup - Dia de los Muertos

Recipe Type: Soup

Cuisine: Mexican

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 20 mins

Cook time: 20 mins

Total time: 40 mins

Serves: 4

The browning of the vegetables enhances the taste of the soup, but if you prefer not to have the additional olive oil in the soup, just skip this step and throw the vegetables directly into the boiling broth until they are soft.

Ingredients:

• 8 cups of chicken broth, either homemade (preferably) or commercial
• 3-4 carrots, minced
• 1 stick celery, minced
• 2 cloves garlic
• 3/4 cup alphabet pasta
• 1 onion minced as finely as possible
• cilantro or parsley for flavoring at the end
• 2 leaves of any greens like kale or escarole (chopped very finely)
• olive oil to coat the pasta and brown it in a pan (about 2 tablespoons)
• olive oil to soften the onion, carrot, celery, and green leaves, (about 2 tablespoons)
• Salt to taste
• Pepper grindings to taste
• Optional: one lime and a few crumbled totopos (corn tortilla that you fry yourself, don't bother buying any)

Instructions:

1. Brown the pasta with the oil in a thick pan at a low heat, about one minute, it will brown quickly.


2. Brown the peeled garlic, onion, celery, carrots, and green leaves separately in the other 2 tablespoons of oil with a low flame for about 5 minutes. Add a little oil if you need to.


3. Combine the pasta and the vegetables in a large pot with the broth already boiling and boil together for about 15 minutes.


4. Check for salt, add pepper grindings if you like, and garnish with cilantro or parsley.


5. Serve in a bowl for your child and add fried, crunchy corn tortilla, and a few drops of lime juice squeezed into the soup at the last minute.

3.1.09

Mise en Place: A Gilda Teaches a Cooking Class

I'm madly gathering the fresh ingredients--tomatoes, tomatillos, onions, cilantro, chiles--that I'll need to teach a cooking class at Casa Carmen. Travel is by foot, mind you; I've covered many a mile between the market and my house today and not on flat terrain. When someone asks you how long it takes to get somewhere in San Miguel de Allende, the response should be: 10 minutes downhill, 25 pesos (by taxi) uphill.

What's more, it's never a straight shot from any two places, because you always run into someone you know and, before you know it, you've taken a detour for churros and chocolate. Life here is slow and hurried at the same time. Slow because you take time for friendship, hurried because if you want to get anything done, you need to limit your leisure time.
But, today, I'm on a mission.  I'm staying focused.   Even the most basic lesson about sauces that appear frequently at the Mexican table--pico de gallo, salsa de molcajete, and a salsa made with dried guajillo and cascabel chiles--require preparation!

So many sauces, so little time. We'll start with a visit to the Ignacio Ramirez market to identify some of the ingredients and then return to Casa Carmen to roll up our sleeves.

Stay tuned!

Happiness is a Wild Avocado

I've packed a set of handpainted cups from San Gimignano, a weathered cutting board, two old cork screws, a pair of mismatched dishtowels and assorted kitchen knick knacks no one wanted when my two sisters and I divided our mother's things after she passed away. My husband has packed his own treasures: his Pavoni coffee machine, his pizza peel and, of course, some basic tools. We've packed our hearts in these bags.

I'm on the plane looking down below at Mexico's majestic mountains, at a land where we will eventually live.  Squinting down at the winding roads below, I wonder how many times my family has been back and forth across this forsaken land, led by whatever heart wrenching forces drove them to first leave from north of the Rio Grande to travel south, then from south to north and now, in my case, from north to south once again. The spirits of the women in my family who preceded me, surely must be waiting with a welcoming rebozo in hand to drape around my shoulders for the chilly mountain nights I will encounter. “Hija, por fin has regresado” they'll whisper to me.

I long to take in the vibrant colors and smells, the riotous noise of the perennial fiesta, the lament of the ubiquitous mariachi, and most of all, a quintessential feeling of belonging. A part of me wants to hold on to what I leave behind, but the pull is strong to look forward and not back. For now, my adrenaline is pumping, thinking about the friends I will visit, the trips to the market I will make, the food I will prepare, and the restaurants I will try in San Miguel de Allende, the place I will someday call home.

I arrive and one of the first things I find are glossy-black, wild avocados.  My aunt Gloria used to call them aguacates criollos. They have a thin, aromatic peel that can be eaten along with the creamy green meat. The peel tastes somewhat like Thai basil.

What to make?  Wild avocado tacos.

Buy only the smooth black ripe ones. Slice them in long thin slices. Arrange them in warm corn tortillas and top them with fresh cilantro, salt, and finely chopped onion. Squeeze lime juice and sprinkle with salt. Go up to the rooftop with a cold beer and take in the view of the glittering night sky or devote your gaze to the glow of the Parroquia below. And make a wish.

Note: If you don't have access to wild avocados, use ordinary avocados. (But don't eat the peel, for heaven's sake!)

Message in a Molcajete

Hijo,

I want to tell you a story. It's been part of the lore of our family. It's about a molcajete. This is a story I would have told you, along with many others about our family but, child, we simply ran out of time.

