Hi!! I'm Elena. My grandma is Rosa, and if you've been around this neighborhood you might already know her, because she has her own page, Rosa's Kitchen Table, that my cousin Cristina made for her, and she runs a whole WebRing of cooking pages called the Kitchen Table WebRing. (I'm not on the ring. This page is not a cooking page. This page is about somebody who cooks, and somebody who is trying to.)

Here's the situation. I'm 19. I'm at City College and I live at home, which is about ten minutes from Grandma's house in Fresno. Last spring my mom said something that scared me. She said, "Your grandma is 63, and nobody in this family can make her tamales but her." And I thought about that for like a week. Fourteen grandchildren and not one of us can do it. Cristina is at Fresno State and she's the one who types the recipes, but typing is not making. So in April I asked Grandma if I could come over on Saturdays and learn, and she looked at me for a long time and said, "Wash your hands." That's a yes.

So this page is about that. It's kind of a diary and kind of a thank-you card. The recipes are on her page (they're hers, go get them there). What's here is what it's actually like to try to learn them from her, which is a completely different thing.

Okay so if you haven't been, let me explain Sunday, because people at school don't believe me.

Grandma and Grandpa Manuel's house has a regular dining room with a regular table. It seats eight. That is not the Sunday table. The Sunday table is the dining room table plus two folding tables from the garage plus the kids' table from when my mom was little, all pushed together in an L that goes from the dining room out through the sliding door into the backyard under the patio cover. There are folding chairs, kitchen chairs, the piano bench, and a cooler with a cushion on it that is technically my seat since 1987. There are three tablecloths and none of them match.

Who's there: Grandma and Grandpa. My mom and dad (my dad is Ricardo. If you read Grandma's page you already know about my dad and the beans. Yes, that Ricardo. He would like everyone to know that he has since learned how to make the beans. Grandma would like everyone to know she'll believe it when she tastes it). My Tía Lupe who is not our tía but has been coming since before I was born. My aunts and uncles: six kids total in my mom's family. Cousins. Cousins' boyfriends. Whoever my Uncle Beto brought from work. The neighbor, Mrs. Ortega, who brings a jello thing every single week that nobody eats and everyone thanks her for. Usually 25 people. On Easter it was 34 and we ran out of chairs but we didn't run out of food. We have never once run out of food. I have asked Grandma how and she says "it's beans" and won't elaborate.

What happens: Everybody gets there around 1. The women are in the kitchen and the men are in the backyard and yes I know how that sounds but the rule is if you're in the kitchen you work, and the men are the ones who wash every single pot afterwards, so honestly, fair. The little cousins get put to work spreading masa or shelling something or setting out the forks. There's the rice, and the beans, and either carnitas or chile verde or on birthdays enchiladas, and a giant pile of tortillas that Tía Lupe warms on the comal and keeps in a towel, and salsa (two kinds) and pico, and Mrs. Ortega's jello thing. Grandma doesn't sit down until everyone's served, which used to be the last thing, but now I'm allowed to do the serving on Sundays and she sits down third or fourth, which I count as a personal victory.

Then everybody eats for an hour and talks for three. Then there's coffee and pan dulce from the panadería on Belmont, and if it's someone's birthday there's cake AND the pan dulce. Then everybody gets sent home with a plate. If you leave without a plate my grandma will follow you to the car. I have seen her do this.

I have never missed a Sunday in my life except for one week in 1996 when I had chicken pox, and Grandma sent a plate to the house.

Here is the thing nobody tells you about learning to cook from your grandmother: she does not know how she does it. I don't mean that as an insult. I mean I'll say "how much salt?" and she'll say "enough," and she means it. She's not being cute. Her hands know and her mouth knows and her brain has never had to be involved. So half of what I'm learning is cooking and the other half is learning to watch her hands and then ask her to do it again, slower, while I write it down. (Cristina's recipes on her page are what happened when Cristina did this for two months. Now I know what that took.)

Stuff I've actually learned, in order:

1. Frijoles de la olla. Beans. First lesson, because, quote, "if you can't make beans you can't make anything." I can now make beans. They are not as good as hers. She says the pot matters (hers is clay and older than my mother). I think it's the pot AND something else she's not telling me. (April)
2. Arroz rojo. The red rice. The whole secret is you fry the rice in oil first until it's golden, and the first time I did it I got scared and stopped too early and it was just rice with tomato in it. Second time I burned it. Third time, perfect. She said "now you know" and that was the whole compliment. (May)
3. Salsa. Both kinds. The roasted one and the green one with tomatillos. This was the easy one, except I touched my eye. Every year somebody does it, she says. This year it was me. (May, and I would like to forget it)
4. Tortillas. Flour ones. I am bad at this. Mine come out shaped like states. Texas, mostly. She can roll a perfect circle in four strokes without looking at it, while talking to Tía Lupe about somebody's daughter's wedding. It's not fair. (June, ongoing, possibly forever)
5. Chile verde. The pork in green sauce. I got this one on the second try and my dad went back for thirds and didn't know I'd made it until after, which was a very good day. (July)
6. Arroz con leche. See below!! (August)
7. Tamales. See BELOW. Sigh. (Trying again at Christmas.)

