Caldo, Sopa, Caldillo: Soup's On!

Michael Sedano

My grandmother lived on Lawton Street, close to the packing house where she worked. The North side of town stopped where the navel orange groves began and stretched from Redlands to Bryn Mawr and all along the Santa Ana River wash to the mountains. My Mother dropped me off at Gramma's during the day.

Gramma's kitchen featured a wood-burning cast iron stove, lumbrita going all day. Inside the firebox, Gramma kept camotes slow-roasting in residual heat, crinkled cascara dripping with miel. On top of the stufa, frijoles waited in a clay vessel, and always a pot with soup. "Caldo de Res" I've seen it named, but to us, it is Cocido.

Was I four? Three? I remember walking into the kitchen and being guided to a bench at the table. Mom and Gramma begin their visit as my grandmother places a bowl of cocido in front of me. 

Gramma ignores my protests as she cracks chile japones into the bowl, shushing me that chilito is good, and good for me. She squeezes a lemon half into the soup, places a hot tortilla de harina in my hand. Later years, if I whined about hot chile my Dad would tell me to chow down because chile "puts hair on your chest."

The little boy doesn't know that yet. But right now, ahh, the intense pica, mollified by limón, is just right. Gramma pulls a tortilla de harina off the comal and it hits the spot with this caldo. I make a tiny scoop of tortilla, fill it with caldo and into my mouth. A spoon will come later.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but inside, it's so comodo. It's caldo weather, gente!

Three Soups For The Season, y Más

The photograph illustrates a version of my grandmother's recipe. My mother wrote down the familia recipes for my wife and daughter. Our descendants will not miss the flavors of home. Of sentimental importance, I use my mother's cocido / menudo pot for my caldos now.

 

 

 

The Gluten-free Chicano Cooks

La Cruda

 

Miguelito sat in the small unpainted room between the front room and the kitchen, leafing through a Hit Parade magazine. Dany Landeros was spinning rancheras on the radio. The boy looked away from the black marks on the paper to study the photograph of “Woozy” tacked to the wall by his Uncle John. “Woozy” must have been the name of the four-eyed man.

 

Woozy was an American, meaning a white man. Jesus next to him was white, too, hasta en color, but that's different, it was a drawing. Woozy’s grizzled unshaven face made him look like a bum in grainy black and white. Miguelito recognized retouching without having a word for it. Somehow the photographer had duplicated Woozy’s eyes giving the bum two sets of eyes, over-under. Fake but compelling to the small boy. 

 

Pondering the provenance of Woozy’s photo—did Uncle John pay for it? Did Woozy give it to Uncle John? Why two eyes?--the boy had not noticed Uncle John stumble into the room. Tall, unshaven like Woozy, Uncle John smiled down at his nephew, his hard-working little sister’s own little boy. Smiling made John wince in pain.

 

John wore the creased baggy trousers he wore last night at El Resbalón. His left leg bore a dark stain and drops of blood dotted his undershirt pointing to swollen crusty nostrils and a bruise coloring Uncle John’s face with black and blue and green and yellow blotches against his deep brown left cheek.

 

“Sientete, Mi’jo,” gramma told him. She didn’t say it the way she invited Miguelito to sit to a bowl of Cocido and her hand-made tortillas hot off the comal. Miguel detected sadness and the stress of helplessly aguantando the fact her oldest child was a wino. In a few weeks, she’d give him money for the Greyhound to Stockton or Fresno from where he’d pick his way down the valley. All his mother had to do every year was worry and send money.

 

John ignored the chair and leaned into the ice box. He took a drinking glass off the top of the white appliance and two eggs from inside. He hastily cracked each blanquillo into the jelly jar, bits of brown shell clung to the viscous egg. Juan looked at Miguelito with his one good eye, the other swiveling with it under the swollen lid. “Salud!” he saluted the youngster. John tilted his head back and let the raw eggs slide into his mouth.

 

“La cruda,” Uncle John said. Miguel recognized the statement as both fact and lament. The boy stared at the empty jar on the table. A single drop of albumen glistened on the rim in the light from the window. A thread of eggwhite stretched and slowly glided down the outside of the glass. Woozy stared blankly from the other room. The moment burned itself into Miguelito’s awareness and he would never forget it.

 

Gramma used her apron to pull open the firebox to stoke up the heat with a piece of orangewood that she pushed into the coals. Then she poured water from the olla into a shiny steel soup pot. In a practiced blur she peeled six tomatillos, sliced a small onion, halved and sliced a yellow lemon into the pot with a Bay leaf and black peppercorns.

 

She walked out to the garden to pick six slender green chile pods and all the red chile piquin on one bush. She tore off two leaves from the tall blue-green plant and walked back to the stove.

 

Uncle John breathed in deeply. The blooded nostril gave off a shrill wheeze and bubbled when he exhaled. He pulled a wadded handkerchief from his back pocket and emptied his nose. Miguel couldn’t avoid seeing the green and bloody mocos Uncle John folded away into his pocket.

 

Gramma added the chiles whole into the pot, followed with a generous sprinkle from a round cardboard box of salt.

 

She pulled the blue-green leaves from her apron pocket. Laying one leaf flat on her palm, she slapped the other palm sharply onto the leaf, three quick slaps. Gramma looked at the leaf between slaps. The surface had a whitish cast now. Gramma peeled off the transparent skin to produce a wet poultice. She did the same to the other leaf and placed them on Uncle John’s face. He went “mmmm,” the pain hidden below the leaves’ cool healing tissue. Gramma cured Miguelito’s frequent headaches with the same tall blue-green plant, whose name he never learned.

 

The scent of burning leña and earthy lemony steam filled the kitchen with deliciously fragrant breaths. Miguelito inhaled deeply and made a secret vow that he would never forget the aroma, nor the moment’s complex of feelings.

 

In a few minutes, gramma ladled some broth into a bowl adding a few tomatillos, onions, and lemon slices. Setting the clear liquid in front of her first born, she said a single word. “Caldillo.”

 

Caldillo

Caldillo is chiloso with lemony flavor from tomatillos and lemon. Not only does gramma’s Caldillo cure la cruda, it cures the common cold. Naturally gluten-free with about 70 grams of carbohydrates in the whole pot, Caldillo is good for what ails you these cold, wet days.

 

6 – 8 whole tomatillos, dehusked.

