Tortillas vs. Wheat Bread And Other Things

Burritos, I am told, are not Mexican but a North American invention. A burrito is made from wheat flour and although one can find a tortilla made of wheat in Tenancingo,, corn tortillas outnumber wheat by a million to one. I calculated once that Tenancingo with its population of 100,000 consumes more than 1,000,000 tortillas a day,, perhaps as much as 2,000,000. Masons alone eat ten tacos for lunch each taco using two tortillas. A burrito is nonexistant in this zone,,only perhaps in malls and chain restaurants. I do however like the
taste of a burrito,, crepe-like gooey filled with hashy stuff. I suppose I miss the flavor of wheat at times,, but you know it's somewhat unfair to compare corn tortillas and wheat bread like comparing oranges and apples. They both wrap other things in their embrace and are eaten with meals but the similarity begins to break apart from that common point. Bread absorbs everything wet into its very soul and a tortilla repels moisture. Bread lasts for days and tortillas have a shelf life of about one hour. After that they must be reheated on a
comal and even then they do not taste the same. A fresh hand made tortilla right off the comal is divine. Tortillas wrap around many different salsa-moles-whatevers and
retain their consistency resisting their moistures like a parka. Bread on the other hand becomes soggy in seconds. Great sopper of sauce bread is. I imagine that to some extent the different characteristicsof the two staples have defined recipes in each culture. Sopes, tacos, quesadillas, can be made with bread,, but the holding time is less. A burrito without someone to consume it bleeds after a bit spilling its
guts like a stuck squid. A taco left uneaten turns into an old cigar filled with beans.
     And habaneros aren't the hottest chile in the world. There's one from India that looks like a turd and is practically off the Scoville Scale,,, A habanero rates 350,000 units on the Scoville Scale while the Indian turd pepper weighs in at 1,400,000 units,, that's 4 times
hotter. There's another from Trinidad that rates the same as the
indian fire turd.
     They say there are 500 different varieties of chile in Mexico, the country from which the chile came. In the last couple of years I have been making lots of salsas. Before I used the entire pepper,, seeds and all. Recently, however I have been only using the meat of the pepper and tossing the seeds in the compost pile. What a difference! (There are peppers coming up everywhere on the property.) The salsas are still hot but nothing like with the seeds included,, and they retain the individual pepper's taste. Each pepper has their peculiar flavor. Salsas are a whole new delight. My palate is in tact, in fact right on down to mi touch hole. No little midget welder trying to cut his way out. Probably most of you already knew that but for me it was a great revelation. The chiles we use in this region,, and by the way in each region they have their own preferences, are listed here by order of popularity:

Manzano
Serrano
Chilaca seco or Chile Macho
Chipotle tamarindo y rojo
Pasilla seco
Arbol seco y fresco
Jalapeño

Have you ever eaten one and then your temperature begins to rise,, and you can feel your face flush with heat? Some salsas here are so overladen with piquante that to me the heat utterly and completely supercedes the flavor dominating the thing robbing one of the opportunity to enjoy other flavors within the salsa. I do like piquante though,, and
now any dish without it just seems bland.
      It's ironic but my father liked chiles. You know the chile flakes that they put on the table in pizza parlors,, which the Italians call diavolochino (chinese devil). I really don't know from what chile they were made,, yet I think they were what they call cascabeles here (rattlesnakes), but with the seeds and veins as part of the mix they could be pretty hot. My mother didn't like anything except Sax Fifth Avenue and Atlantic City.

      

     A friend once said something about making art as 80% busy work 20% creativity. Perhaps that is even being generous for most artists. Concerning the porportions of work and creativity, if creativity is measured by the quality of the result and how that result compares to the creative gestures of other artists,, well there may be much more creativity in one work of art over another. One artist can spend hours and hours thinking about a painting,, kneading the possibilities before they begin, and this may be all out of porportion to a fast execution. Some artists,,, very few artists,,, prepare a painting in their mind. They employ instinct but only after the idea has been plotted. In comparison 99% of the artists just do it,, that is start slapping paint down then reacting off that first application,,, and then they start painting between the strokes,,,, and then between those strokes too.