So many years ago, your grandfather, Rogelio, returning safely to Laredo from the Second World War, proposed to your grandmother, Floria, or Lita, as you used to call her when you were learning to speak. A wedding was planned in a poor neighborhood just a few blocks south of the bridge in Nuevo Laredo. The bride's family was humble and, therefore, the wedding party was not large. As the story goes, or as Lita used to say, there was a little girl in the neighborhood who wanted badly to attend the wedding. This little girl, who must have been around eight years of age, according to Lita, appeared at the backyard wedding reception with her best dress and a wedding gift wrapped in newspaper.

The gift was a molcajete that Lita came to treasure probably more than any of the more costly gifts she received. The identity of the little girl is lost in time and hopefully no calamity befell the household in Nuevo Laredo that discovered its molcajete suddenly missing.

This pumice stone mortar and pestle has sat quietly resting on its three legs, when not in use, like a witness to the years we lived in your grandparents' house. I began to use it when I was just a child myself when I helped Lita cook. And when I left home, Lita let me have it. Its black porous surface has an almost smooth texture from so much grinding and I can attest to contributing to its smooth edges these past ten years. If it could talk, what stories it could tell.

Hijo, I'm writing you a recipe for Salsa Molcajete, a sauce Lito, your grandfather, made very often quite early in the morning. Lito was an early riser and he would inadvertently annoy his three sleeping daughters by getting up at 6 a.m. On a Saturday morning, he would roast serrano peppers for his breakfast sauce until they started smoking. Unfortunately, the smoke from the chilis would get us all coughing. Poor Lito...he just wanted to make a sauce quickly, not taking the time to slowly roast the chilis. I'm laughing at the memory of the commotion and yelling that would break out of the bedrooms as my sisters and I would wake up coughing to the smell of smoking chilis slowly wafting into our bedrooms. Throughout the house you could hear the three of us yelling "Papá!!!" Then Lita would join the fray, "Rogelio!!!"

Needless to say, the molcajete has been around for a lot of our family stories. It would have been around for yours too.

Salsa de Molcajete

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Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 15 mins

Cook time: 5 mins

Total time: 20 mins

Serves: 4

Grinding roasted tomatoes, peppers, garlic, and onion in a mortar, gives them a complexity of flavor you wouldn't otherwise get.

Ingredients

• 2 cloves peeled garlic


• 1/2 white onion


• 1 extra large tomato


• 1/4 teaspoon seasalt


• 1/4 cup cilantro


• juice from one lime


• 1 serrano pepper (or you can subsitute a jalapeño)

Instructions

1. Dry roast the garlic, onion, serrano pepper, and tomato on a comal for about 5 minutes until they are slightly charred.


2. Peel the tomato.


3. In the molcajete grind the garlic, serrano pepper, onion (chopped fine) and cilantro with the sea salt.


4. Empty the contents of the molcajete into another bowl to make room to grind the tomato.


5. Mix everthing together again in the molcajete, squeeze the lime juice and fix for salt.

Notes

This makes a chunky sauce with intense flavors. You can add or diminish any of the ingredients according to your taste.

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2.2.1

Sweet New Year

Another year is gone.  What is remarkable about the year is that the war in Iraq finally ended, in a manner of speaking.   Our troops came home. These four words: Our troops came home do nothing to tell the story of the profound loss some of us suffered or how our lives changed forevermore.

As I have throughout these years, I attempt to find meaning in all this 'sound and fury' of this life. I deal with this rage over this unspeakable loss of my only child, through the tireless activities of my day to day existence, in the forceful and difficult breaking of old habits and the willful discovery of new ones. But I also reminisce about my past and what there could be in it that led me to survive where others have not.

From my past I gather and reorganize my memories again of days when the the aunts and cousins from Monterrey or Villaldama, or Puebla arrived in Laredo with gifts for us. We all lived frugally in those days, that is, the 50's and 60's, but no one ever arrived without treats for us. Recently, one of these cousins, visiting from Mexico city arrived with a magical box from a legendary candy store in Mexico City: Dulcería Celaya.  I was fascinated by the elaborate decoration and delicate aspect of these sweets. I had not seen my cousin in years and the box she brought me resurrected memories of the past when everything was safe, and good...and sweet.

On this one year anniversary of the launch of this blog, las dos Gildas wish you all the luxury of time to spend with your families.   Enjoy the sweet things in life as if there is no tomorrow!

If you have never tried your basic dulce de leche, here is a recipe from Girl Gone Granola

Thanks for Thanksgiving

Photo courtesy of Joe Duran a.k.a. Uncle Joe

I’m sitting by the window on a rainy autumn day.  The leaves have fallen from the trees, save for a few stragglers, and I already miss the way the vibrant yellows, oranges, and reds look against dark branches and blue skies.

This is comfort-food weather and a homemade soup is gurgling on the stove while I listen to a talk radio show about the origins of Thanksgiving.  One of the guests is food historian Andrew F. Smith who dedicates a chapter of his book, Eating History: Thirty Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine, to the real Thanksgiving story.  I hear him say that the Pilgrim-centric Thanksgiving story is a complete myth (no surprise) but I'm flummoxed when I realize how little I know about the holiday I've celebrated every year since I can remember.