1 yellow lemon (or lime), halved and sliced.

1 medium white onion, sliced.

6 pods fresh or dried chile arbol.

3 pods chile piquín.

2 cups water.

Salt.

Peppercorns.

Bay leaf.

 

Add to water and bring to low boil.

Serve steaming hot.

Breathe steam, sip soup, wake up, breathe clearly.

 

 

Chile Verde Quiche: Crustless, Meatless, Gluten-free

The Gluten-free Chicano Cooks

Chile Verde Gluten-free Meatless Tortilla Quiche 56g* 

Michael Sedano, The Gluten-free Chicano

 

Note well, this is the Ur- version of the dish. An experimental attitude, and a hielera full of left-overs, leads to wonderful eating. 

Add a layer of chopped Hatch chiles, or, zucchini for a modified green&gold casserole. Adding a layer of well-drained sausage or ground meat picadillo gives the dish an entirely new character. (Beware of ingredients that add liquid to the delicately balanced custard element. You will ruin your meal. Add more rice to soak up the liquid.)

 

375º 45 minutes

 

Whisk together vigorously:

2 eggs (medium) 7g 

Scant 1/3 cup whole milk 4g

2 TBS (¼ stick) salted butter melted .02g

Pinch coarsely ground black pepper .06g

 

½ can, 1 cup or so, Las Palmas green enchilada sauce. 3g

 

Grease a baking dish, bottom and sides:

Ladle a few TBS enchilada sauce on the bottom of the greased baking dish.

 

3 corn tortillas 33g

Tear corn tortillas into small chilaquiles-size pieces (1/3 the size of a storebought chip)

Cover the bottom of the baking dish with tortilla pieces, get them 2 layers thick.

Cover the tortillas with most of your enchilada sauce.

 

Add all the egg butter milk mixture atop the sauced tortilla pieces.

Scatter 1/8 cup leftover steamed rice into the custard blend. 6g

1/3 cup small curd cottage cheese.  2g

1/3 cup grated mozzarella or jack cheese .4g

1/3 cup sharp cheddar .4g

 

Distribute cheese across the top. 

Daub rounded TBS of cottage cheese in 4 or 5 spots;

Sprinkle lots of grated cheese across the entire dish;

Ladle a few TBS enchilada sauce across the cheese;

 

Decorate the top with sliced yellow cheese and black olives.

 

Bake 40 to 45 minutes at 375º. 

Give the Quiche a shake. If the top middle jiggles like jello, give it another 10 minutes.

Remove from oven and let sit five or ten minutes. 

Serve with a crisp green salad and a gluten-free dressing.

La Bloga-Tuesday: A History of Gluten-free Chicano Food

The Gluten-free Chicano has been a La Bloga-Tuesday Semi-regular Occasional feature since 2011, when Michael Sedano's Celiac Disease-dictated campaign against wheat / barley / rye ingredients in his food was in its fifth year. No: bread, soy sauce, beer, pasta, malted milk, and a host of suspicious ingredients best avoided than risk a few days incapacitation.

Just because you have a food allergy, and Diabetes, doesn't mean you have to find a cave and become a food hermit. Some food, like Mexican food, is naturally gluten-free, or mostly so. Other dishes lend themselves to gluten-free methods, and carbohydrate counting. Diabetics often limit each of 3 big meals to around 50g, and two snack meals at 35g.

Here are four columns where a click leads you to some outstanding comida Chicana, all of it Gluten-free. Menudo. Nopales. Helote Calabaza soup. Enchiladas. Mira nomás!

https://labloga.blogspot.com/2011/09/introducing-gluten-free-chicana-chicano.html

Puro Quiche

https://labloga.blogspot.com/2012/07/gluten-free-chicano-cooks-banned-books.html

Chile-Potato-Helote Bisque 

https://labloga.blogspot.com/2015/09/gluten-free-chicano-cooks-mission.html  

Multiple recipes 

https://labloga.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-gluten-free-chicano-looks-back.html

 

 

*Carbs estimated from values found at http://www.carbohydrate-counter.org/advsearch.php 

 

Training Wheels. Gluten-free Shepherd's Pie

Random noises in Plague-time: Training wheels.
Michael Sedano

I don't look up at strange noises any longer. Living behind glass for months now, I've come to identify and distinguish between recycle garbage trucks and garbage garbage trucks, a pool cleaning pick up from hot-rodders with bad mufflers. Quotidian noise fades away. Today one long, agonized sound of hard friction, of metal wearing against a mechanical device. It's the sound of despair.

The little girl works her bike pedals, her helmet secured under a chin, the training wheels protesting a mishap, or a poor installation, or a dad who doesn't work at being daddy, lets the child's bike just go through the motions. Behind the little girl, a man follows a toddler exploring independent mobility. Dad’s got his hands full, and his face unmasked.

He's not unique nowadays, not anymore. Lots of faces like his pass my window in Plague-time. Their masklessness screams out loud like poorly installed training wheels. We're falling off gente, and we can't get up.




The Gluten-free Chicano Cooks
And the Plague-time Cupboard Was Bare
Michael Sedano

Compromised people do not venture into public for essential supplies like food. For us, the Gig Economy steps in for a $15 fee and an optional 5% tip. What sin vergüenzas of the employers. As usual, labor provides all the productivity and some programmer gets all the money. "All tip money goes to the schlepper," so I sweeten the pot. 

This is the information age. I sit at home on the computer and create information. All the money gets loaded onto the info- element and a trickle comes to minimum wage labor.

Our household food dynamic shifted from just-in-time stocking to bringing inventory and managing its outflow. I muck up a lot, expecting one content only to have ordered the wrong package and that's what the order-puller delivers.

What you get is what you ordered, unless the shopper substitutes. Tortillas are tortillas, que no? So when the corn is out of stock, here's a dozen tortillas de harina--wheat--for the gluten-free Chicano. 

No Grapefruit Juice, instead, here's Ruby Red drink with no high fructose corn syrup! Just a shitload of sugar. The Gig Economy turned these people into servants of the computer, they do not make pulling errors. When you clicked on the screen that was what is in the plastic bag on your front porch. Kinda. 

Shortages happen. Milk sours. So it goes, the Mother Hubbard look on the Gluten-free Chicano, who stared at the empty places between unwanted jello, ghost chile sauces, two jars of sweet pickle relish? I have rice noodles, red quinoa, gf lasagne noodles from a year ago, a two-thirds used box of instant mashed potatoes.

