The Pig and I

It was New Year's Eve in 1992, my family was invited to some people's farm in Veracruz (beach front, fabulous) I was naive as a potato, and since I was very little I gave my mom such a hard time with food, I definitely didn't like the idea of eating animals, but my family was weird anyway, who knew I was going to be a chef 25 years later. So, these people brought a huge and gorgeous pig to this awesome beach front farm, my immediate reaction was fascination, I pet it non-stop, that animal was extremely friendly and I think we had some chemistry. No adult advised me of its sentence, I'm sure they were all drunk, happy enough that the kids were not around but rather playing with the pig or anything moving but close to them. 

The next morning I woke up at the screaming of the pig, I witnessed with horror the destruction of sensitive life without the minimum respect or consideration, its death was inhumane, perhaps necessary and sustainable, but inhumane. That day Czechoslovakia dissolved and I promised myself to avoid eating animals as much as possible, since I didn't control my diet or had enough information, I was just a confused and traumatized kid. But, how do you control your diet at that age?

So I had the brilliant idea of starting to wear a fanny pack, neon of course, because my mom bought it for us and it's the 90's in my fanny pack you could find: calculator (indispensable), notebook, pencil, eraser, sharpener, stickers, a silver ounce coin, a photocopy of Ricardo Flores Magon speech, stamps of classic paints and art, dinosaurs and famous astronauts and candies, always candies. You can tell why I was not everyone's favorite classmate, but I never got my ass kicked, I was always the strong nerd nobody dared to confront but rather fear and avoid.  I was not a monster, I wanted friends but also didn't know how to fit in, still don't. Stupid fanny pack. 

So, I kept all of my stuff organized in the pockets, except for the big pocket, that one I originally designated for hiding food. Good and bad, snacks banned by my mother (American candies) but I also had a ziploc bag, and at every meal I would start with the starch and carefully observed my parents moves. I calculated our daily routines. My dad would eat fast and leave the table, my brother was a slow eater but he was always busy talking, and my mom would constantly go into the kitchen for you more salsa, avocados, salt, water etc

I love my mom's cooking (now) so don't take me wrong, but seriously, liver and onions is not a kids friendly dish. Dishes that are common in Mexico sound scary in the US, because you already know that "Mexican" food is not really Mexican right?

Here's a comprehensive list of my childhood horrors:

-Braised octopus

-Pozole (with pig's head)

-Quesadillas de sesos (Sheep brains with manchego cheese)

-Barbacoa (Sheep bbq)

-All sorts of cow organs stews for tacos

-Raw fish, cooked only with lime juice, hot sauce and salt.

But my worst enemy was the Mexican version of Chinese food, technically Mexican food with soy sauce and still lime juice. Unnamed parts in each stew. 

I mastered the art of hiding food in my fanny pack for years, until my brother caught me or waited for the right moment to blackmail me, and he did. I gave him (a forced bribe) a toy, 

Monterey Jack from Chip'n Dale Rescu Rangers. Apparently it was not enough to cover his mouth.

He told my parents what I've been doing and of course they were horrified, I explained to them

the story of the pig and etc, you can probably imagine in how much trouble I got.

Flavor was good, I never denied that (except for liver with onions) It was only my trauma.

In 1993, in another New Year's Eve adventure but now we were heading to Yucatán to visit our family, my mom got lost in the jungle and we noticed that people were marching in the middle of the rain, morning and night like a pilgrimage or that's what we thought, after hours of driving in circles my mom decided to go to Agua Azul waterfalls, a scenic destination and tried to find a map, what we didn't know was that those people were about to declare war against Mexican government and declare autonomy, but we were middle class and we only cared about getting safe to our destination. 