It is true that in 1621 the Pilgrims and a group of local Indians shared a meal together, but it was unplanned.  The colonists had just harvested their crops and the then-governor declared it a holiday.  This happened concurrent with a treaty signing between the English colonists and local Native American tribe of which ninety members paid a surprise visit to the colony and shared in the festivities to consummate the treaty.  But this was not a regular occurrence and it was not referred to as Thanksgiving.  Rather, the Pilgrims celebrated many days of “thanksgiving,” a tradition with religious underpinnings that the Europeans brought with them to the New World and which entailed spending the day in solemn worship.

Over the course of the next two hundred years, the religious tradition of giving thanks to God after the fall harvest became more secularized.  In 1841, Alexander Young, a Unitarian minister, published a research paper about the colonists, adding commentary in a footnote that the 1621 event was the first of many Thanksgiving feasts.

Twenty-two years later, Sarah Josepha Hale, a writer who believed that if the nation celebrated a holiday together (at the time there were only two national holidays, George Washington’s birthday and the Fourth of July), its people were destined to be united in all things.  She thusly published a novel in which she wrote a scene about a quintessentially festive dinner of roasted turkey, cranberries and pies, the model for the modern-day Thanksgiving meal.

Hale gained notoriety and became an influential writer and editor with a broad readership.  Over the years, she successfully lobbied Congress and other politicians to declare Thanksgiving a national holiday.  In August of 1863,  at the height of the Civil War and just after the battles at Vicksburg and Gettysburg, victories for which the North was surely thankful, President Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving a national holiday.

All of this makes me reflect on how traditions and cuisines evolve over time, shaped by socio-political trends and cultural milieux like beach glass smoothed by ocean waves.  I think about how this happens when immigrants arrive and assimilate in any new country.  According to Smith, the

[r]apid adoption of the Thanksgiving myth has less to do with historical fact and more to do with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of immigrants to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  In the face of this great wave of immigrants from so many lands, the public education system’s major task was to Americanize them by creating a common understanding of the nation’s history, in particular an easily understood history of America.

America is a melting pot, as the saying goes, and I'm thankful for its diversity of people and ideas, important ingredients in an open and democratic society.  I'm also very grateful to be the product of two cultures and for all the perspective that this affords me.  And while Thanksgiving isn't the result of two different communities coming together in appreciation of their cultural differences as we were taught in grade school, I nonetheless appreciate the evolution of a holiday that brings people together to share a home-cooked meal.

So, this year, I say thanks for Thanksgiving!

Remembrance: Pan de Muertos

When I was younger, I dreamed of my hometown, Laredo, Texas, almost on a weekly basis. I roamed its streets, looking for my house, feeling anxious because I could no longer find it. I took buses that dropped me off at streets I no longer recognized. I knocked at houses where no one knew my family. I walked up and down Kearney Street, looking for the mesquite tree that grew in front of our house, not recognizing anything. To add to my anxiety in this recurring dream, I knew my loved ones were waiting for me to arrive from this long trip home. Funny how dreams are a tapestry of our aspirations, our worries, and our sorrows.

Last night after many years, I dreamed again of going back to Laredo. It was a collage of symbols, of the surreal, of longing, and of loss. In the dream I found my son under the mesquite tree in front of my house, waiting for me. My mother's white dishtowel flapped from one of the branches.  My son was dressed in camouflage as he extended his hand to me to tell me, as he always did, that everything was alright. He led me inside the house where his grandmother and the rest of the family was waiting, gathered around a table bedecked with foods that we all knew he liked.

It comforts me to believe that our dearly departed and beloved come back to be among us on November 1, Día de los Angelitos, and November 2, Día de los Muertos. But the truth is, I always feel close to my son. From my second story window, on this beautiful fall day, I look down at the brightly colored leaves scattered below and can almost see him, looking up at me, proudly stepping out of his new car as he did a few years before he deployed to Iraq.

It was comforting to prepare this simple egg bread, Pan de Muertos. I've woven together recipes belonging to different relatives in Mexico with my own knowledge of bread baking. The result is a very easy brioche-type bread that is not difficult to make and it doesn't stray much from the traditional bread of Mexico. It is an orange blossom and anise-scented, barely sweet, airy bread. Sweetness, love, remembrance, lament...all are part of this ritual. It's hard to believe I'm here, blending, kneading, baking this bread in this quiet house, thinking of my son and all those who did not return from a war that finally ended, much too late.

A whispered Why? floats in the air, unanswered, and the yeast continues to do its work.

Pan de Muertos

Recipe Type: bread, desert

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 3 hours

Cook time: 45 mins

Total time: 3 hours 45 mins

Serves: 8

Dear readers, The error in this recipe has been corrected.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup warm water


• 1/4 cup butter, room temperature


• 3 cups unbleached flour


• 1 packet yeast


• pinch of salt


• 2 teaspoons anise seed


• 1 tablespoon orange zest


• 3/8 cups sugar


• 2 jumbo eggs or 3 small eggs, room temperature


• 2 tablespoons orange blossom water


• granulated sugar for sprinkling


• For the glaze: 1 oz cone of piloncillo and 3/4 cup water and juice of one orange

Instructions

1. In a large bowl mix the sugar, flour, anise, salt and ½ cup of the flour and then mix in the butter.


2. The eggs, the water, and orange blossom water should be combined in a separate bowl, mixed well, and added to the first mixture.


