Life and Fish Tacos

I committed to writing about the outdoor kitchen in Reynosa, Tamaulipas; about the first time I tried to learn to make masa tortillas by hand from some sweet abuelitas. Today’s the day. The challenge for me, and the reason why I have been putting off this blog entry, is because I have a tricky memory—I mean that it plays tricks on me and messes with my realities…and consequently my self-confidence. Do I really know that things happened the way they happened? Can I trust my mind? I need to be truthful and so I’ll say that when I think back on my two weeks in Hidalgo/Reynosa, weird peripheral details stick in my mind like a crystal, but others are muddy, closer to emotional impressions than to the concrete buildings and the people I encountered. I don’t want to lie and make up what may never have actually happened just to fill in holes for the purpose of a blog entry. (There are a couple of people who know me really well who can attest to my need to make sure that my recounting...

Corn or flour?  In my case, at dining establishments, I choose corn, almost always. I figure that if a restaurant can present me with a tender, not crumbly, even house-made, corn tortilla, then everything else on my plate stands a chance at being food perfection. It’s hard to get corn tortillas right. One thing I had my heart set on, after pocketing my first paycheck out of college, was to purchase a tortilla press.  (Have you ever seen one of these? Not something you’d want to drop on your foot…)  I have since squished hundreds  of little balls of masa, sometimes with amazing results, although most times nominally. Granted, my version of amazing, with an almost complete lack of culinary talent, is laughable to most of the moms of my Latino students, who pump out perfectly round corn-masa tortillas in their kitchens…without the aid of a tortilla squisher. So, here’s a story: It´s the summer that I turn 20, and I find myself on this birthday in Hi...

Tonight is one of those more difficult nights. Bill paying night. And I always do this at night, you know, which I shouldn’t, but I do. In fact, I put off going through my bills till the last possible moment of the last possible day for them to get to their destinations on time. Well, we all do that, you may say. Or we all feel like doing that, at least. But I’m going to stick up for myself here, and say that perhaps the reason why I procrastinate with my bills is not the reason that you do it. It seems human nature to avoid the unpleasant. What is not un pleasant about paying my bills is getting my adulting out of the way. I like adulting. I like being able to pay for my stuff, although I do get annoyed when I have to pay for stuff that I don’t feel I should be paying for. An example would be my parking fees where I work. Maybe I should be contributing to the parking lot, but…I don’t want to. So, yes, I do glean a certain peace and satisfaction from being responsible. I don’t p...