Things Grandma says while teaching, a list: "Taste it." "Taste it again." "Your tongue is the boss." "Lower." (the heat) "Higher." (the heat) "Don't peek." (the rice) "Mija, that is not a pinch." "Who taught you to hold a knife like that? Not me." "Good." (once, in July, about the chile verde; I'm going to have it framed.)

Okay. So. In my family tamales are a Christmas thing, thirty dozen on Nochebuena, with the whole family in a line. But I wanted to try them by myself first, so I'd be useful at Christmas instead of just spreading masa with the eight-year-olds. So on Labor Day weekend I asked Grandma if I could make a small batch, like two dozen, at her house, and she said okay, and then she said "by yourself?" and I said yes, and she made a face, but she said okay.

What went right: the pork. I made the chile the day before, toasted the chiles, soaked them, blended them, strained them (she was watching for that part), and it was honestly really good. I made the masa from masa harina and I beat the lard until it was fluffy and I did the float test in a glass of water and it floated. I was so proud. I set up my little assembly line. Grandma went to go watch her novela and left me alone, which I now realize was her being kind.

What went wrong: everything else. I put too much filling in. Way too much. She says a heaping tablespoon, and I thought, that's not very much, people like the meat, and I put in like three. And I spread the masa too thin because I was trying to make the two dozen stretch. And I didn't fold them tight. And I think I didn't pack them in the pot close enough because there were only two dozen and they kind of fell over. And I steamed them for an hour and got impatient and opened one and the masa stuck to the husk and I thought "it's probably fine."

It was not fine. Out of 24 tamales, 19 split open in the pot, the filling came out the sides, the masa was mush on the outside and raw in the middle, and the whole pot looked like a crime scene. Five of them were fine. FIVE.

Grandma came in, looked in the pot, and didn't say anything for a while. Then she said, "Too much meat." And then, "Too thin." And then, "Not long enough." And then she got a fork and ate one of the broken ones and said "The chile is good, mija." And then she put the five good ones on a plate and made me take them home to my dad.

So at Christmas I'll be on the assembly line with everyone else, and I will put in one heaping tablespoon, and I'll be okay with that. She said the thing about tamales is you can't make them alone. I thought she meant it was too much work. I get it now. It's not about the work.

This is Grandma's rice pudding and it's not on her page (Cristina, get on it), so here it is, as she taught it to me in August, with her permission, and with the amounts I wrote down while she said "enough." I've made it four times now and it comes out right every time, and my little cousins ask for it, so I'm calling it mine. Kind of. It's hers. You know what I mean.

What you need:

• 1 cup long-grain white rice
• 2 cups water
• 1 cinnamon stick (the real kind, Mexican canela if the market has it; it's softer and flakier)
• A strip of lime peel (Grandma's touch; you take it out at the end)
• 4 cups whole milk
• 1 can (14 oz.) sweetened condensed milk
• A pinch of salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• A handful of raisins (optional; my dad says yes, my mom says no, they've been fighting about it for 22 years)
• Ground cinnamon for the top

What you do:

1. Rinse the rice in a strainer. Put it in a pot with the 2 cups of water, the cinnamon stick and the lime peel. Bring it to a boil, turn it down low, cover it, and cook about 15 minutes until the water is almost all gone. Don't peek. (Yes, this again.)
2. Pour in the whole milk, the condensed milk and the salt. Stir. Turn the heat to low and cook it uncovered, stirring every couple of minutes so it doesn't stick or scorch on the bottom, for about 25 to 30 minutes. It'll bubble gently. It'll look too thin for a long time and then suddenly it'll be creamy. You want it a little looser than you think, because it thickens a LOT as it cools. Grandma says "when the spoon leaves a trail." That's real, it does.
3. Turn off the heat. Fish out the cinnamon stick and the lime peel. Stir in the vanilla and the raisins if you're using them.
4. Pour it into a big bowl or little cups. Sprinkle with ground cinnamon. You can eat it warm (my favorite) or put it in the refrigerator and eat it cold (Grandpa's favorite). If it gets too thick cold, stir in a splash of milk.

Makes enough for about 8 people, or 25 if you're at Grandma's and everybody just gets a little. First time I made it she tasted it and said "more cinnamon." Second time she said "good." Two "goods" this summer. I'm on a streak.

I took two rolls of film on Labor Day (the table, the backyard, Grandma at the stove, my dad pretending he made the beans, the tamale crime scene) and they're at the drugstore right now. Then I have to find somebody with a scanner. Cristina says the computer lab at Fresno State has one and she'll do it if I bring her a plate of the arroz con leche, which is basically how everything in my family works.

So check back in October. I'll put a on it.

Also coming: a page of the Sunday menu every week (my mom's idea), and a guestbook if I can figure out how.