3. Add another ½ cup of flour.


4. Add the yeast and another bit of flour until you have gradually added the rest of the flour and a dough is formed.


5. Knead the dough on a floured surface for about 3 minutes.


6. Place the ball of dough into a bowl large enough to allow the dough to rise and cover with a slightly damp dishcloth.


7. Cover the bowl with a lid so that the heat and moisture will allow the dough to rise.


8. Let it rise near a warm area for about 1 hour and a half.


9. Punch down the dough and shape it into a large ball, leaving small pieces of dough to form the ball on top and the four rolled pieces that form the 'bone' shapes.


10. Let this shaped dough rise for another hour in a warm spot of your kitchen.


11. Brush the glaze on it, (see below), sprinkle with granulated sugar and place in 350 degree oven for 45 minutes or until it is a golden brown.

Notes

For the glaze:
Bring a 1 oz. cone of piloncillo to boil in about ¾ cup of water until it dissolves, let it boil until it thickens, add the juice of one orange, cook for another 3 minutes; then let it cool before brushing it on.

2.1.7

Hurricane Beans

Maybe the end of summer is awakening in me a craving for slightly more substantial foods because I seem to have beans on the brain lately. Or maybe it's having just returned from Mexico where beans are, of course, a staple and found in abundance.  Whatever the reason, while friends and family were preparing for the arrival of Hurricane Irene, I found myself sifting and stirring these frijoles negros con epazote.

My Hurricane Beans are simple but delicious, which goes to prove that most of the time, the simplest way is the way to go.  Too many ingredients and too many steps can sometimes over complicate a healthy and delicious meal. I grew up eating mostly pinto beans but I've grown accustomed to black beans during my frequent travels to San Miguel de Allende where Doña Beatriz of Casa Carmen Bed and Breakfast prepares the black, glossy legumes like no other cook.

Doña Beatriz

Doña Beatriz garnishes them with fried tortilla strips which adds to flavor and texture. Unlike many cooks, she does not soak her beans overnight; she  simply throws them into boiling water (after carefully picking out bits of dirt and rinsing them) lowers the heat o a simmer and covers them. The beans cook for 2 ½ to 3 hours until they are completely soft. You don't need to check them constantly, as long as you've left them on a low flame and covered. Midway through the cooking process, add salt to taste and an unpeeled clove of garlic. If you run low on water, add only boiling water to the pot.

What gives these beans their signature flavor are the sprigs of epazote thrown in when the beans are almost ready. Epazote can be found dried or fresh at Latino stores or you can even grow your own as my neighbor, Leslye, does...lucky me!

Epazote

Hurricane Beans a.k.a. Black Beans with Epazote

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Recipe Type: Side Dish

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 15 mins

Cook time: 3 hours

Total time: 3 hours 15 mins

Serves: 6-8

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup olive oil


• 4 cups black beans, cooked


• 4 to 5 oz of pancetta or bacon chopped into little chunks


• Salt to taste


• Several sprigs of epazote


• 2 – 3 corn tortillas cut in strips and fried to a golden brown

Instructions

1. Brown the bacon/pancetta in the olive oil slowly until it is golden.


2. Add the cooked beans and bring to a simmer for about 15 minutes, adding water if it is not soupy enough.


3. Add the epazote and cook for another 5 minutes.


4. Serve garnished with the fried tortilla strips.

Notes

Beans can be cooked and then frozen after cooling them, thereby giving you the freedom to prepare them in whatever style you prefer, whenever you like.

Gazpacho a la Mexicana

When my mother was newly widowed, my sisters and I encouraged her to take a trip to Spain with people her age and that is how she came to visit that country for the first time. Our mother, with her youthful and positive attitude was soon the star of the traveling group and the tour guide's pet. Speaking Spanish certainly was a plus; she was the one septuagenarian in the group who was linguistically and culturally independent.  She returned from this month long trip full of stories of her adventures in Spain.

One day, a few months after she had returned, we sat on her bed, chatting about the trip as we went through brochures of places in Spain she had visited. Among the piles of papers was a recipe typed with a Royal typewriter on onion skin paper.  A recipe for gazpacho. I wish I could remember what she told me that day about the exact circumstances in which she was given this recipe by a waiter in a restaurant.

The truth is, my mother always had a way of inspiring people to do things for her. Apparently, as best I can recall, my mother had so much enjoyed this gazpacho—something she had tasted for the first time in Spain—that she had asked the waiter how it was made. The waiter, an old gentleman, disappeared long enough to type out the recipe and proudly hand it to her. I still have the original copy of the recipe.

For me, also, it was the first time I had eaten gazpacho and I found it to be such a perfect way to blend the bounty of summer into one fresh taste. My husband adores this, but when he's not around, I add chile to it (He doesn't tolerate chiles.) to give it a bit of Mexican flavor.

