Enchiladas, with love

Rather unexpectedly, but not unwelcome, food has brought me closer to myself. The great thing about having a ton of free time is I get to think about anything and everything, especially myself.

Today I made a batch of enchiladas. They were of course delicious as usual. This time was a bit different though. I could taste my growth, I could feel my soul go into the chile sauce.

In other words, I'm closer to making food the way my great grandma did. Her food was quite simple, few ingredients, but always fresh. When I was younger, I wasn't necessarily aware or rather, I could not demarcate all those feelings that her food gave us. She genuinely liked to cook, there was no cooking woman in the kitchen simply because she felt it was her duty. I distinctly remember her food being made for the masses of my family, where she always made more than needed because someone would always come to visit.

My great grandma's food was the stuff you could not talk about to understand fully. It was only with the other senses that you could really know and taste all the wonderfulness that went into her food. I don't know much about my great grandma's family line, but even then, all I have to do is look within myself to understand, and the collective wisdom begins to surface.

We all have our own unique way of cooking. Some of us don't even like to cook, we prefer to be fed. That's fine too. However, I will say that everything we eat should come and grow out of respect and love for the nourishment that we intake.

Today when I made my enchiladas with my frozen chiles that took my sibling and I many hours to deseed, I felt strong. Making enchiladas never made me feel like that before. Later, I then made a quick champurrado with soy milk, cloves, and cinnamon. Mixing it in the old ass pan I have reminded me of my grandma's house. How she won't throw anything away if it is still semi functional, a true rancher to the bone. I get a ton of that from her. So I made the wonderful hot chocolate mix in my scratched up pot with super old floral patterns and it also felt different.

Cooking itself is taking on a more complex, more beautiful, more intense level for me. Though the finished product tends to always be delicious (did I mention how humble I am ha ha), it is the journey of making these simple yet intricate dishes that I enjoy the most. It helps me in the desire to create those warm feelings my great grandma created for us at her house. How there was always something on the stove and it always smelled so good. It helps me relate more to my grandma, never wasting anything, and being creative when things "break" or I can't find ingredients. I become more and more like them everyday. They are my heroes.

Pouring the enchilada sauce today was unlike the other hundreds of times I've done it before in my life. All the times before had consisted of me being an apprentice to the sages that are my ancestor's knowledge, exploring my roots and flavors of the past that combined to literally make me into the corporeal being I am today. I moved from apprentice to now being able to craft my own work. To use my attention to detail and immense amount of patience to create more than just wonderful dishes, but to also create art that is a form of my self expression.

For the first time in my life, I was able to use my soul to create my food. I was able to breathe life into my ingredients, I was able to enhance flavors simply by allowing my inner thoughts to flow freely. I was able to not think about finishing within a given amount of time, but to recognize that every dash of spice, every rinsed chile, every minute of blending and mixing was all part of the process. Essentially, there is no finished product as we must always keep eating, and so today I realized that cooking for me is a wonderfully intricate and lovely journey. That there are no bounds to what I can create, and that by allowing myself to respect and appreciate something as simple as a dried chile has the potential to change lives. That's the hope anyway.

Food for me is not something we just scrounge to continue on with our lives. For me, food is very much a way to connect with the earth. A way of taking from the earth in order to give back, in order to keep being part of the awesomeness of existence. Through love, cooking has moved into a different realm for me altogether. I'm excited to see what great stuff I can further create.