The freezer has a slice of ground beef chub and frozen mixed vegetables. Ideas begin to spin, meat and potatoes.

Mrs. Hubbard finds a piece of bell pepper, carrot, and brown onion. There's always yellow cheddar in the Gluten-free Chicano's refrigerator. The spice rack is well stocked, garlic powder, salt, peppercorns.

Shepherd Pie: Gluten-free By Design. Carb-cautious.

Reading ingredients matters, the ingredients in your hand, not in a recipe. The Gluten-free Chicano doesn't expect any of these ingredients to contain wheat, barley, or rye products, hence "by design." Any Shepherd's Pie should start out an inherently gluten-free preparation. But read the labels.

Mashed potatoes with still-frozen mixed vegetables

Shepherd pie carbs. Source link.

Mashed potato flakes, milk, butter. 30 g / cup. 2 cups = 60 g
Frozen mixed vegetables. 12 g / cup
Cheddar cheese. 1.45 g / shredded loose-pack cup
Onion, raw. 11 g / medium
Carrot, small. 6 g / each
Beef. 0 g
90 g in this Shepherd pie.

Six servings provides some 15 grams of carbohydrates per serving. That's not bad for diabetics like the Gluten-free Chicano who holds to a 50 g per meal limit.

I would add a thinly sliced serrano chile to the beef. Sra. Gluten-free Chicano lives with a hyper-sensitive palate, so the chile goes on the side. But chile. A day without enchilando yourself is like a day without sunshine.

Meat and savory vegetable layer

"Shepherd Pie" calls for rustic preparation, so I rough-cut/chop the carrot and hunk of bell pepper. 

In a cast iron pan over high heat, I wilt the onion then crust the  small portion of beef. Add the vegetables, break up the beef and create a good mix over medium flame.

Non-stick spray a loaf pan. Sprinkle a pinch of cheese on the bottom.

Using the potato flakes available, I make a scant two cups. I keep them dry to give the mashed potatoes some texture. Smaller amount would be better.

Flatten a couple of spoonfuls of potato-frozen veggie mix as a bottom crust.

Make a meat layer, the rest of the mashed potato layer, cover with all the remaining grated cheese. This is extra sharp brick cheese. Sprinkle the top with good Paprika.

Bake at 350º 30 minutes. If your oven burns hot, check to ensure the crust doesn't overbrown.

This is the cross-section with two servings removed. There's a breakfast, a lunch, a dinner, another lunch, and chicken feed here.

Venezuela In A Poet's Heart. Chicano Hot Dog, Origins and Development.

A Rosary for Venezuela
Lisbeth Coiman

I am a radical atheist relearning to pray.
Kneeling to conjure devotion, I hold my motherland between the palms of my hands, to protect her against all evils. My words, the beads of the rosary slipping through my fingers.

First Sorrowful Mystery – Agony

Lord, put the right words in my mouth.
I am not a journalist, just a scribbler who feels her native land between her rib cage and her seventh vertebrae. Not a refugee nor asylum seeker. A first generation immigrant with a peculiar diction. My identity contained in the expired passport of a country that no longer exists.

Second Sorrowful Mystery – Washing of the Hands

Allow me Lord to reclaim the ownership for my people’s uprising, to validate the courage of twenty years of struggle against the impostor hiding behind an outdated ideology, acting like the emperor he claims to fight in his robinhood fiction.

Let me write of Bachelet washing her hands in the pool of the Secretariat Building.

Third Sorrowful Mystery – Crowning with Thorns

Lord hear my prayer. End the usurpation of power, give us an interim government, call for general elections, and allow the release of political prisoners. Sacred Auyantepui watches in silence while the guardians of Angel Falls bleed to death in the jungle.

Fourth Sorrowful Mystery – Via Crucis

Lord be the witness. From a palace on a hill, the caricature of a man executes his only job, make martyrs of those attempting to survive.

Fifth Sorrowful Mystery - Crucifixion

Peace medicine burns inside trucks at border crossings of hope and despair.

Litany – Mercy
May those who have eyes see, those who have faith pray, those who have art create awareness.
May the hungry be fed, the sick be healed, and the desperate be comforted.
May Maduro leave to avoid more bloodshed.
May a period of reconciliation follow.
May Venezuela be free.

==

I am a bilingual writer and adult educator living in Los Angeles. My work has appeared in La Bloga, Entropy  Acentos Review, Lady/Liberty/Lit, Hip Mama Magazine, Rabid Oaks, Cultural Weekly, la and elsewhere online, and recently in print in the Altadena Literary Review, and Accolades: A Women Who Submit Anthology. My self-publish debut book, I Asked the Blue Heron: A Memoir, (2017) explores the intersection between immigration and mental health.

On controversy and one's patria...via email 
"The truth it’s difficult to take a political stand without touching somebody else’s sensitivity. My point is I don’t believe in ideological dialectics, but in humanity. A dictator is a dictator whether it stands on the left or on the right.

But on social media, which seems to be a no man’s land without behavior rules, I have received vitriol from both sides: the communists supporting Maduro and the Trumpzuelans supporting Trump for fear of the communists, some in private messages insulting me really bad. I have both been accused of being a communist and a fascist. Some Venezuelans call me Chavista."

The Gluten-free Chicano Invents the Chicano Hot Dog.
Michael Sedano

10-year old Miguel de las Costillas decided he’d had enough school this week after a long Monday with the awful teacher and the Times tables. "You have to wait for someone to catch up so just sit there," she commanded.

On Tuesday, February 2, 1956, Miguel opened the refrigerator and surveyed his prospects. The freezer compartment had Camp Steaks, breaded pork cutlets, and best of all, crispy breaded abalone steaks. For Tuesday lunch, Miguel fried one Camp Steak using two of the four pats of butter frozen to the top. Wednesday, Miguel fried one of the pork cutlets. He ate it with catsup. Thursday was his best day. Abalone.



Frozen abalone steaks in the waxy box fried up crisp and delicious. Miguel cooked all six wafer-thin steaks, doused them with juice from a lemon and salted the hell out of them. Miguel tilted the empty plate to his lips and let the salty lemon juice and abalone crusts slide into his mouth.