When we came back from vacation, we saw on the news that the Mexican army bombed Chiapas and flooded the Mayan state with soldiers and tanks, killing and disappearing people, an unknown amount but one is too much. I watched the news, which are state propaganda in Mexico and they demonized the Zapatistas, they immediately named them a terrorist organization, and at that age you have no idea of what is going on, but I remember the people marching when we got lost in Chiapas and they were just normal people, pissed off but people nonetheless, kids included. I was fighting my fanny pack revolution in my wealthy (sort of, it was just debt) while people with real problems were being murdered by the army we were raised to respect and honor. Those two worlds collided. It wasn't long before the entire economy collapsed after a presidential candidate was assassinated and the military conflict intensified. My family lost everything. Our house, cars and valuables. One day on April my dad picked us up from school and when we drove by our house all of our belongings were outside, my mom was standing on the sidewalk holding a pot with a mole she was preparing for my dad's birthday, she was petrified and crying. That night we were homeless, but thankful for having a roof over and warm food. We moved in with my grandmother, my closet and my world was inside a box of Pampers, our furniture got sold or stored. My parent's debt was growing and we had $0 from one day to the next the Mexican peso devalued and thousands of people lost everything, it only takes one day. Banks knew it, they were waiting like hawks.

My vegetarian revolution died (I was vegetarian again but never an activist from 2006 to 2010) and I was more curious about the Zapatistas.

My brother and I were still enrolled in a private Catholic school, being smart at school helps with the bills. But now I was the scary nerd with the neon fanny pack and homeless. So, you can tell how my personality developed after that.

Zapatistas were fighting for land and freedom, and respect for their traditions and Mayan roots. NAFTA was the main target.

After Govt. changed the Constitution in order to adopt NAFTA, rich global companies forced-purchased family owned farms, we witnessed one of the biggest diasporas the world has ever seen, millions moved to the US with whatever they had, families split and society got bitter. The gentrification of colonial towns, and our gastronomy began too.

It's easier to fight a revolution for yourself, while enjoying socioeconomic privileges than when you lose everything and have to fight every day for survival, and it's immensely more honorable when people unite and fight together for a common goal and others show solidarity and move out of the way. 

I'm not indigenous but I'm Mexican, I don't even know exactly what I am when it comes to family tree and etc. I know there's basque and Italian, but no specifics. Both of my parents are proud Mexicans and so am I, but since colonial times there's a crystal clear caste system  that keeps indigenous people, the original owners of Mexico in the bottom of society. It was better for me to show solidarity and appreciation but never to the point of appropriation, it was not my fight, but solidarity is key.

It is clear to me now that if anyone wants to talk about what people should eat they should at least acknowledge that many don't have the access to not only fresh food, but food and by many I mean millions. Industrial farming is an abomination, but if we want to really change things, the means of production should not be private property. Let's start with food. "La tierra es de quien la trabaja " 

Vegan activists can't exclude poverty and history of racial exclusion in their narrative. 

I think we need to end factory farms and animal torture, but I don't have the heart to change entire cuisines, traditions or force people to adopt a diet they cannot afford.

Good food comes from the heart, and so it should be the way we treat animals. Good food should come from healthy societies, not from oppression. 

Clairvoyance

Cooking is a universal compilation of knowledge, it's the continuous debate of which technique is better and why, it's chemistry and physics, it's survival. Cooking brings people together, whether it's your grandmother forcing you to clean a monumental pile of corn for Sunday's pozole, your friend trying to be all "manly" telling you how to grill a steak to perfection while being completely intoxicated with PBRs, or cooking for people in need. Cooking can also be a form of art and a way to express the way you feel.
Cooking is knowledge, and you never stop learning.

That's why I dislike celebrity chefs in pop culture, sharing recipes and procedures of public domain for a grotesque amount of money, copywriting the evolution of food and with it, erasing basic skills of survival. It's knowledge, not magic.