Gazpacho a la Mexicana

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Recipe Type: appetiser, soup

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Serves: 4

Ingredients

• 5 medium tomatoes or an equivalent quantity of cherry tomatoes (they're sweeter)


• 1 quarter medium yellow or red onion


• 1 large peeled cucumber (save the other half for garnish)


• 1/2 of a red bell pepper


• 1 clove garlic


• 2 slices old French bread


• Jalapeño or serrano pepper added as needed


• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil (the best quality you have)


• 2 tbls white vinegar (or more if you prefer)


• Sea salt to taste

Instructions

1. Blend all the ingredients starting first with the tomatoes, then the bell pepper and garlic


2. Add the oil and vinegar and then the rest of the ingredients.


3. Serve chilled with garnish of chopped, sliced, cucumbers, fresh corn kernels, and croutons sprinkled on top of each bowl of gazpacho.

Crossing Frontiers of the Mind

This 4^th of July was a quiet one for me, nothing like others in the past. Those, both of my childhood and my past adult life, were filled with outdoor parties, carne asada on a big grill, plenty of pico de gallo, frijoles borrachos, slices of crispy watermelon, lemonade. The carefree laughter of children darting among the adults, chasing illusive fireflies in the last streaks of fading sunlight.  Most memorable is one when, newly arrived here in the nation's capital, my husband, our son, Alex, and I went on bicycles to the mall to watch the fireworks.  The  evening was full of pure wonder and delight, all three of us thrilled to see the fireworks against the silhouette of the Washington Monument.

Today, through my window, I see the flags on every lawn, planted into the ground every year by someone in the neighborhood. It would surprise most people that for me these flags make my heart heavy and my soul mournful. For me, they stand for things other than backyard parties.  They represent an image in slow motion of folded flags handed to grieving mothers by white-gloved hands on splendid lawns with geometrically aligned rows of new tombstones, draped caskets of beloved youth. They bring forth in me a need to understand what cannot be explained.

In spite of the path I've walked, I remain a person who dreams fervently of an enlightened world where there is compassion, tolerance, and understanding as opposed to ignorance, hate, and fear...a world where truth and justice reign. And I believe in a sense of common responsibility. In the words of Chilean poet, Gabriela Mistral:

"Donde haya un árbol que plantar, plántalo tú. Donde haya un error que enmendar, enmiéndalo tú. Donde haya un esfuerzo que todos esquivan, hazlo tú. Sé tú el que aparta la piedra del camino."

(“Where there is a tree to plant, plant it yourself. Where there is an wrong to right, do it yourself. Where there is an effort that others avoid, do it yourself. Be the one that moves the stone from the road.”)

How better to attempt to bring about change than to teach? I am truly fortunate.

As a teacher of foreign languages, I have, with the help of teacher colleagues, for the past 4 years worked on a program of language and cultural immersion, taking middle school boys to Mexico to experience first hand  the culture of a country that has been so maligned by the U.S. media. In San Miguel de Allende they are introduced to authentic Mexican food, weaned from soft drinks only to discover the fresh aguas naturales for which Mexico is known.  They take cooking classes, play soccer and basketball with the locals.  They learn to dance, study Spanish, perform community service, and learn to acknowledge adults when they enter a room unlike many of their adolescent peers on this side of the border.

Through them I undoubtedly touch the future. I stand back and watch in awe at how they begin to see the world from a new perspective, because:

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” – Mark Twain

I am including a recipe for frijoles borrachos as my parents made them when I was a child, so many July Fourths ago. Later this week, I look forward to bringing you some of the recipes I discovered in San Miguel de Allende with my brood of students.

Frijoles Borrachos

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Recipe Type: Side dish

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Serves: 8

My mother always had beans in the house. They were made in a clay pot, but they are perfectly fine cooked in anything other than clay.  Once they are cooking at a low flame you don't have to "watch" them.

Ingredients

• 1 lb. pinto beans


• 3 serrano peppers


• 3 strips bacon (chopped in 1 inch pieces and browned separately)


• 1 onion (chopped)


• 3 tomatoes (chopped)


• cilantro to taste, chopped (about 1 cup)


• salt to taste (about 1 tbsp)


• cup beer

Instructions

1. Clean the beans, picking out bits of dirt from them and rinse them; you do not have to soak them overnight.


2. In 5-6 qrt. kettle, cover them with plenty of water, bring them to a boil, lower the heat and cover.


3. After about an hour, when they've lost their spotted color, add the salt and allow them to continue to cook for another forty minutes approximately, or until they are almost completely soft. Smash a few of them with a large spoon or a potato ricer so that they create a bit of "sauce."


4. Add the chopped onions, chopped tomatoes, cooked bacon with some of the bacon fat, and serrano peppers; cook for a half hour more and then add the chopped cilantro and beer allowing the flavors to blend for another 10 minutes.

Calabacitas de mi Casa

As a teenager, I had a plan: to graduate, leave home—and go to college to study art. It didn't exactly work out that way.  As John Lennon says in his song Beautiful Boy, Life is what happens when you're busy making plans. By the time I graduated from high school, my college fund had dried up; it had been used to tide us over after a family business reversal.

