This winter I gave myself a very big gift. The gift of Mexico. It was an antidote to a notoriously brutal Nova Scotian winter, but also to a confusing time in my life, one where the constant shifting back and forth between two lives (one in Maine and one in Nova Scotia) had worn me down. Wanting to put down roots but unable to take the leap in one definitive direction, I chose to just veer off-course entirely and get some perspective from a different vista, recharging my batteries while doing some much-needed work to inch closer to my master's thesis completion.

I swam in the ocean and fed my freckles (who greedily drank the sun and multiplied tenfold), consumed vast quantities of mangoes, avocados, papayas, and (!) octopus, met some inspiring new faces, and generally became acquainted with the gentle pace of life in the tiny coastal town of San Augustinillo. You've got to love a lifestyle where your daily to-do list includes eating a whole coconut, on the beach. 

Having discovered true bliss

• It increases the nutritional value of corn exponentially, making the nutrients more readily available for the body to absorb. For instance, it increases calcium content by 750%! (For corn-dependent cultures, it's crucial to good health and avoiding the creepy-sounding pellagra, a disease found in cultures whose diet is heavily corn-based but who do not practice nixtamalization)
• It softens the corn, breaking down its outer skin and changing its chemical composition so that it can be ground into a soft pliable dough, known as masa.
• Nixtamalization reduces carcinogenic mycotoxins which are naturally-occurring on corn, diminishing their content by over 90%
• Nixtamalization chemically changes the corn, releasing its flavours and aromas, hence that indescribable corn smell that makes one swoon when walking by a tortilleria

Elena showed us the cream-colored ears of corn (with the occasional purple fleck) that she and her husband grow in the hills near their home and we compared notes on corn varieties. When I told her that we grow a variety of deep yellow corn, she said "oh you're lucky, yellow corn is more flavourful than white!" In fact, I heard this from several people, but white corn seems to be favored in many parts of Mexico, due to the more pliable, workable tortillas it produces. But aside from the popularity of white corn, Mexican corn is a smorgasbord of all colours, shapes, and sizes... to be expected from the country known as the birthplace of corn. Having seen purple-blue, bright rose red, and even jade green Oaxacan corn, I am now dreaming of rainbows of tortillas.

One of the native corn varieties at the Mazunte organic farmer's market

After she placed the metal pail aside to cool and rest overnight, we headed home and returned to Elena's bright and early the next morning, ready to see the next steps. She started by draining the corn and rinsing it in fresh water. She showed us how to rub handfuls of kernels with our fingers to get any remaining pieces of skin off. Once the corn was clean, we walked down to the communal masa mill, or molino in the village centre, a few minutes away.

Fortunately, we were first to get to the mill because within a few minutes, there was a small line-up of women all waiting to mill their morning corn. In about 5 minutes flat, the corn was transformed into a moist pile of fragrant masa. Elena paid a small fee to the woman who runs the mill and we were on our way back, with our precious cargo.

Back at the homestead, Elena kneaded a bit more water into the masa and we got right to work rolling out little balls and pressing them into tortillas. 

After pressing, Elena showed us how to carefully place the tortilla on the hot comal (the large clay plate that sits on top of the fire). There is a certain graceful technique to it. As Elena gently pointed out after my first few messy, torn-up tortillas, you need to place them down delicately, one end first, so they don't tear or fold. 

I loved everything about this step of the process, the way the tortillas puffed up, the smell of the wood smoke mixing with the rich corn-ey aroma that makes your mouth water, the mound of warm tortillas that grew higher and higher as the little bolitas of dough became less and less. And then we tasted our first tortilla and well, probably my life will never be the same again.

Elena learned to make tortillas when she was eight years old, and has been making them pretty much every single day since. So we knew we were learning from a pro. Back when she first learned how to make tortillas, there were no mechanized mills and she used a metate (a traditional grinding stone) to mill the nixtamalized corn into masa by hand. When you consider the amount of work that goes into making a tortilla, from planting the seed to harvesting the corn, to nixtamalizing it and milling it into masa, rolling it, pressing it, then cooking it, you start to look at tortillas differently, you eat them with a bit more reverence. I asked Elena if she ever got bored or tired of making tortillas every single day and without a moment of hesitation she replied a strong no. She explained how much she enjoys this evening and morning ritual and finds pleasure in it. 

When you travel to another country, you see people going about their daily lives as an outsider, looking in. I've never gotten much satisfaction from being a tourist and staying in a hotel because there is a part of a culture that you cannot really understand unless you're invited into someone's home. There, you become a participant, not just an observer. To me, that makes all the difference in the world. So when someone invites me into their home, and especially into their kitchen, it is the greatest honour and pleasure, and no amount of sight-seeing can ever provide the richness of experience, the opportunity to exchange knowledge, culture, and friendship, and to crack open and fill up your heart and mind so deliciously.