When we are kids, he have a powerful curiosity for food preparation and where does food comes from, then we develop some sort of culinary clairvoyance, full of tabus and lies, but we are kids, I'll just call it "magic" then we find a sexist world, were each gender has a role, and of course I'm talking about Macho-Mexico, the kitchen is not for the man. But, my curiosity never went away, to the contrary, this gender-bullshit made it even more exciting, because now, every time I grabbed an onion or garlic and peeled it for my mom, I felt I was in fact creating something magical, underground. I would have to basically camouflage or something in order to retain my "manhood".

Acquiring knowledge is always a challenge, and so is getting fresh food nowadays. I witnessed the decline of Mexican Family-owned farms and everyday-local farmers markets, I saw miles and miles of fertile lands being redeveloped in order to supply not just (or at all) the local market, but our hungry USA, instead of free range chickens, and seriously, they were as free as seeing chickens eating next to you while waiting in the bus stop, but instead of that, now I saw enormous buildings with thousands of animals with no freedom. All of that farming know-how went to huge corporations, profiting with knowledge, making it harder to even get a share of it. I saw farmers leaving everything behind for a dream, I saw them abandoning entire towns, the most cruel diaspora of modern times. Something most rural Mexican immigrants have in common, they still have that knowledge with them, and also, a dream to maybe one day, start all over again.

Life is ironic. I was studying to maybe one day work in politics, but my love for food never went away, I decided to tell my parents about my decision, I wanted to go to a culinary school and become a chef. My mother got all excited, we talked for hours about how I helped her in the kitchen when I was a kid and stuff, but now it was time to face my dad. Well, that was one of the most unpleasant moments of my life. He was so upset, so confused, so full of passive-aggressiveness. I remember one of his lines "Is that why you don't have a girlfriend?" I did answer in my head (No, I don't have a girlfriend because I'm the biggest antisocial nerd in the classroom and nobody invites me to parties) So again, gender roles. He said, "Then you have to find your own path"

We left Mexico City and moved back to small town living, Mazatlan. Without my dad. My mother and I started a small restaurant with Mexican food (no, not the "FOR REAL, THIS IS THE MOST AUTHENTIC ONE) but we needed more money, so I was looking for a second job, so I walked to a restaurant couple blocks away from my mom's business, saw the "Hiring" sign and talked to the owner, she hired me immediately as general chef helper, whatever that means. That was the most exhausting experience ever, from going to the market for both, my mother's restaurant and my new job, cleaning grills and fryers, chopping cases and cases of tomatoes and onions, cleaning fresh seafood, making handmade tortillas, etc, etc, etc. I was working 18 hours a day. No time for school, no time for friends, no time for family.
But I was doing what I wanted to do, I was finally cooking, acquiring knowledge at a very high cost, intense labor but how much I learned.

Sadly, my mother's health was not the best at that moment, my income was not sufficient and her business was not doing that well.  My brother had a car accident. I was completely overwhelmed, so I decided to  buy a plane ticket, take my US$50 saved in the bank, which I thought it was a lot, said goodbye to my girlfriend and friends, to my mom and brother, to my two dogs and turtles, to the ocean. I left everything behind because I wanted to save my mother and I wanted to learn more and to become a chef one day, again.

My first job in the US was not food related, I was painting houses in some Wisconsin suburb, I think it was Watertown, but I'm not sure, at that time, I knew a little English, such as: Elephant, Apple, Thank You.
So, for months I was just sending money to Mexico, and looking for a kitchen job. Finally found one, for pantry/prep. My first night at this restaurant, I cut my finger while chopping tomatoes, never been that embarrassed in my life.

Knowledge is a fascinating trip, I chose food, and I owe everything I know to many people that had the patience to teach me, to people that made me feel like shit, but I learned anyways, to my mother and grandmothers, to street vendors in Mexico City, to amazing coworkers in Mexico and Wisconsin.

So, I just want to share the recipes and techniques I've learned over the years and share them with you. This is of course just a long "Hi, this is me" letter and I will now write recipes in the next posts.

PS, My dad learned how to cook, however, his food always looks brown, but it's pretty good stuff, he also learned how to respect my profession and he's proud of me.