Tamale Heaven

In search of a Choco-Taco for my best friend to try we came upon La Chica Tienda on Anderson Lane. No Choco-Taco but there was a little restaurant inside. We were starving so we ordered....Little did we know we were embarking on Tamale Heaven. Leonar Banos-Soute and her husband Bill fed us the best chicken tamales we ever had, black beans with queso fresca and the yummiest and freshest Spanish rice. I had agua de jamaica that took me back to the times I had it in Mexico and the fresh agua de tamarindo was exquisite. We cleaned our plate. The portions were just right. I don't like having to doggiebag things but I hate feeling too full, not a problem at Oaxacan Tamaleos, they were perfect portions. We had room for fried bananas and crema and were pleasantly satiated the rest of the evening.

The atmosphere was awesome. We could hear Infowars softly playing in the background in the La Chica Tienda part but we mostly heard a regular chatting with the owners. Their talk let you in on things in their lives and it was nice. Eventually our curiosity brought us in on the conversation. The entire dinner was a welcomed surprise, not at all what we expected and turned into a MFK Fisher meets Jim Jarmusch event. I highly recommend! Going back to try the rest of the menu.

The Migrant Worker , the Vegetarian and the Vegan

I have been a vegetarian in the past but I didn't have the resources to do it correctly and couldn't get the protien and iron I needed. I have often heard vegetarian and vegan friends say that their actions spare the cows, chickens, fish etc....and it is a protest on the treatment of those animals bred to be fed to humans. I agree with their stance, however, I feel all vegetarians and vegans should keep the migrant worker in mind.

It is the migrant who harvests the veggies they consume. I think in order to be truly correct, all vegetarians and vegans should rally for fair pay and treatment of all migrants in this country. They should look into the working conditions these migrants must operate in and demand that they are improved. So often vegetarians and vegans forget the humans involved and I find this irrational. I feel all non-meat eaters should look into the companies they purchase from and ask how the migrant worker is being treated. It is the responsible thing to do. I really have a disgust for those who forget or ignore the migrant worker and only stand up for the animals, and feel so clean, it should be both or it isn't right.

There are many reasons to be a vegetarian and I am not knocking them but I feel whether you are meat eater and consume produce or strictly produce that you not forget those who harvest the produce.

I stress that not even vegans find themselves free of a morale dilemma when they eat. We all have to eat and one way or the other it will exploit the animals or the humans if not both. Those that decide to practice ethical eating should take that all the way and realize that no matter what you eat you are guilty of something. Still, I admire all attempts made at ethical eating.

Minutiae

When my best friend and I moved to town in 89 to go to school we sought out a certain type of place to call our place and have tea and coffee at and hang out. Les Amis and Captain Quackenbush's Cafe on Guadalupe turned out to be what we were looking for. As the years passed we stopped going to both places as often as we had and they eventually closed. When I found out Quacks was in it's last days I went in one last time and had my favorite tea and a pastry then took the mirror off the wall in the ladies room and carried it out. No one seemed to notice. I took it because at that moment it was cool to think of all the women and probably men who had looked into that mirror and it looked old and could have been there before the place was Quacks. I had overheard the place would be gutted while I was having pastry so I guess I was motivated to want to keep something for myself. I remember my best friends and I trying to take a photo of ourselves in that mirror once with a 110. The mirror has hung everywhere I have gone since.

I miss Sound Exchange, The Bazaar, Olympia Books, The Varsity, Dressed to Kill.....the drag is just that nowadays. I wish they still showed movies at Hogg or the Union as often as they used too. I'd take a lunch break if the Hogg still showed films during the day. This entry shows that I , ummmm, I've been on campus way too long.

Book days #d?

As a kid I loved the public library in our town. The summers could get up to 105 and the ac in that library was always 60 degrees. It was a very clean and organized place. I used to go and listen to records at a table with those huge earphones and just watch people come in and out. I would look at all the magazines. I'd order books through an interlibrary loan system and could get titles sent in from San Antonio. I was a master periodical guide and card catalogue user at a young age. I was there for books though and would come home with a dozen every week. During the summers I'd enter the reading contests for my age group and would win those and win most books read in all age groups. I was a winner four or five years straight (sadly, that wasn't hard, not many others to compete with).