But, as the saying goes "No hay mal que por bien no venga."  It wasn't the end of the world.  In fact, there were advantages.  For one thing, I didn't pay a penny for my education at the local college where I ended up for two years, since I was on scholarship there.

Still, there were dramatic changes at home.  My mother, for the first time, went to work outside the home. It was traumatic for her as she had always been at home for  my father, two sisters and me. But dire necessity dictated this change.

Many problems arose from this sudden adjustment in the way we did things. The family, for example, was now in a terrific tizzy about who would prepare midday lunch for my father.  My sisters were still in school during the day and hiring a housekeeper to make his lunch was unthinkable.

My father awoke everyday at an ungodly hour to make his own fiery, chile-laden breakfast. Throat-burning chile vapors floated through the house at 6 am, waking the whole house. To our added alarm, he often left the frying pan on the fire as he left the house for work.  Certainly, my mother felt he could not be trusted to prepare his own lunch.  

Hence, the duty to uphold this family routine fell on me as the oldest but also because I finished my morning classes at the local college by 11 a.m. and had plenty of time to get home to prepare lunch for my father. By that time, I had learned at my mother's side how to prepare our typical family meals. One of these was calabacitas con pollo, which we always ate with corn tortillas hot off the griddle. My father liked his tortillas crackly and I liked mine soft.

I can imagine now so many years later that Papá, who must have felt in desperate straits at the time, was happy to arrive at noon and still find that some things hadn't changed. His eighteen-year-old daughter was home from classes with a meal waiting for him. We would sit down to a plate of calabacitas con pollo—with soft and crackly tortillas—and savor our new tradition.   After lunch he would lie down for a quick siesta before returning to work and I would rush off and still arrive on time for afternoon classes.

After two years at the local college, I finally left home  to continue my studies. As it turned out, I left art for my other love: language and linguistics. I married, had a child and the calabacitas dish soon become a part of our family tradition as one of the first solid foods (minus the chiles) I gave my baby, Alex. I used a food mill to give the zucchini and other vegetables a consistency a baby could handle.

What food traditions have you carried on to your children and grandchildren?  Are there any recipes that have special meaning for you?

Calabacitas con pollo

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Recipe Type: Main

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 20 mins

Cook time: 35 mins

Total time: 55 mins

Serves: 4

Ingredients

• 1 lb of chicken pieces: wings, drumsticks, thighs etc.


• 2 lbs zucchini chopped into cubes


• 1 onion, chopped


• 2 medium sized tomatoes, chopped


• tsp comino powder (grind your own in a molcajete if you prefer)


• tsp ground pepper


• 2 serrano chiles


• 4 tablespoons (approximately) of olive oil


• Kernels cut from 2 fresh corn cobs


• Salt to taste

Instructions

1. In a large heavy pan, brown the chicken pieces in the oil over medium to high flame for about 15 minutes.


2. Add all the rest of the ingredients, lower the heat, cover and cook for about 20 minutes, until all the flavors have come together.


3. Be careful not to pop the serrano chiles, unless you want a spicier version. If you leave these chilies intact, they will provide flavor without making it overly spicy.

Note: I often cook this with pork, instead of chicken. If you use pork, be sure to cut it in small cubes, and brown them well, so that this flavor blends with the other ingredients. 

A Quesadilla Commentary

I can't figure out why restaurants offer quesadillas on their menus so different from those found closer to the border and in Mexico proper.  I am not opposed to new twists on traditional foods or even so-called fusion foods (unlike La Madrina, who is much more of a traditionalist than I am), but why mess with a good thing?

Dear American Restauranteurs, a quesadilla is not baked in an oven like a pizza.  It is not cheddar and monterrey jack and mozzarella cheeses layered between two flour tortillas and grilled like a panini.  It is not even a prodigious serving of cheese, chicken and onions stuffed in a flour tortilla.  And it is most definitely not goopy, make-believe cheese (read: nacho cheese sauce) in a cripsy flour tortilla and deep-fried.

Quesadillas are quintessentially uncomplicated, which is why it seems almost absurd to include a recipe here.  Of course, in Mexico some variations are found, perhaps the addition of huitlacoche, a corn fungus and delicacy, for example.  The essence of the quesadilla remains the same, however: simple and savory.

As a parent, quesadillas, are my go-to food.  They are easy to prepare and children really do love them.  But I usually make them with corn, not flour, tortillas and just a sliver—not mounds—of cheese, either Mexican asadero or queso fresco when I can find it. This is the way my mother and grandmother made them, always with a spill of salsa or a heap of aguacate (avocado) on the side.  For my kids, I skip lo picante (the spice) but serve with avocado or fruit instead.

Mexican Quesadillas

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Recipe Type: Appetizer, Snack

Author: Gilda Claudine

Prep time: 5 mins

Cook time: 5 mins

Total time: 10 mins

Serves: 1 - 2

Ingredients

• Corn tortillas


• 3 slices of cheese, preferably Mexican asadero or queso fresco.

