Stirring up Memories

Welcome to the ending, of a new beginning of shared memories and recipes from my Mexican culture.

Pozole, tamales, menudo, arroz con pollo…nothing stirs up memories like the smell of a home cooked Mexican meal. 

Right now, I am recollecting the many memories my mom and I share in her kitchen, the memories I share with my siblings, my dad, my cousins, my uncles and aunts. All these memories flash back to moments at the dinner table or in the kitchen.

I am flashing back in time. I am making cookbook plans for the future, afraid unwritten recipes will become lost memories and past lifestyles.

Throughout my blog, I have traced the importance of cooking in the Mexican cuisine, the role of the female in the kitchen, and I’ve sprinkled some recipes along the way, but most importantly, I leave you with my own feelings about he Mexican cuisine.

To me the Mexican cuisine is a recipe of its own in which all recipes are imaginatively created and symbolic to families of all educational and social economic standing in their own unique and flavorful way. In my life, food brings one together. Although I don’t always like being interrupted when eating my meal because my brother decides he wants more apple juice, or although I don’t like seeing my mom spend too much time in the kitchen, at the end of the day, when all have eaten and the table sits ready to be cleaned up, I contemplate on the fact that more family memories have been created, more jokes have been told, new stories revealed.

However, I did not always feel like this. When I first left home to attend the university, when I was away from my mom’s cooking for the first time, that’s when I realized the important role food played in my life growing up. Anger of living in such a traditional household became appreciation. But, today I am afraid as I sit in a stool, in my mom’s yellow kitchen, watching her roll dough into perfectly round tortillas. I am afraid the memories will fade if I not do not stir up a cookbook that holds and cherishes my family’s traditional recipes and the memories that go with the recipes.

Writing this blog has inspired me to create a cookbook, written in my own hand, in my mom’ s hand, in my sisters hand, in my aunts hand because traditions are changing. There are additions and omissions to many Mexican recipes, but my cookbook will include recipes that live on forever, unchanging, defining my culture and my life.

Thus, I end this entry with one wish: That my mom inherits me with her rolling pin, her molcajete, and her prenza (flat press). She knows. I've told her of my wish. 

With these cooking tools, I will press down all my family's traditions into a book that has no beginning and no end.

Molcajete

Rolling Pin

Flat Press