I fear the collapse is coming. My primary solace comes in knowing that I have a strong community, a family that I can rely on and I hope can rely on me. This community, mi familia, that I love so much gathered last night to celebrate a birthday, fall equinox, harvest moon, and Jupiter getting super close to earth and appearing below the moon.
We gathered at our friends’ farm. My mother and aunt lead us in making an absurd amount of tamales. Together between everyone we made falafel with fresh ground acorn flour and veggies harvested from the garden, wine, bread, a tres leches cake, and squash stuffed with quinoa. Everything made from scratch, and everything made with love. We sat in a circle and chewed corn and spat it out into a deep pan, the plan being to make chicha–I’m looking forward to see how it turns out.
The tamales turned out better than I had expected despite all the white people who kept trying to uncover the pot to look in. This reminded me of one of my favorite blog posts, Tamale Day BITCHES!. I should’ve learned from their mistakes and guidance.
Tamale day is a strong believer in segregation and prejudice. But rather than using this as hate, we use them as tools. You see white people have fucked up tamale day more than enough times. As a result we’ve had to enact some rules….
The number one crime whites have committed at Tamale Day was touching the fucking steamer. One year a bunch of my hungry friends kept on checking the steamer. The problem with this is that the steam then escapes and condensates on the lid. The water drips on the tamales below which have dropped in temperature so that it takes longer to cook soggy tamales. After that year the coalition of the brown enacted a no white people allowed to touch the steamer initiative.
I think if my mother, aunt and I hadn’t taken turns yelling at the white people to back away from the tamales, ours too would’ve been soggy. Luckily for my friends I am a loud bossy bitch when it comes to my food. I had challenged SergDun and GroceryEats to a tamale/brew challenge. They said yes, but then never stepped up the plate. I think they were scared of the fact that we could make vegan tamales better than them—which by the way we did with a nice vegan consume (vegan chicken broth) and some TVP in the core of the tamale. We also made organic free range chicken Tamales with the best red sauce ever — just ask Michelle who would’ve eaten all of it had it not spilled.
The homemade wine was intense. Some bottles tasted of vinegar, others were tasty but WAY more potent than I had expected. I ended up having to ask my mother to drive me home after realizing that one glass was going to be too much for me to handle. Someone described one of the homemade bottles of wine (a pear one I believe) as being so strong that it would eat away at all your stomach acids—that said it was super tasty. As for the Chicha, I am not sure we chewed/spat enough corn to make a good brew, but I’ll find out later and let you all know.
I love the bond that is shared when making food together. That bond might be even more awesome than the food itself. We also played music, talked, hugged, danced, and stared at the planets and stars. The star musical instrument of the night was Ben’s homemade banjo made with, I believe, lamb skin, and a gourd from their garden, as well as one banjo string!
My only regret is that I didn’t take a camera. I’m still not sure how my favorite punk rock photo-journalist and awesome friend although present didn’t bring his camerato the party. What kind of photo journalist forgets his camera? I’ll post some pictures later that another friend took or if anyone sends me some they took with their camara phone.