The best part was checking out the books and coming home and putting the books on my bed and reading them on my bed, carrying them outside, taking them in the car on trips and just being able to take them wherever I'd go. It's hard to cuddle up with a lap top and books on a monitor. No matter what gadget they'll invent in the future to read info, I could never get into because I love hard backs. Hard backs. Paperbacks are practical and I like them but I like to get my faves on hard back and set them on a shelf and move heavy boxes of them in and out of apartments and carry them in a bag and have them weigh heavy on my shoulder.

I work in front of a computer all day and my eyes are red, no matter what sort of new ergonomic screen or contacts I try, eventually the eyes get all red. So I don't get those who prefer their info on screen rather than in print. I have to have the article in my hand so I can read it. I can't read much info online out of a work place.

Digital libraries are supposed to save space and be more efficient. When I enter a bookstore I am reminded of my old library. At a Barnes and Noble I hear muzak, smell coffee and new books, the ac is cold enough, and people sit in comfort reading and take books home. Maybe one day there will be book salons, sort of makeshift libraries, more privately owned libraries opening to offer the public sanctuary among old books. Fahrenheit 451 would be hard to understand in a future of digibooks. I like to hold a real book.

Escape

I woke up at 5am quite easily this morning and was out the door at 5:30am to run an errand. I heard roosters crowing in the neighborhood. Wondered who owned them. I heard them clearly in the distance. Hearing them made me soooooooo happy because its been years since I heard one. It was cool outside and still dark and no one seemed to be getting off to work that early, no one had lights showing through their windows,no cars driving by and the roosters made it all seem even more still. I felt I was some place else and that feeling lasted an hour or so. It was a nice trip then the sun came out, the people and cars and noises and the roosters were long gone and so was all that wonderful, stillness and peace.

Lots of open space and farm animal noises can really relax me. When I was a kid and had a bad week at school there was always my grandparent's house and lots of big pecan trees to climb, lots of grassy space to run really fast on, lots of cows,sheep,goats,pigs and horses. They only owned chickens but their neighbors owned livestock. Lying on my tummy I would follow ladybugs through blades of grass, feed chickens and watch them eat every single grain, watch the livestock eat, feed the horses over the fence. I appreciated all this then and miss it now.

Vegas offered the same luxury of space. I'd get up every morning when I was there and look out the window and could see beyond the strip malls into the space and the mountains in the distant. Colorado holds deep breath moments and so does that cliff in the Sierra in Mexico where the train stopped and I couldn't hear anything but the wind unless I cupped my hand to my ear. My ability in Mexico had a walled garden that he created filled with tropical greenery, an orange tree, papaya tree, mango, lime and cirhuella tree. He'd water it every evening and was pretty meticulous about it. When we'd visit I'd wake up to 80 degree mornings and go sit in the cirhuella tree and eat a few and just watch everything come out and smell the fruits. Once a baby owl appeared and some huge lizard like thing that scared me to death when it came charging and swishing from out of this tropical greenery. I couldn't explore this area much because I'd find things like spiders the size of my eight year old hand that were flesh colored and creepy, or huge, hairy black moths and bats. It was best to sit in the tree and take in the smells of the fruits of the garden.

When someone tells me to just take a deep breath, it doesn't help much unless I recall a tranquil moment from my Lifetime of Memories Bank(these are filed under Peaceful Escapes). I'm lucky to have recorded quite a few of these moments. I used to wonder if I'd be able to have this on a daily basis but it is to luxe to posses for many reasons. For now, I feel completely motivated to step outside my door at 5:30am on those occasions I need to take deep breaths and then go back to bed.

My Weekend

I received a complimentary copy of Stitch-N-Bitch Crochet:The Happy Hooker and finally saw my crochet contribution. It was a cool feeling. I am also in the company of really talented and clever "hookers". I'm going to try out a few of the patterns but for now I love thumbing through it. Went to celebrate this at Azul with my girlfriends!

Bud and Sissy. Watched Urban Cowboy this weekend and loved it! Been awhile that I'd seen it all the way through. Brought back memories of grade school and the Charlie Daniel's Band. I think everyone at Sacred Heart Academy had that soundtrack on cassette and brought it to school to play on boom boxes at recess.

I went to an estate sale and scored 8mm home movies. They are so cool! California in the mid to late 60s with surfers, beaches, a helicopter ride. Whoever filmed it also got footage of the freeway from the car so you see these cool old cars zooming by. It was awesome watching them. They are in real great condition too.