“Hooray for Hollywood,” Miguel sang along to the opening words of the Dorothy and Dick Show on channel 5. Irritated by Sheriff John's Bosco cartoons--no one saws logs to make sandwiches of nails and wood, then chews with their mouth open--the 4th grader's mood changed with the music.  Miguel relaxed singing the words he knew, “where any office boy or young mechanic, can be a panic, with just a good-looking something or other." The boy looked forward to lunch and today's movie.

Miguel didn’t panic when he looked into the freezer. Empty. The cold part had corn tortillas from Tommy’s market, machine-made instead of las de mano from Quatro Milpas in Berdoo, where little abuelita made tortillas for as long as Miguel could remember. There was mantequilla. Miguel was not that desperate. The only tortilla-with-butter worth eating was his mother’s hand-made tortilla de harina, or his gramma’s from the wood-burning stove. Miguel found weenies.

Miguel de las Costillas regretted his Thursday lunch. Fish was for Friday, but today he has only weenies for lunch. And tortillas. De maíz. Miguel fell into reverie.

The ancient Purépecha woman looked into her cocina and found only tortillas and meat. How will she feed her familia with only these ingredients? Miguel understood.

Automatic hands strike the blue tip match on the burner which springs into bright blue yellow flames. Reflexive hands slide the crusted black cast iron sartén over the flames. He pulls a single tortilla from the pink butcher paper and refolds the bundle. When the tortilla grows soft and flexible, the boy rolls the tortilla around the weenie. A dab of mustard and it's ready to eat. Not yet.

He gouges a tablespoon of lard from the red box and lets it melt across the bottom of the frying pan. Smoke starts to rise from the hot oil. Two fingers place the Chicano Hot Dog into the pan. The boy has patience and allows the aroma of toasted corn to join with the hot lard smell. He pushes the rolled weenie. Gravity lets the offround roll settle comfortably where it toasts in place. A third rollover and the Chicano Hot Dog has crisped all around and needs to cool.

Ten-year-old Miguel de las Costillas dipped the steaming Chicano Hot Dog directly into the squat jar of yellow mustard. He burned his tongue on the first bite, juggled the morsel on his tongue to cool. He burned his tongue on the second bite, too. And the third. The fourth bite was just right. The last bite left mustard on his fingers and Miguel de las Costillas licked them clean. 

On teevee, Wallace Beery was an ugly sloppy Pancho Villa. Miguel de las Costillas hoped the movies would be better next week.

The Gluten-free Chicano Hot Dog*

One kosher all-beef weenie
One good quality machine-made tortilla de maíz
Non-stick spray
Peanut oil/vegetable oil

Soften the tortilla in the pan, just a spritz of non-stick spray. 
A fast method is wrap the tort in a cloth towel and microwave 6 seconds. This works for bulk, too, when making enchiladas.

Wrap the weenie in the tortilla.
Set the roll on its flap on a plate.

Heat ¼" or more oil in the heavy frying pan. Let the oil smoke.
Place the roll flap down in the hot oil. Use a finger or fork or tongs to hold it for a few seconds to "set" the shape.
Roll and cook to brown crispiness.
Roll and cook to brown crispiness.
Serve with white and yellow cheese, pico pica or El Pato hot sauce, a dab of mustard for that All-American touch.
 
Garnish with pickles, fritos or potato chips optional.
Water or cold leche.

*Any dish cooked by a Chicano for that Chicano's consumption is Chicano Food. The Chicano Baloney Sandwich, for example, differs little from the Okie or Anglo Bologna Sandwich. The Chicano Hot Dog has a little less controversy to its status, what with the crisped tortilla and its origins now revealed, innovated by an habitual truant.

Aboard the Way-Back Machine: 2014. Lowriting. Gluten-free Torta.

La Bloga takes a look back at March 4, 2014, retrieving a pair of features including The Gluten-free Chicano's meatless torta, an egg dish not a sandwich, and Michael Sedano's review of a collection attempting to "take the pulse of Chicano Soul as expressed by automotive enthusiasts writing in diverse genres."

What do the next six months hold in store? Six years ago, March 2014, were you prepared for what would come your way by summer's end? What would you do differently, more of, less of, not at all? We know today's Super Tuesday. GOTV has to be in everyone's future, in 2020. What's it going to look like in 2026?

Take Me Low Riding In Your Car, Car

Review: Lowriting: Shots, Rides & Stories from the Chicano Soul. Santino J. Rivera, Editor. Art Meza, Photographs. Saint Augustine, FL: Broken Sword Publications, LLC, 2014.
ISBN-10: 0989631311 ISBN-13: 978-0989631310

Michael Sedano

The man lurks across the aisle from my company’s display. A leading automotive window manufacturer, we are at the huge SEMA show in Las Vegas.

The man stares at the van window display, then walks around to the other side of our large display area where the sunroof sales team works the crowd. Over three days he keeps appearing at the periphery of vision as I churn the crowd into the display. Finally, on the third day of the show, he walks close enough for me to step into the aisle and greet him.

English. He doesn’t speak a lot of English, back home in Kyoto. He whips out a copy of Low Rider Magazine and points to a tricked-up van with a set of bay windows and a bubble window in the rear hatch. My company makes those windows, I gesture and open my catalog.

No, not the windows in Low Rider. He pulls out a copy of a slick Japanese auto magazine. An installer’s nightmare, a craftman’s virtuoso installation. The Japanese van has a line of five window slits on the driver side, his and hers sunroofs, a pair of roof-top vents, and six more windows on the passenger side. My company manufactures them all, in Los Angeles. A tour, of course.

Over the course of several years, the gentleman from Kyoto visits me four times a year to socialize and place his orders. When his business struggles he haggles a bit more, occasionally reducing an order to a twenty-foot container. His normal buy fills a forty-footer. That’s a lot of windows.

A few years after I start selling windows to Japan, Luis J. Rodriguez comes to Tokyo and witnesses what we had wrought. Rodriguez sees a well-defined low rider cultura, from wheels to drapes, vatos to hynas, thriving among Japanese gente.

I say “we” because the assembly workers at the window factory are almost every one of them raza: Mexicanas and Mexicanos, a few Salvadoreñas Salvadoreños, and a handful of Chicanas Chicanos. They used to get a kick out of my stories about their windows cruising Tokyo streets low and slow. Copies of the Japanese magazines showing the fruits of our labor wore out their staples in the lunch rooms. If they read English, they would truly dig low writing.

