Sunday, March 6th

Yes, I will write some more about Laredo.

Another early memory from Laredo is, like all early childhood memories, brief.  An image enshrined in memory forever.  My mother took me with her to buy tortillas.  We went to a busy small plaza-like area (I was too young to know where, exactly) and an old woman draped in black shawls sat in the cold winter evening, with a huge basket of warm tortillas, wrapped by the dozens I guess.  I remember the iconic old woman, the dark, the cold, and the pleasure of Going Somewhere alone with my mother, a rare treat.  I have always loved going somewhere.

Another: my little sister (only one, then)and I  are riding in the dark as my mother drives us.  You may not realize how dark the dark was, in those days.  Nowadays there are lights everywhere but then it was not so then, even in a big town like Laredo. Ahead in the headlights, there is a little old man with a "Nieve" sign on a small cart.  My mother stops, asks him, "What flavor?"  I guess she asked him in Spanish, because I can hear his answer: "Canela, Señora."  My mother impatiently shook her head and drove off, to our disappointment.  "What is canela, Mama?" we asked.  "Cinnamon!  It's always cinnamon! Why don't the Mexicans make some other flavor?"

In the years since, I have had a few blissful bites of   helado de canela, and now I am sorrier than ever that she didn't get us one cone, at least.  Cinnamon ice cream is best made with real cinnamon, that is, Ceylon cinnamon bark.  There are many cinnamons going around out there now, as my latest little bottle of harsh McCormick's Ground Cinnamon can attest.   I am reluctant to even put it on cinnamon toast, it's so strong.  And even Spice Islands cinnamon bark is as hard and woody as--tree bark. Good cinnamon bark is soft and thin and ragged, and it smells and tastes like heaven.  I have found it mostly in little cellophane (plastic, now) packages in third world type markets.  If you can find some, put a few sticks into some milk and cream,and simmer.  Or boil it in  sugar syrup and add it to milk or cream--perhaps that is better.  Taste.  Don't add any powdered cinnamon unless you know your source is the real thing.  Freeze that ice cream in any freezer method and you will have a delicious ice cream, even if you do it in an ice tray in the refrigerator freezer.  My mother made us lots of delicious ice cream (vanilla) by that method. It just takes a fork and plenty of beating at intervals.

The interesting thing to me now is that my mother was doing all that gadding around at night.  Dark as it was, and wild as Laredo was thought to be, she didn't hesitate to walk alone into a strange almost deserted marketplace, or to stop to address a little old man on the street.  She spent plenty of time alone in those border places while my dad would be working in Mexico, she alone in charge of everything.  At night, she would sometimes fill up the window sills with toys and such so that she hear an intruder. The windows had to be open because of the weather. And she sometimes had a baseball bat beside her bed. I wonder if she slept, with those little kids dreaming there in the house, but I guess she did.  Brave mama.  YAZZYBEL