Today after class I translated for the Canadian couple we met at Casa del Mundo. I met them at Elenita’s and took them down to Petrona’s house. They run a business called Crossing Cultures and created a cookbook of foods from all around the world. They are making a new edition and wanted to see how people make tortillas. Petrona, the gracious woman that she is, welcomed them to her home and explained the entire process.
It is actually quite a process. First the maiz is cooked. Then it is brought to the molino (the loud construction site noises that penetrate my walls every morning from 5am-10am, 1pm-4pm, and sometimes as late as 10pm if many tortillas will be made for a special event such as the ferria) to be ground up. Then they add this white thing that I believe is a form of limestone and knead the dough before making small balls of dough and using their hands to make the tortillas. The actual verb is "tortillar" which means to make tortillas. It looks like the women are just clapping their hands with the dough in between and magically a perfectly round tortilla the size of a round coaster appears. It is a learned skill- one that I tried to master- that girls learn when they are 5 years old or younger.
Then I took the couple to one of the weaving coops for a demonstration and translated for them there.