Instructions

1. Heat the tortillas on a comal or in heavy skillet over a medium flame.


2. Place a slice of cheese on one half of the tortilla.


3. When the cheese begins to melt, fold the tortilla over.


4. Flip the tortilla to the other side.


5. The quesadilla is done when the cheese is melted.

Notes

There is no need to use oil in this recipe.

Eye-of-the-Storm Enfrijoladas

Beans.  They’ve been on my mind.  Specifically, pintos that, in a refried state, rank high on my list of comfort foods.  This is probably because my grandmother always had a pot on the stove.  Always.

She served them with everything: with fried eggs for breakfast, mounded next to enchiladas at lunch, slathered across a tostada for a snack and dolloped on a milanesa-dominated plate for dinner. But my favorite variation? My grandmother’s enfrijoladas, corn tortillas warmed on a comal, then dredged through mashed, refried beans and topped with a crumbling of queso fresco.

As I’ve mentioned before, I spent my summers and different periods of my life living in Laredo with my grandmother.  I wish I’d paid closer attention to the world then.  I didn't know until years after I'd left Laredo, for example, that my grandmother's house was located in the "El Cuatro" section of Laredo, west of downtown.  The battered barrio has historical significance and recently caught the attention of The National Trust for Historic Preservation.

As a child growing up, I probably knew on some visceral level that most of the buildings on Lincoln Street were dilapidated.  But I was oblivious to the fact that the area was home to some of Laredo's poorest families, including my own.

A Spanish colonist founded Laredo in 1755.  Laredo remained a part of New Spain until the land port was ceded to the United States in 1848 at the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo.  Another historical tidbit that I learned on one of my visits to Laredo as an adult:  in the late 19th century, Fort Macintosh (now the site of the Laredo Community College and one of my childhood "playgrounds") was home to some of the first peace-time, African American U. S. Army units known as the Buffalo Soldiers.

El Cuatro was another early barrio which sprang up west of the centro. The name, El Cuatro, was derived from the city voting precinct in which the barrio was located - the "Fourth Ward." Many early residents were employed with the railroads, and their box-shaped board and batten houses are still present throughout the neighborhood. Due to its proximity to Fort McIntosh, the neighborhood attracted a small enclave of blacks. For a short time in 1865, the post was manned by a company of the 62nd U.S. Colored Infantry. Since that time a number of black units were stationed at the fort, including Company K of the Black Twenty-fifth U.S. Infantry in 1906. The soldiers' families and their descendants made their homes in El Cuatro and the small barrio across the tracks called El Tonto. Saint James Tabernacle and the Grayson school remain as the only architectural relics of Laredo's black history. (http://tiny.cc/xlyx5)

I don't recall learning about Laredo's rich history while I was in school there and I wonder now whether it was taught at all.

Also out of my intellectual reach at the time were the complexities of life.  My grandmother was the matriarch of a sprawling family and ran a household that was made for a high-ratings reality show.  There was always a stream of visitors, old friends from Mexico, cousins from California or my assorted aunts and uncles and their children, some of whom also lived with us.  There were borders at the house from time-to-time.  A man named Cecil who parked his car in front and stamped out social security cards from the back of his camper. The boy with liquid-green eyes who lived around the corner, one of my first childhood crushes who, years later, was stabbed in a bar fight.

Along with a bustling, busy household came the concomitant family crises and commotions, garden variety goings-on whose meanings I did not comprehend at the time.  Those were the long, hot summers of my innocence and I observed it all from the center of my grandmother's universe.  There was always so much activity that I now realize my grandmother was a quintessential multi-tasker.  She could negotiate a great deal on a used appliance while strategizing about its resale.   Listen empathetically to a neighbor whose son was in serious legal trouble while watering the lawn and tending to her plants.  Yield to the demands of her large family while shopping and cleaning and cooking for them—from scratch.

There were rare moments of quiet.  The old house was without air conditioning most of the time, the little window unit in the front room turned on only for special visitors, if it worked at all.  This meant that the windows and doors were always open.  The oscillation of stand-alone fans provided a relaxing rhythm for a summer borderland soundtrack: the cooing of pigeons, trains rumbling by, the thwack of a neighbor’s screendoor, cicadas in the trees and crickets in the grass, the clucking of chickens in a nearby yard.

And I am ten again, sitting at the oval, formica table top in my grandmother's kitchen.  I notice the way the sun spills into the window above the sink and how the light dances in the sudsy water.  I’m sorting tomorrow’s beans, separating the shriveled and broken ones and the bits of sediment from the rest.  Meanwhile, my grandmother stirs freshly-squeezed lime juice, water and a little sugar in a plastic glass because she knows a limonada is my favorite drink.  I take a sip and watch her at the stove, turning the dial and perfecting the gas flame.  I smell the oil warming in the pan and hear the spit of onions in the moment before they succumb to sizzling.  She ladles beans from yesterday’s batch into the pan and effortlessly squashes the macerated and formerly-speckled seeds into a brown pulp.

I’m done discriminating against imperfect pintos and my grandmother thanks me with a kiss, placing in front of me a plate of earthy and savory enfrijoladas.  A little something just for me in the eye of the storm.