Rodriguez’ account of his 2006 trip to Tokyo’s low rider culture kicks off the first two prose pieces in Broken Sword Publications’ latest contribution to chicano culture, Lowriting: Shots, Rides & Stories from the Chicano Soul.

Editor Santino J. Rivera has assembled a hybrid anthology mixing belle lettres with expository writing. Lowriting makes an ambitious attempt—270 pages--to take the pulse of Chicano Soul as expressed by automotive enthusiasts writing in diverse genres.


Three prose pieces frame the collection, Rodriguez and Rivera at the opening, and near the end, Xicano X’s apologia brings the collection to anthological climax, despite 100 pages remaining in the work. It’s an interesting collection.

Underlying the essays scattered across the collection is a vision of cars and cruising as dualities. On one hand, the cars and bikes stand for artistic and often self-taught engineering skill. On another hand--those of writers and poets--low writing collectively contains a metonymy for the chicano part of United States culture, the cars, the gente, the traje, the history. One should remember the Japanese Luis J. Rodriguez visited were imitating “American” culture, and chose low riding aesthetics. Finding Japanese Xicanos screams irony to Rodriguez, that la cultura finds a valued place in Japan while back home it’s the contrary.

Rivera’s interview with film star Danny de la Paz tackles a host of theoretical issues revolving around cars and chicanismo. The interviewer approaches the star like a fan but when the third wall comes down he discovers a serious analyst who’s done high-level chicano studies research.

De la Paz delineates between his characters’ ethos and the actor’s own upbringing as a middle-class kid in a preponderantly Anglo suburb outside of Los Angeles. There’s a dissonance lurking under the Q&A, that moviegoers think Puppet and Chuco are real and that De La Paz has special insight into their portrayal. He wasn’t a vato off the block, he was a theatre-trained college actor who used to watch “real vatos” during filming.

It’s a jarring disconnect that even the actor perceives. Rivera observes that De La Paz considers himself an “ambassador of the Chicano culture,” and delves into what rhetoricians call “ethos,” the persuasiveness, or authenticity, of a character’s (or politician’s) embodiment. The subject hangs out there, just out of reach of the interviewer. The interview ends with the interviewee illustrating that acting the part doesn’t make one an expert but only a more informed fan. De la Paz owns the low rider archetypes, it turns out he doesn’t own a low rider.

Xicano X writes a first person fan letter to low riding in the essay, “Lowriders: Time and Money Well Spent.” El Equis doesn’t own his own low rider but rhapsodizes about other people’s cars. The title explains premise of his essay. Activists and professors lament the lana and love devoted to a machine and idle cruising when there are so many issues la comunidad needs address.

Xicano X’s response is to reaffirm low riders as valuable cultural commodities that, with book banning sweeping the nation, keeping low riding culture alive is a way to ensure the survival of material culture and the values imbued in a paint job or hydraulics.

The essays, provocative as they be, are not the best part of Lowriting: Shots, Rides & Stories from the Chicano Soul. The poetry is. And, that said, one of my favorite non-expository pieces is not a poem at all, but former bloguera Gina Ruiz’ inventive story, “Lorca Green.”

Ruiz’ story comes with a familiar theme of alienated kids and sexual abuse. There’s a collection of neighborhood kids and a pachuco outcast. The vato has a soft spot for the girl narrating the story. Ruiz’ skillful narration leads the reader to what seems a set-piece rape scene when Ruiz kills the narrator. The dead girl’s voice wraps up the loose ends and brings matters to a heart-satisfying close.

Andrea J. Serrano’s “To All The Cholos I Ever Loved Before” and “A Prayer for Nuestra Señora la Reina de la Calle Central A Litany (With a Nod to Juan Felipe Herrera)", are the first poetry after the opening essays. Serrano sets a high standard that only a few of the other poets equal. Serrano’s poetry makes an especially inspired choice given the prevalence of “hynas” as toys rather than essential members of the scene.

In “Cholos” the persona might be one of those groupie hynas flitting from driver to driver. But she’s not an empty bikini, she’s a woman with longings and right now she misses the simplicity of mindless cruising because, like the woman in “Prayer,” they’ve grown beyond the mindless part but kept the identity that cruised because the mayor, the cops, adults said “no cruising.” That was like telling you not to be yourself.

Nancy Aidé Gonzalez, Viva Flores, Ricky Luv, Richard Vargas, Raúl Sanchez, and Tara Evonne Trudell, make important contributions to the literary collection, while Roberto Dr Cintli Rodriguez, Allen Thayer, and Gustavo Arellano’s essays do the same for the anthology’s expository collection.

Rivera issued a call for writers and most of the literary work is new and produced for this book. The expository stuff mostly is reprints, well worthwhile. Thayer’s discographic essay, for example, will put tunes into your ear.

Art Meza’s fotos range from breath-takingly engaging to documentary car portraits. Among my favorites are the back cover foto that appears also between the Danny De La Paz interview and Andrea Serrano’s first poem. The foto, “Dreaming Casually, Mayra Ramirez ’56 Chevy Bel Air” displays gorgeous rich tonality from the black black of the rear window at the foto’s right to the mosaic of greys to pure white framing the driver’s arm resting on the door. And yes, they’re worth a thousand words, and the price of the book.

I read the collection on a computer screen. The graphics are stunning. The print book hopefully comes on good heavy coated stock that treats Meza’s work with the respect fine art photography merits, or why bother?

Josh Devine’s spot illustrations offer clever graphic amuse bouches between entries. I wonder if the spark plug Lupe is Devine’s work? The clever pastiche deserves a credit.

The entire collection deserves not only a reading but an order via the publisher or indie booksellers. Low riding, like football or ice hockey, might be an acquired taste, but low writing, like any United States literature, is essential to comprehending the “soul” and the “chicano” in “chicano soul.” As the interview relates about the film, Boulevard Nights being taught in C/S classes, Lowriting: Shots, Rides & Stories from the Chicano Soul will be taught in chicano studies courses.

The Gluten-free Chicano Cooks
Meatless, Glutenless, Fast and Cheap Torta

This is 1920s depression-era cooking, a can of string beans, an onion, an egg, some cheese, butter. And it's delicious! It's a torta de string beans.

