All right, students: Raise your hand if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever had ceviche. Nobody? No, Wise-Guy in the third row, ceviche is not Spanish for a beer.<\/p>\n
Then how about sancocho? Still nobody?<\/p>\n
Well, don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t feel bad, students. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never heard of either of these things either \u00e2\u20ac\u201d until I read today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s paper.<\/p>\n
We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re talking spicy treats. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re about to be featured in a dedication ceremony at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque on Thursday. Oddly, Spain is divided, as any country is, into areas of special or local favorites. Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t try ordering chile in Espa\u00c3\u00b1a. And if you order a tortilla, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll receive an eggs-and-potatoes omelet. As for the cultural center\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ceremony, I may know when and where it was scheduled to take place, but that doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get me much closer to knowing what I just quizzed you on.<\/p>\n
You, Juan, our class clown: You confused \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ceviche\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cerveza,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which is understandable. I remember once when I was your age that a guy who didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like being beaten by my team in tackle football, called one of us a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cerviche\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201d or something like that. In the heat of passion, spurred by an intense football game, we sometimes slur our words, and a word that sounds a bit like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cerviche\u00e2\u20ac\u009d almost started a fight.<\/p>\n
This week, the U.S. Postal Services is releasing its latest series of stamps, with intricate drawings, representing spicy foods. The headline and the newspaper article stress that these items are spicy. But I hope that doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean that the glue we lick to make the stamp stick carries the flavor of chile pequin.<\/p>\n
Now let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s be honest: Doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t everybody on the planet know what tamales are? Obviously! You haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t lived until you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve tasted a hot steaming tamale, and maybe even slipped one \u00e2\u20ac\u201d still warm \u00e2\u20ac\u201d into your pocket on the way home, for a late-night treat. It may be stove hot in your pocket, but the chile itself on your hands burns in another way.<\/p>\n
How about chile rellenos, flan and empanadas, two other things featured in the buyable set of stamps? My mother, Marie, often prepared the more common items: tamales, enchiladas, etc., and she developed the habit of preparing only what she liked. We loved her enchiladas and her red chile, but her specialties were limited.<\/p>\n
Well, for my part, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d much rather eat them than spend an hour in class defining them and listing their ingredients. But you need to realize that my knowledge these foods pictured on those new stamps is limited. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never even heard of some of those spicy foods, certainly not \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ceviche,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which Juan over there probably thinks can also be a name you call somebody you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like. Or who wins at touch football.<\/p>\n
I know about very few of the foods being featured by the Postal Service: tamales, flan, empanadas, chile rellenos. As for the other foods pictured on the new stamps, ceviche and sancocho, I plead no lo comprendo and nolo contendre.<\/p>\n
You see, my mom was as Hispanic as anyone in town, but she prepared only what she liked. Few could match her red chile and beans. But possibly because of her personal likes and dislikes, we never had sancocho, which sounds like a saintly ghost.<\/p>\n
Maybe I form judgments too quickly. Maybe I mocked the names of the last two items mainly because they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not common native foods. The article I mention says they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re favorites in Mexico, Central and South America and the Caribbean. That could be why they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not familiar to me.<\/p>\n
But back to Mom: Growing up with her taught us to eat and enjoy her red chile with relish. (Well, maybe not relish, but with a good attitude). The yummy sounds around the table must have encouraged her, and nobody ever complained about the heat. In fact, we believed in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the hotter the better.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
We even had a live-in chile-temperature tester. You see \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and I mean this with total respect to my late uncle Juan \u00e2\u20ac\u201d he became bald at quite a young age. As my uncle ate Mom\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s chile, little beads of perspiration would form on the top of his head. The more beads, the hotter the chile. And if the beads became large, we prepared for a heat-fest kind of meal.<\/p>\n
Mom\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mealtime offerings tempered as we all aged. When we were younger, on our own, with families, there was never any question as to what Mom would be feeding us that day. And as we aged, the chile got milder; there was less need to have a bottle of ice water at the ready, and the tiny bubbles on Tio\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s forehead shrank and eventually went away.<\/p>\n
When I lived in Gallup, in my early 20s, I often ate out at ethnic restaurants. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d once heard my boss, Walter Vivian, editor of the Gallup newspaper, explain, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153When I go to a Mexican restaurant, I always tell them I want the real stuff, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcnot the stuff you feed the tourists.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nI picked up that line, and it served me well. But whenever I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d ask my friends at Gordo\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s or at El Sombrero in Gallup why the chile seemed so mild, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d invariably reply, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The customers complain if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s too hot.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d usually answer with, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Then why don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you make a five-alarm batch for the customers like me who complain that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s too mild?<\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m beginning to understand why temperance is also important. My stomach pays for my over indulgence, and that can be paynful.<\/p>\n
As for the rest of you, enjoy your ceviche \u00e2\u20ac\u201d I just now discovered it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a South American fish dish with a steaming bowl of sancocho, a Latino soup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
All right, students: Raise your hand if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever had ceviche. Nobody? No, Wise-Guy in the third row, ceviche is not Spanish for a beer. Then how about sancocho? Still nobody? Well, don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t feel bad, students. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never heard of either of these things either \u00e2\u20ac\u201d until I read today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s paper. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re talking spicy treats. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1625"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1626,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625\/revisions\/1626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}