Eye of the Storm Enfrijoladas

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Recipe Type: Breakfast/Desayuno

Author: Gilda Claudine

Ingredients

• 1 lb pinto beans


• 1/2 small onion, finely chopped onions


• 2 or 3 slices of bacon, cut in pieces or diced


• Salt to taste


• 1/2 cup of Canola oil


• Corn tortillas


• Queso fresco


• 1/2 avocado (optional)

Instructions

1. Soak the beans in 4 cups of water overnight.


2. In the morning, drain the beans.


3. Over medium heat, warm the bacon until it yields some fat.


4. Add half of the onion and simmer.


5. When the onions and the bacon are almost cooked through, return the beans to the pot.


6. Add another 3 or 4 cups of water.


7. Add salt to taste and cover.


8. Allow the beans to cook at a low temperature for several hours or until they reach the desired consistency.


9. The beans should be soft and easy to mash.

Refried Beans

1. In a skillet, heat the Canola oil.


2. When the oil is hot, add the rest of the onion.


3. Sweat the onion until it is completely translucent.


4. Add three or four ladles of the beans in their liquid.


5. Raise the temperature and when the liquid begins to bubble, mash the beans.


6. Add water as needed to keep the beans from drying out.


7. Once the beans are mashed to the desired consistency, turn down the heat.


8. In a separate pan or on a comal, heat a corn tortilla. (Optional: warm the tortilla in a bit of oil here).


9. Using tongs, place the hot tortilla in the pan with the refried beans.


10. Dredge and/or coat both sides with the bean mash.


11. Using a spatula, remove and place on a plate.


12. Crumble the queso fresco on top and add avocado.


13. Serve hot.

Mother Love

My son, Alex, and me

Mother's Day did not originate as a bonanza for florists and restaurants. It is a little known fact that it began as a Proclamation by the social activist Julia Ward Howe in 1870 after she lived through the atrocities of the Civil War as a wife and mother. She believed that mothers ultimately bring to bear a sense of responsibility regarding the destruction that war brings upon society:

Arise, then, women of this day!
 Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!
We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. 

Her words from across almost a century and a half ring with particular poignancy to me, as this Mother's Day will be the fifth year since I lost my son, Alex, to the war in Iraq. The pain that the war has brought me affects my life in ways that are difficult for those who have not experienced it to understand.

Alex on his wedding day

Arlington National Cemetery

This Mother's Day, then, is a day in which I gather my thoughts and think of the women who throughout my life influenced me and gave me the strength and clarity of purpose to rise each morning since that day.

I've had the good fortune of being surrounded by a multitude of resilient, resourceful women in my family, women who were unfazed by the incredible obstacles they faced growing up.  These women were products of families uprooted by the violence of the Mexican revolution, the ensuing diaspora, the Great Depression and the intense discrimination against Mexicans in Texas where their families settled. These women left an indelible impression on me.

Two of these women were my father's sisters, Tía Oralia and Tía Gloria. When my grandfather died unexpectedly of typhoid fever in the 1930s, my grandmother returned to Mexico with my tías and left the boys behind to be brought up by relatives. I can't imagine the pain shared by the family at having to make a decision like this in order to survive economically. Hence, my father was raised in Laredo by an uncle and aunt, and his brother, Fernando, in San Antonio by other relatives. The tías were raised by my grandmother in the little town of Villaldama, Nuevo León where the family originated.

Tía Gloria

The sisters, Oralia and Gloria, were brokenhearted at having left the country without their brothers, but from the stories that I heard growing up, the two brothers and two sisters were often reunited either in Laredo, San Antonio or during long summers in Villaldama. Later, as my sisters and I came into the world, these tías doted on us, showing up at our door loaded with tamales and other delicacies such as membrillo, pan de huevo from Sabinas, candied pumpkin and dulce de leche de cabra from Saltillo.

My mother's sisters, Tía Romanita (the tall, slender beauty shown in the photo above with my grandmother and great-grandmother) and Tía Lupita, were other ever-present women in my life who modeled hope, love, generosity and humor. Both of them, magicians with a needle and thread, could a create a dress out of a folded piece of cloth with an idea born in their imaginations rather than with a sewing pattern on paper.  To wear their creations was to be literally wrapped in their unconditional love.

My mother

But it is my mother to whom I owe so much of what I am today and to my ability to survive. It is from my mother that I learned to challenge, to question, to be brave, to demand justice, to seek clarity in a world of ambiguity. It is from my mother that I learned life goes on, in spite of unspeakable tragedies. And that it goes on only through an understanding of our shared humanity, in the giving and forgiving that is part of our existence.

This year, for the fifth year, the little flower shop in Bethesda that my son, Alex, used to call to order a delivery of Mother's Day roses will not receive a call from him. But today, I inhale deeply and am certain I smell the unmistakable scent of roses in every room of my house, our mother-son bond unbreakable across the cosmos. My aunts, my mother, and everything that made me are part of the embrace with which I reach out to my precious child. I will continue to attempt to live a life of grace as my mother and aunts did, as Alex would have wanted.