Growing up, my familia called these tortas. When I got to the big city after the Army, I learn the locals use "torta" for a sandwich. But then, they also called a taco a "burrito." We all speak a dialect. Where I come from, an omelette is a torta and a sandwich is a sandwich.

Use an omelette pan or one you can flip the contents with ease over medium flame. Lightly coat the sartén with some non-stick spray, then drop a tablespoon of butter into the heated pan.

Add some sliced or diced onion to wilt, and in a few seconds, the drained string beans.

Here I'm using a 6" individual sartén for a single serving. With a larger pan, you'll likely want to finish it under the broiler, and if all else fails, go ahead and scramble everything.

Cook for a few minutes, or until refrigerated beans are hot all the way through. Pour a couple of vigorously beaten eggs into the mixture, cook until the egg is almost set and top with a big pinch of grated cheese.

Fold the torta, or flip it, or--and this is what I did because the torta stuck a bit to the bottom--pop it under a high broiler for a few minutes until brown and crusty.

Present whole on a plate with your favorite sides. If you use a 10" skillet, serve on a platter and cut the large torta into pie-wedges.



Fifteen minutes start-to-finish. Gluten-free, meat-free, inexpensive, delicious, authentically chicano.

Memory: Starting Over.

Michael Sedano

Starting Over

Just so everyone knows, dementia-related residential care is not a one-way proposition colored by Finality. That’s what I sensed when I had to find care for my Alzheimer’s dementia-afflicted wife. I’d lost use of both shoulders and she no longer walked with control. One time she fell and I could not assist. She crawled to the bedframe and pulled herself up. It was 2 in the morning. She wasn’t sleeping. Nor was I. Then she stumbled but didn’t fall. I watched helplessly again.

I sought assisted living for her. After surveying a number of institutions, I settled on the one closest to the house. “Alzheimer’s” on her neurologist’s diagnosis closed the door to assisted living. Instead of her own apartment in a senior community, she was offered “memory care.” A space behind a locked door where severely disabled souls wander the halls or lie in the dark until roused for organized socializing.

Barbara entered that world far more able-bodied than those poor women and a few men. Alzheimer’s is a “progressive disease,” these people are our future, ten twelve years from now when we have progressed beyond reason. She was unhappy in that place. I was perpetually unnerved. "P'alla va la sombra" my Dad used to say.

One morning she phoned. “I can’t walk. It hurts too much.” She lived five minutes away and I drove her to the hospital where an orthopedic surgeon fixed her infected hip and for a week the hospital cared for her.

Skilled Nursing Care had to be her next step, after surgery. Wound care and P.T. consumed the caregivers. Barbara received individualized care and attention despite the chaotic hubbub of the 50-bed nursing home. Mission Care in Rosemead is amazing for its people and responsiveness.

Five weeks at Mission Care, Barbara’s health rebounded. Energy and alertness returned to my wife’s everyday self. The Social Worker phoned, she’s ready to be discharged.

I laid a deposit at another place for Barbara. She wouldn’t have to return to that near-by place where she was unhappy. By the way, these senior living places create a false urgency, "I have only one unit that might be available in a few weeks" when Jill dies. There are lots of places and each has lots of rooms to rent.

All the while I’ve been working to regain my shoulders and they’re back. I can lift and lever considerable weight on an exercise machine and I can suspend my weight on my shoulders for several seconds’ duration. It’s called The Plank, like a push-up without the groaning.

UTI. That’s the name of the enemy of older women and of dementia-afflicted women. Urinary Tract Infection. When that crap gets into the patient’s bloodstream and feeds into the struggling brain, Alzheimer’s symptoms not only exacerbate, the infection introduces new behaviors, hallucinations particularly, that break a husband’s or daughter’s heart. For a while there, Barbara no longer knew who I am, and we’ve been married 51 years.

Experimental Attitude Without Fotos

“I didn’t know any other Vibianas, and then I found another Vibiana, and I love her book.” In the world of Chicano Literature and Chicana writers, there aren’t that many Vibianas, so I knew the book Vibiana enthused about. I’m even thanked in that book, Mi Amor, by Vibiana Aparicio-Chamberlin. I read an early draft.

Let’s have brunch, las dos Vibianas at Casa Sedano, I suggested. They can talk about the book and meet another Vibiana, with "V" not "B" Vibiana.

So we planned it, calendared it. When the nursing home told me I could have Barbara back so come get her, I went and got her. She came home in time for the brunch. I converted our literary chat into an impromptu welcome home brunch for the long-absent Barbara. 

It was cool. She came home to a normal day and stepped right in without missing a step. Chatted, ate all her food, lived in the moment like the others.

Champagne and Eggs Benedict are de rigueur for literary chats as well as impromptu welcome home brunches, so I was ready. The Gluten-free Chicano provided muffins for the two Vibianas and Barbara. 

The real treat was the unveiling of the Gluten-free Chicano’s microwave hollandaise sauce. Here’s a quick description for cooks with an experimental attitude. Few foods say “the holidays” better than tamales or hollandaise sauce, so El G-f Chicas patas will document the hollandaise process in a foto essay soon.

Barbara, Vibiana, Michael, Vibiana

The Gluten-free Chicano’s Mi Casa es Su Casa but Mi Microondas Is not Your Microondas Hollandaise Sauce

¾ stick butter
8 egg yolks
2 limes or 1 lemon, juiced.
Tabasco sauce
Black pepper
salt
Boiling water
Large glass measuring cup

Have everything at room temperature. You can separate the eggs the night before. Take them out of the refrigerator an hour early.

Melt the butter in a saucepan on lowest flame then put it aside. Add the citrus juice and tabasco, a pinch of salt and coarsely ground black pepper. Taste the butter, make sure it’s showing off that lemon.

Boil 2 cups water and pour into the large glass measuring cup to get the glass hot. Reserve the water and dry the measuring cup.

Put the yolks in the hot glass measuring cup and stir the yolks into a homogeneous colored soup. Stir in a tablespoon of hot water.

Rapidly stir the hot butter-lime mix into the yolks.
This is the complicated step for classic Hollandaise sauce. Using a double-boiler, whip that butter slowly into the yolks and observe it thicken to a mayonnaise-like paste. Too much heat and you scramble the eggs, not enough and it doesn't thicken.

