recuerdos y pupusas

Here I am in Boston this week, and I was out on a walk for a little exercise after work.  I wasn’t planning on eating out, but saw a restaurant that served pupusas. So in I went, to have a few pupusas with a side order of memories (recuerdos).

Pupusas could be thought of as a national food of El Salvador, corn tortillas stuffed with beans and cheese, or cheese, or chicken, or chicken and cheese, or pork etc.  As I ate the three little ones on my plate, covered with real honest to god curtido (cut cabbage, a little like cole slaw but with only vinegar and a little oil), and red salsa, I thought about my homestay mother when I was in El Salvador.

She was the town pupusa maker.   The pupusera, if you will, but that has other connotations that shouldn’t be talked about on a family blog such as this.  Every afternoon, she or her helper would cut the cabbage to make the curtido, big huge buckets of it, and boil the tomatoes to make the salsa. Then the carried it to the pupusa stand, where there she stood and made pupusas all night, pretty much without stopping.  I was expected to eat pupusas every night.  The kids and I would walk over to the pupusa stand and I’d order two, three, or one pupusa every night for dinner.

This became a little monotonous, as you might well imagine.

I didn’t complain, though.  My alternative was to make dinner for myself, which would probably have been eggs and beans, in a kitchen that can only be described as disgusting.  I cooked in it, of course, there’s not much that I can’t bear, but I wouldn’t have wanted to do it on a regular basis.  It was more important to maintain a good relationship with her, and learn as much about her and her family as possible.

She had seven kids, five of which lived at home still.  Two were in the US with their dad.  Their dad had two more children with a new girlfriend in the US.  The youngest of the five kids at home was born AFTER the the two in the US were born, and it’s pretty sure that the youngest is the son of the dad - the mom went to visit and got herself pregnant, which nearly everyone wanted to tell me was a bad idea all around - dad in the US with another family, her a grandma already, etc.  Certainly a very interesting story, especially when I was listening to it in Spanish.

Posted by Marie on September 13th, 2007 under Uncategorized

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