I Did Not Eat Risotto As A Child

 

      I did not eat risotto growing up. Why is that?  My mother was a lousy cook. She could burn water. My grandparents lived next door to us in the metropolitan area on the east coast. They both cooked. My grandmother who cooked every day delivered hr delicious meals to our house. Thank God for that. My mother's idea of haute cuisine was the cheapest cut of chuck steak swimming in unseasoned canned tomato sauce. My grandparents "kind of" collaborated on the Sunday meal. My grandfather cooked a part of the Sunday meal starting on Saturday afternoon in his own well stocked kitchen in the basement while my grandmother, whose kitchen was upstairs, where most kitchens are cooked the other parts of the Sunday meal.They complemented each other quite well.
      Be patient I am relating this for a reason. An old Italian expression says that "the shortest distance between two points is an arabesque". My grandfather, from the south of Italy married a northern italian woman who often made polenta and pasta by hand and cooked lots of seafood. He almost always made the tomato sauce and prepared meat and vegetables. My grandmother's family came from a place at the foot of the alps called Biella and my grandfather came from a small town near Naples called Avelino. This may have had something to do with my not eating risotto as a child. After reading a little about risotto I discovered that rice entered Italy through the middle east along with the Arab invasion of Spain. The Arabs copped rice from the Greeks. The Greeks discovered rice from Alexander the Great's excursions into India. The Indians got it from the Chinese. The Greeks didn't give a rat's ass for rice but the Arabs saw something of value,,,,, a little like the story of the potato and tomato in Italy. (that is another interesting food journey). Rice entered Italy through Venice and then Lombardy in the north. Since my grandmother's family came from Biella in Piedmont, the next province west of Lombardy, perhaps rice was not a part of their diet. Dishes in Italy, at least many years ago, were very regional. Spaghetti is still more of a southern dish than a northern one. My grandmother often made Polenta. I was just reading that in Biella corn was first planted in the 17th century and polenta became a staple of their diet. There is a substantial wool industry in Biella to this day and interestingly when I was growing up we ate alot of lamb. I believe that my grandfather's southern style married with my grandmother's northern palette produced a food fusion of Napolitano-Biellese,,,, and a family that liked polenta, lamb, seafood (bay of Naples), things with tomatoes (The earliest discovered cookbook with tomato recipes was published in Naples in 1692 although the author stole from Spanish sources,, who stole from the Aztecs and Maya),, and we loved pasta.I was seriously lucky.

Erectile Dysfunction

     I was reading again, and you know the damage that does. I was initially indulging myself in the story of the woman from New Jersey who is having 100 or more orgasms a day. (I am sure my brother must be trying to contact her). Then this caught my eye. BMW motorcycles made in 1993 with a Corbin aftermarket seat may be the cause of priapism,, or a permanent erection. After a four-hour ride on his motorcycle, one BMW owner realized that he had a problem. Namely, a problem with his erect penis, which after some waiting would not subside. Now while most of us would cheekily reply that such a state is the sign of a good motorcycle ride, this San Francisco Bay Area native is not laughing, and has filed suit in the Superior Court of San Francisco County against BMW Motorrad North American and Corbin-Pacific. Saying that the motorcycle and its dealer-installed custom motorcycle seat have caused priapism. The man is suing for lost wages, personal injury, medical expenses, product liability, and negligent infliction of emotional distress.Hard to believe, no? I smelled fecal matter here and I didn't even know what priapism was until I read the article.
  


This corbin motorcycle seat looks like a sexual aid

      I got to thinking about priapism. It would be a boon to those with erectile dysfunction as well as a nightmare for those in a bathing suit on a public beach so  I read up on it.
     Priapism is an erection that lasts far longer than normal—often for four hours or more. It may start as a regular erection when you’re sexually aroused. Or, it can pop up without any stimulation. The erection can last for several hours, and can be very painful. If priapism isn’t treated, it can cause erectile dysfunction and scarring. Priapism is most common in men ages 5 to 10 and 20 to 50.There are two kinds of priapism. Low-flow (ischemic) priapism is when blood becomes trapped inside the penis and can’t flow back out. The trapped blood can be painful or if left like that can literally putrefy and cause damage to the organ.                High-flow (nonischemic) priapism occurs when too much blood flows into the penis. It is usually not painful.Diseases that affect blood flow, such as sickle cell anemia and leukemia, can cause priapism. Additionally, some drugs have priapism as a potential side effect. These include erectile dysfunction drugs like tadalafil (Cialis) and sildenafil (Viagra), antidepressants, and blood thinners. Excess alcohol use, as well as illegal drugs like marijuana and cocaine, can also have this effect. Injuries that damage arteries can cause priapism as well.   
     I also read that medical evidence has shown that prolonged use of overly hard bicycle seats, like those Corbin sells, can cause numbness or even erectile dysfunction due to damage to the pudendal nerve. It seems the plaintiff in this case was just trying to "stiff" BMW for his rigidity stemming from a previous medical condition. This gives another perspective to the image of those hard riding inflexible bikers who are really soft at heart.
     I knew of a wealthy older gentleman, who did quite well for himself financially. He was always a bachelor. At the age of 78 or so he fell head over heels for this young morena. It became a symbiotic relationship.The family was concerned,, but little did they know how bad it would get. In order to please his morena he started taking a cocktail of doctor prescribed penile stimulants, and he also enlisted the "herbalists" (curanderos) to augment his chances with natural stimulants. He wanted a good solid erection. He got one that lasted six months. After his chemical ingestion he ended up in the hospital nearly dying,, and with military flagpole syndrome.
      Since a man's stimulation comes with a bulge it can be more embarrassing. Years ago I remember the father of a friend divorcing his wife for a much younger women. He was under pressure to please so he had an internal penis pump installed or a penile implant. When a man is sexually aroused, all he has to do is squeeze the pump between the thumb and index finger, and an erection occurs. When I heard this all I could think about were the possible malfunctions. Imagine turning left a little too quickly in the supermarket, squeezing the pump by mistake then poking through the napkin shelve only to exit on the other side in the cereal aisle.