The microondas cooks the eggs lickety-split so cook in 5 to 8 second increments. Remember, the heat builds after coming out of the radiation chamber. Keep stirring and the sauce thickens. After two or three batches you’ll know your microwave and the right duration.

Cover the vessel with a plate or stretch wrap. Run the micro for 8 seconds and stir. Give it another 8 seconds and stir.

If your sauce got too thick on the second heating, stir in a teaspoon of hot water and the sauce will smoothen. If worst comes to worst, you have lemony scrambled eggs. Use more hot water next time, and shorter increments.

Microwave ovens vary wildly in power and performance. Experiment with half-batches of 4 yolks and 1/3 stick of butter. Always add lots of lemon or lime. The Gluten-free Chicano likes a hollandaise that bites lightly from tabasco and sparkles with the bright acidity of fresh citrus.

Voices from the Ancestors at Ave50. Gluten-free Chicano cooks. Autry Mural Update

Rigor, Received Knowledge, Learning to Think

Review: Lara Medina and Martha R. Gonzales, Eds. Voices from the Ancestors. Xicanx and Latinx Spiritual Expressions and Healing Practices. Tucson: UArizonaPress, 2019.

Michael Sedano

Beatrice Villa was born in Pomona, California in 1898. As a girl, she herded sheep in the Crystal Springs Pass area, where today, Redlands and Yucaipa shake hands along Interstate 10. Grampa grew up in La Barranca somewhere in the Chihuahua monte. Grampa could cure any ailment with herbs and ointments and magic fingers. Gramma told me she knows where the lost gold mine of Crystal Springs is located. Both she (English) and my Grampa (Spanish) were storytellers whose knowledge and wisdom are handed to me through stories, beliefs, practices, and the continuity of generations.

And my other gramma, from Michoacan, who knew herbs and plants and food and taught me the difference between de la casa and del monte, and who made caldo from the rooster that beat me up one day, I know languages and stories from her, too.

Like every Chicana or Chicano, I'm a product of what these abuelos taught me, even if I can remember only a fragment of what they told me. Were I to formalize my memories and turn them into expression, invent new knowledge from received knowledge, I would unlock immense spiritual resources in words, and connect across generations into ancestral knowledge. All of them, not just mine. In reading, others would do likewise. If there were such a book.

Such a book would be literature anyone could use in practical ways, and specialists like students, can use professionally. But there'd be a caveat to the latter. To certain members of the academy, the spiritual content of cultural identity comes with suspiciously tenuous conceptual rigor.

Get over it, as the parlance goes. It's been done. There's a book. Voices from the Ancestors. Xicanx and Latinx Spiritual Expressions and Healing Practices. 

Editors Lara Medina and Martha R. Gonzales collect the work of eighty-five writers investigating, documenting, teaching spiritual practice and theory as indigenous gente have done, would do, could do, will do. "Xicanx and Latinx Spritual Expressions and Healing Practices," the subtitle of the collected knowledge Medina and Gonzales compile, makes clear how Voices From the Ancestors(link) comes with its own audience along with an enhancement of curricular impact for its exogenous readers. "Decolonization" looks like this.

Editors Medina and Gonzales and la portada arte by Emilia Garcia, back: Prisoner art

Medina and Gonzales debuted the thirty-dollar book at Highland Park's gallery of record, Avenue 50 Studio,(link) almost within sight of the Native people of the Americas mural the gallery's helping restore. Gonzales debuted the work recently in Europe.

There's an interesting dual layout at work. The lineal table of contents flows along a topical agenda but also reflects the flow of a day or a person's growth, from morning ritual to evening prayer, from birth to sexuality to death. Chapters on altars and sacred spaces, dance, writing, painting, meld with chapters on death and dying, dreaming and cleansing, curanderismx and health.

The x in some words conveys attitude more than grammatical precision. Writers elect x's use or not, throughout. I don't recall reading "wymyn" or variants. Gender topics range through, male, female, transitional, queer, joto. Rape, recovery and identity occupy important roles in the impact of the collection. Sexuality-related topics, and food, will be the book's most accessible elements. There's not a lot of Spanish in the text. Interestingly, the introduction, which Medina read at Ave50, italicizes "conocimiento" but when Medina reads it, she substitutes "knowledge" for it. The editors state their use of language and parlance is not a hang-up. That's a method of ensuring its widest possible readership.

Voices From the Ancestors exemplifies the value and importance of material culture in spiritual subjects by including a nicely-printed set of eleven color plates on coated stock. Medina mentioned the pages, naming contributors who sponsored the pages. These plates, and the how-to content, make the book a solid addition to anyone's library, though I'd check any used copies to make sure it still has those gorgeous plates.

Raza and allies come to this knowledge eager for a book

Raza already know how to read this book. Its knowledge is what we heard, or were prepared to hear, as we grew up. There's a montón of unknown material here for us, variants of what we grew up with, thoughtful essays articulating shared experiences for us. This is what we send our kids to college to learn.

Beyond that, there are woman-specific topics like the essay on recovering from sexual trauma. Don't give me "men get raped" egalitarian crud. That ritual is for women punto.

Still, everyone will benefit from understanding trauma while not diluting the horror of sexual trauma and the assholia of men. Generational, medical, cultural trauma is shared together alone. Victims of epistemicide don't know it.

In Voices From the Ancestors readers endeavor to recover what got killed and what nearly died off, in getting colonialized. Some is recovered, some is made up as they go along and there's nothing wrong in that. Gramma improvised, too.

Some of the anthologized writers believe the ancestors possessed infinite wisdom about divinity and that the act of writing helps encounter its extant forms. While Lauren Francis Guerra is the one who articulates that, the attitude is a clarion throughout the work. Becoming decolonized requires deliberation and deliberate effort, in lak ech doesn't happen by itself even if it's universally true. This is the foundation urgency of the work, the being-in-becoming from reading.

I don't know if Lara and Martha can expect pedo from fusty old-line professors, if any still exist. In my day, this material could not have been considered. Rigor and spirtuality are mutually anathema in some ways of knowing. People have learned to think better nowadays, even the hard liners on curriculum committee should be open to new audiences, if not new ideas. Besides, they're not the only audience.

Does the Academy have the critical acumen to understand this material? If they cannot or will not allow us to create our own knowledge, they'll have to get over it. There were the authors at Avenue 50, reading from the book. Independent booksellers, college bookstores, the publisher, will get your copies to you quickly.

