Exchange Student in
Mexico Day by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
In
high school, I could eat my body weight in food and was a welcome guest at my
Mexican friend B’s home where they teased me about not eating enough.
Whenever
I had been invited to lunch, B. would show up to escort me on the bus from my
apartment in downtown Detroit to the west side of town where he lived.
“I
can take the bus alone to your house,” I said as we sat down.
He
would always tell me that a young lady always gets escorted when she has been invited
to lunch.
“That’s
the Mexican way,” he would say as I sat in my seat by the window.
I
felt like an exchange student for the day when I entered the house and did not
know how many times to kiss people on the cheeks. In my home, we only gave each other bear hugs
and pats on the back.
The
five-foot high painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe in her blue cloak with
golden stars on it seemed mysterious to me, a white Anglo-Saxon
Protestant. B’s parents only spoke
Spanish, which made me feel like I was in a foreign country, too.
I
was always surprised how meals in my friend’s home did not resemble the
combinations of tacos, tostadas, and enchiladas that I liked to eat in
restaurants with what I thought was hot sauce.
We
would usually start our meals with familiar looking sour cream, guacamole, and
warm flour tortillas typical of northern Mexico as an appetizer.
My
friend’s mother puréed avocado, tomato, onion, cilantro and jalapeño peppers
into her version of guacamole.
“Dairy
products kill the flames,” my friend said the first time I innocently delved
into the jalapeño-guacamole.
Then,
we would have soup. Looking through
cookbooks years later, I found a recipe for my favorite corn soup from the
northern Mexican state of Sonora. The
Sonoran soup has squares of green and sweet red pepper and whole ears of baby
corn colorfully flavoring a chicken soup.
After
the soup, we would eat one of my favorite dishes – tamales. Steamed masa flour surrounded the spicy pork
in these tamales wrapped up in a corn husk wrapper for steaming.
The
savory pork was preserved in its own fat like carnitas and was seasoned with
oregano, cumin, coriander, onions, and carrots.
I
helped make my favorite dessert – buñuelos.
To make these we sat in the kitchen and pulled the elastic dough over
our knees and stretched the dough into rounds that were fried and sprinkled
with sugar and cinnamon.
I
loved the buñuelos with coffee and knowing that the feast day of the Virgin of
Guadalupe was also my birthday.
By
Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
