The remarkable Aurora I mentioned in an earlier post has had a tough life. Her husband is dead, she's raised six children and now has... have I lost count? Eleven grandchildren? She walks her way to work each day. No car, no use for the bus, even showing up drenched one rainy morning because, as she explained, her umbrella is a piece of crap. She has wild tales to tell of coyotes and quicksand in Arizona, which I have to follow intently, sifting through her rapid Spanish for the words I recognize and cognates I can understand, while carefully watching her facial expressions for clues to help me grasp her remarkable past.
Aurora was elated to learn that I might be teaching an ESL class after school, insisting that this would be the year she would learn English. When that did not come to be, I promised her we could have classes anyway, any time she wanted, in my office. This Monday, I made good on that promise for the first time and Aurora brought me, of course, tacos de papa con huevo... a favorite of mine, potato and egg breakfast tacos, in handmade flour tortillas.
It's hard for me to imagine this woman, rising early, knowing she must work late, seeing that her littlest granddaughter gets ready for school, patting out balls of tortilla dough, rolling them flat and toasting them over the stove, finally packing up the finished tacos in paper towels and foil and walking her way to work to see me. It's humbling, frankly.
Aurora sat and ate with me, although only half of a taco since she said she had already eaten a large breakfast. She lamented not bringing any chile, but proudly told me that she had made the tortillas by hand. The tacos were delicious, as my office-mate, Amanda, attested later on when she ate hers. It took an enourmous amount of willpower not to eat the tacos leftover for Amanda, but I persisted and shared. My kindergarten teacher would be so proud.
After tacos, Aurora and I pored over paper, scratching phrases in English and Spanish and practicing pronunciation. Phrases like, "I have six children, three boys and three girls" require drilling. Hardest is the pronunciation of girls, which to Aurora's ear sounds like "gros" which is what she writes on her paper to help her pronunciation. I laugh and tell her that this means something else entirely... It will not be without a lot of hard work that Aurora learns English this year, or that I learn Spanish, but she is already, undoubtedly, one of the best parts of my day.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Tacos Are for Weekend Getaways
In the first few years of my professional life, when I worked full-time as a high school teacher, we had a name for the month that stretched endlessly from the adrenaline-laden excitement of the first few weeks of school to the state-sanctioned respite of Thanksgiving break: Black October. Black October means that the honeymoon period of a new year is over, but it'll be a good long while before any prolonged separation. Now, even though I work managing a non-profit site, I'm still in education and the workload and wild mood-swings of the high school environment haven't gotten any easier. What has gotten easier is my ability to take a mini-vacation. My girlfriend insisted we needed the break (and she's usually right). Marfa was considered, but tossed out as too far for a relaxing three-day weekend. We headed to Fredericksburg, a Hill Country hit that's remodeled itself as the heart of Texas' wine industry, a little more than an hour west of Austin.
For lunch on the way, we were seeking out the kind of home-style road-side diner that's too often been swallowed by a Denny's or a Cracker Barrel. We chose the Hill Country Cupboard in Johnson City:
The Hill Country Cupboard advertises itself along the side of the road as having the World's best chicken fried steak. Neither one of us were game for trying it, but I heard, as we were finishing up perfectly average plates of migas, an older woman clearly say, "that was the best chicken fried steak I've ever had!" That seems like a pretty bold claim to me but it's true that this is a part of the country where people eat a lot of chicken fried steak. Probably she knows what she's talking about. I swear there was a version on every menu I saw this weekend, but no other place claimed to be the World's best... just saying.
We stayed at the lovely and adorable Kerrine's Cottage through the Main Street Bed and Breakfast. My girlfriend was ready to move in, except that said cottage is located in Fredericksburg which is populated primarily with knick-knacks and 65+ tourists.
Getting breakfast delivered to your private cottage: very rock star.
And my goodness! That looks like a breakfast taco! Part of my delicious rock star breakfast included tasty potato, egg, sauted onions and peppers, and bits of bacon that I picked out of my tortilla before diving in. The eggs were the perfect consistency, juicy but not runny, and everything was deliciously flavorful, especially the salsa which had just the right tinge of cilantro. The tortilla was just so-so, but maybe that had more to do with the fact that it was delivered rather than served fresh, but the trade seemed worthwhile.
We also had a fabulous time sampling Fredericksburg's wine offerings from their own local winery to Lincoln Street, a wine bar that takes itself rather seriously and where I ate about a pound of delicious cheese and olives while getting tipsy on some very nice Italian Cabernet.
After the cheese (and giggling over Stephen Colbert's assertion that he can't eat a twelve-egg omelet every morning for breakfast because sometime in the future his heart will explode) we decided to move around a bit. About fifteen miles directly north of Fredericksburg is Enchanted Rock, a domed mound of exposed granite that's just begging to be climbed.
Tacos in the Hill Country? Tasty. Retirees? Plentiful. Chicken fried steak? Supposedly the best in the world, but heretofore untasted.
For lunch on the way, we were seeking out the kind of home-style road-side diner that's too often been swallowed by a Denny's or a Cracker Barrel. We chose the Hill Country Cupboard in Johnson City:
The Hill Country Cupboard advertises itself along the side of the road as having the World's best chicken fried steak. Neither one of us were game for trying it, but I heard, as we were finishing up perfectly average plates of migas, an older woman clearly say, "that was the best chicken fried steak I've ever had!" That seems like a pretty bold claim to me but it's true that this is a part of the country where people eat a lot of chicken fried steak. Probably she knows what she's talking about. I swear there was a version on every menu I saw this weekend, but no other place claimed to be the World's best... just saying.
We stayed at the lovely and adorable Kerrine's Cottage through the Main Street Bed and Breakfast. My girlfriend was ready to move in, except that said cottage is located in Fredericksburg which is populated primarily with knick-knacks and 65+ tourists.
Getting breakfast delivered to your private cottage: very rock star.
And my goodness! That looks like a breakfast taco! Part of my delicious rock star breakfast included tasty potato, egg, sauted onions and peppers, and bits of bacon that I picked out of my tortilla before diving in. The eggs were the perfect consistency, juicy but not runny, and everything was deliciously flavorful, especially the salsa which had just the right tinge of cilantro. The tortilla was just so-so, but maybe that had more to do with the fact that it was delivered rather than served fresh, but the trade seemed worthwhile.
We also had a fabulous time sampling Fredericksburg's wine offerings from their own local winery to Lincoln Street, a wine bar that takes itself rather seriously and where I ate about a pound of delicious cheese and olives while getting tipsy on some very nice Italian Cabernet.
After the cheese (and giggling over Stephen Colbert's assertion that he can't eat a twelve-egg omelet every morning for breakfast because sometime in the future his heart will explode) we decided to move around a bit. About fifteen miles directly north of Fredericksburg is Enchanted Rock, a domed mound of exposed granite that's just begging to be climbed.
Tacos in the Hill Country? Tasty. Retirees? Plentiful. Chicken fried steak? Supposedly the best in the world, but heretofore untasted.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