TopL:Jacqueline Garza Lawrence, Omar Gonzalez
BottomL: Linda Vallejo, Marta López-Garza

TopL: Yreina Cervantes, Trini Tlazohteotl Rodriguez
BottomL: Maritza Alvarez, Marisol Lydia Torres

The Gluten-free Chicano Cooks
Gluten-free Apple Cheese Quiche
Michael Sedano

Mother Hubbard overextended herself, lived in a shoe along with her dog Tighe and so many mouths to feed, her cupboard invariably stood empty. She made bulgogi.

The Gluten-free Chicano was mother hubbarding the other day. Having grocery-shopped ineffectively, he got home with a bag of apples and whole milk. He went to his cupboard where he found butter and cheese, so The Gluten-free Chicano made custard.

1/3 cube butter melted (.03g carbohydrates)
1 cup loosely packed jack cheese grated (.77g)
2 peeled apples rough chopped (32g)
3 eggs (1.2g)
1 cup milk (11g)
Approximately 45g in the entire dish.

El gluten-free chicas patas used the Honeycrisp apple. Any variety with dry solid flesh whose juice doesn’t run down your chin when you bite into it is ideal for this naturally gluten-free recipe.

Preparation time is however long your oven requires to get up to 375º, plus or minus a few minutes.

Preheat oven to 375º
Grease a standard pie pan and set it aside.

Grate Monterey Jack cheese or Mozzarella. Loosely fill a measuring cup. Do not pack the cheese, it needs to be loose.

Microwave the butter if it’s not room-temperature, when it melts and slumps it’s ready for later.

Peel 2 Honeycrisp or other dry-not juicy-apples. You can use 3 if they're smallish. This should leave the mouth wanting apple, and leave no confusion with apple pie. But that's up to the cook and the crop.

Rough cut them into chunks and slices and chops. You want distinct texture and flavor bites. Use as much apple as you can cut and trim away.

Get a deep bowl so you can work vigorously in it without splashing.
Have the eggs room temperature, and break them into the big bowl.
Use a wire whisk to whisk eggs to a uniform color and consistency. Tilt the bowl and form a pool of liquid to whisk into.

Whisk in the milk and get the uniformity back.
Whisk in the soft melted butter. Work vigorously to make a smooth mixture.

Stir the cheese into the egg mix.
Stir the apples into the egg and cheese mix and be sure everything is coated.

Pour the bowl into the pie pan to just below the rim. The volume is enough to fill an 8" pan.

Pull out the oven rack and place the filled pie pan, uncovered, on the rack. If you wish, place a cookie sheet on the rack first. Gently slide the rack into the oven and keep the door closed for 40 minutes.

Bake uncovered for 40 minutes.

The custard is done when it doesn’t jiggle but wobbles a bit. If you use a juice apple, your dish will be wet and need an hour, might never fully thicken. Quiche is ready when a butter knife emerges mas o menos dry from the center. If your oven is uneven, 45 minutes. An hour is not unheard of. Experience will give you timing with your set-up.



Allow the quiche to sit for a few minutes so it comes out of the pan solid. The appearance loses its fluffiness right away. (In the foto notice the high-water line). It nonetheless makes an elegant presentation at the table, served from the pan.

This apple-cheese combination will be a hit. Maybe serve a crisp green salad, or a pungent Caesar salad with champagne—that’s good friends or courtship comida gente. The GFC cooks for one, so this dish was dinner and breakfast. (It saves, reheating is simple.)

El GFC discovered what Mother Hubbard knew, when life gives you eggs, milk, cheese, and apples, make quiche.


Update: Autry Museum, Highland Park, Califas

This wasn't in her contract but Pola Lopez did what any responsible community artist does, she worked with local gente to assure long-term protection for the mural. It's the kind of ground-based "activism" that produces results. People-to-people always works, that's gente, that's not "activism."

Week after week, Lopez invested hours under unusually harsh conditions restoring the Highland Park landmark. One morning she finds it tagged. Kids, Pola shook her head recounting the morning. After years painting murals in schools, confinement walls, public places, working with local young people, Lopez knows communities invest love in murals and do not tag them, out of honor and self-respect. 

HP tagged the mural.

The artist welcomed the visitor who parked and ran across busy Marmion Way to meet the artist. The fellow knew Chicano arte and talked about its presence in the community. Lopez bemoaned the fact some kids had tagged it. The fellow said it wasn't us, we don't do that.

Keen to the "us", Lopez asked and the vato identified himself as HP. Sensing her visitor affronted that the muralist accused HP people of disrespecting the art, Lopez showed him the fotos of the repainted wall. The gentleman excused himself. He walked across the street, made a phone call, and returned to assure the muralist it had been taken care of.

Los Angeles enjoys a lengthy rich mural history. Seeing Daniel Cervantes' landmark mural restored to vibrancy illustrates important dimensions of that mural history: Indigenous cultures and semiotics, today's Chicano Renaissance, chemistry and surface technology, fund-raising and the business of public art, painting as an industrial work site. Then there's art people and their arte.

There's a concrete, hard-edge to arte. Someone has to pay to restore the Autry's property for them. Stretched thin and at the limits of their once-prodigious fund-raising capacity, the museum has done what it will do and thrown itself upon the kindness of committees to secure grants to fund ladders and brushes and stuff.

Efforts fell shorter than vision and Lopez labors under industrial conditions that alarm this retired corporate safety officer. I worked in an ISO9000 environment with low tolerance for worker conditions like those Lopez has to put up with. The Autry's standards are a lot looser.

Ni modo. That's a popular actitud when there's nothing to be done but do what you do. It's obviously the artist's flexibility to ignore the hardship, solve the problem, get the job done.

She is fund-raising independently, however. The committees and city councilmen and arts commissions and the Autry are tapped out or have moved on to other phases of the project. They're done. (A spokesperson for the Autry offered to update La Bloga's Update but has not followed up).

Protecting the mural, longterm, was the next task before the institutions behind the project. Now the most critical element needful of protection from, tagging, has been dramatically removed without spending a cent, using capital no committee was going to produce. Gente do it right.

Giving directly to the project allows Lopez to hire a qualified professional muralist to join her in the unrelenting sun and finish the Autry's landmark.

Click here to contribute a few dollars or more 

to support the restoration.

Click here to contribute a few dollars or more 

to support the restoration.