Write It Down

     Writing "it" down fixes it in your memory. Writing does hove towards permanency,,,no?


      While walking to the hotel the other early dark morning I wandered through the "rides" set up for the yearly carnival-fair in Tenancingo. The entire center of town is devoted to this event,,,,as La Guera once said, "Just peanuts and cotton candy". I was alone winding my way through this maze of  brightly colored machines looming out of the darkness like distorted realities. Garbage was witness to last night's orgy of rockets, gluttony, and rides. Fiberglass cutsie dinosaurs dumbly stared at me. On the side of a caterpillar ride there were oversize cartooned faces of stars. Avatars of Shakira, Thalia, and Julio Iglesias were captured like latter day grotesque gargoyles. I noticed that the rivets that held the thin metal panels mottled their faces like pimples. The Disney caricatures fared better in their likenesses. No one has to interpret the face of Pluto or Mickey. The work is already done. It is no wonder directors have chosen the night time carnival setting for so many horror movies. The prescence of these oversized distortions so changed my usual path through the zocalo that I became lost. I could hear a man clearing his throat and spitting up a red bank oyster in the distance. Somehow this disgusting human action was a comfort. It was the same route I take each morning, but different dream-like,,everything out of place. Then I heard the steps of someone behind me,,just a scuffle at first and then the definition of someone walking at a faster pace than me.  Suddenly I was breathing more quickly. I am a teenager again covered in pimples, awash in self doubt waiting for Freddy Kruger and the piercing cold steel fingers. The person in a hurry passed me and so too with him sucked the doom from the moment.
      
     You know I try to find something beautiful about every person I meet. Call me naive,,it's true I am naive and many times naivete molests my life. It seems the cautious ones are placed less frequently in harm's way. But I have never wanted to evaluate every word from every single individual as if all conversation were no more than hidden agendas. 
     Human beauty is something taught. We seem to have an innate sense of appreciation for nature but for humans we often turn to a media for help. Icons of beauty abound. I have always found beauty in the far corners,,, in the people who have been rejected by the media. This is for you all you fattasses, and people whose faces are not in harmony with the iconic image. This, perhaps naive approach to the concept of beauty has also spawned in me a sense of recognition for the grotesque in the arts. The paintings of Soutine, Francis Bacon, and Otto Dix somehow move me more than those of Van Gogh. The grotesque is closer to tragic drama, closer to the true contradictory nature of the human soul,, which weilds great power to transport a person's soul more than other forms of creation. Eugene O'neil's Long Days Journey Into Night moves me more than Neil Simon's The Odd Couple.
     There is so much for which to be thankful. What a cliche but it holds some truth. To be repulsed or put off by someone different from the "standard",, or another culture,, another approach to life cheats the viewer. Real emotion is often found in the shadows.The other day I was standing in front of my wife's business and this older extremely skinny lady in her apron and braids unsteadily walked up to me and asked if I wanted to buy her bag of limones reales for cinco pesos. Her mouth was totally deformed from bad distorted teeth, her face wizened, a road map of her defeats. I have seen her walking all over town with her bags of lemons and she probably considers it a good day when in the evening she has 30 pesos. My wife bought the bag and gave her 50 pesos. This is the moment when my measly complaints seem like chicken shit. Mexico is great for this kind of situation. Can't take yourself too seriously unless you live in an ivory tower and travel by helicopter.


















.