facing you. Place the seam side of 2
pasteles
together. Put the 2
pasteles
in the middle of the string. Pull the ends of the string around the
pasteles
and through the loop. Pull the loose ends until the loop is in the middle of the
pastel.
Pull the two string ends in opposite directions towards the narrow ends of the
pasteles
. Turn
pasteles
over and tie the strings together in the middle.
Arrange
pasteles
on the bottom of large pot.
Pasteles
can be stacked three or four layers deep. Cover with salted water and bring to a boil. Lower heat and continue to simmer. After about 90 minutes, unwrap one of the
pasteles
and check for doneness. Serve in the packets. To eat, cut the twine, slide the stuffing out of the leaves, and enjoy!
Makes
30
to
40
pasteles
EN BRAZOS DE UNA DONCELLA
A Christmas Song from Ecuador
Michael Nava
Michael Nava grew up in Sacramento, California. He is the author of the Henry
RÃos mysteries, a detective series featuring a gay Chicano criminal defense lawyer.
His most recent book is
The Burning Plain
(Putnam).
CHARITY
I WAS RAISED on welfare. This was not so unusual in Gardenland, the Sacramento neighborhood where I grew up. It had always been a place where poor people lived. Most of us descended either from Mexican immigrants or Dustbowl Okies. My maternal family had lived there since the 1920s. My grandmotherâs family had been driven out of Mexico by the civil war that followed the Revolution of 1910. My grandfather was a Yaqui Indian, and his family had fled from Mexico to Arizona at the turn of the century to escape the invasion of their homeland in the Sonoran Desert by the federal army of Porfirio DÃaz. In Gardenland, they managed to achieve a modest, working-class affluence. My mother, however, their eldest daughter, did not fare as well.
Christmas was celebrated at my grandparentsâ house on Christmas Day, American-style, with a tree and a turkey dinner. Only my grandmother retained any connection to Mexican traditions and the only vestige of them were the tamales she served alongside the turkey. Among the piles of presents beneath the tree, there were always a few for my brothers and sisters and me, but these came from my grandparents or my aunts and uncles. My mother, scraping by on AFDC checks, could not afford presents, even for her own children, much less her nephews and nieces, which made Christmas a difficult time for her.
Then one year our family was chosen by the local chapter of the Lionsâ Club as one of the poor families whom the Club would sponsor at Christmas. This not only meant a basket of food would be delivered to our house on Christmas Eve, complete with our very own turkey, but also that we kids would be taken to a party at the Lionsâ clubhouse where Santa Claus would give each of us a present.
One of my aunts once told me that as a teenager my mother had been âas pretty as Rita Hayworth,â but by the time she was in her midthirties, with six kids and a husband in jail, her face had become a puddle of indistinct features held together by worry. But I was a kid and, except for the nickels I needed for candy and comic books, money meant nothing to me. Moreover, it was different being poor in the fifties and sixties than it is today, at least in Gardenland. Drugs and gangs had not yet entered the picture, nor were the poor despised as they are now, because poverty was still considered a circumstance that could be improved rather than a moral failing that could not. And Gardenland, as its name suggests, was a rural neighborhood where people grew some of their own food in vegetable gardens and old women, like my grandmother, kept flocks of chickens for eggs and meat. Moreoverâand this is the most important thingâGardenland was an isolated community, not so much on the wrong side of the tracks as a place the tracks never reached. We all lived the same way. There was nothing to which I could have compared us, that would have shown
pasteles
together. Put the 2
pasteles
in the middle of the string. Pull the ends of the string around the
pasteles
and through the loop. Pull the loose ends until the loop is in the middle of the
pastel.
Pull the two string ends in opposite directions towards the narrow ends of the
pasteles
. Turn
pasteles
over and tie the strings together in the middle.
Arrange
pasteles
on the bottom of large pot.
Pasteles
can be stacked three or four layers deep. Cover with salted water and bring to a boil. Lower heat and continue to simmer. After about 90 minutes, unwrap one of the
pasteles
and check for doneness. Serve in the packets. To eat, cut the twine, slide the stuffing out of the leaves, and enjoy!
Makes
30
to
40
pasteles
EN BRAZOS DE UNA DONCELLA
A Christmas Song from Ecuador
Michael Nava
Michael Nava grew up in Sacramento, California. He is the author of the Henry
RÃos mysteries, a detective series featuring a gay Chicano criminal defense lawyer.
His most recent book is
The Burning Plain
(Putnam).
CHARITY
I WAS RAISED on welfare. This was not so unusual in Gardenland, the Sacramento neighborhood where I grew up. It had always been a place where poor people lived. Most of us descended either from Mexican immigrants or Dustbowl Okies. My maternal family had lived there since the 1920s. My grandmotherâs family had been driven out of Mexico by the civil war that followed the Revolution of 1910. My grandfather was a Yaqui Indian, and his family had fled from Mexico to Arizona at the turn of the century to escape the invasion of their homeland in the Sonoran Desert by the federal army of Porfirio DÃaz. In Gardenland, they managed to achieve a modest, working-class affluence. My mother, however, their eldest daughter, did not fare as well.
Christmas was celebrated at my grandparentsâ house on Christmas Day, American-style, with a tree and a turkey dinner. Only my grandmother retained any connection to Mexican traditions and the only vestige of them were the tamales she served alongside the turkey. Among the piles of presents beneath the tree, there were always a few for my brothers and sisters and me, but these came from my grandparents or my aunts and uncles. My mother, scraping by on AFDC checks, could not afford presents, even for her own children, much less her nephews and nieces, which made Christmas a difficult time for her.
Then one year our family was chosen by the local chapter of the Lionsâ Club as one of the poor families whom the Club would sponsor at Christmas. This not only meant a basket of food would be delivered to our house on Christmas Eve, complete with our very own turkey, but also that we kids would be taken to a party at the Lionsâ clubhouse where Santa Claus would give each of us a present.
One of my aunts once told me that as a teenager my mother had been âas pretty as Rita Hayworth,â but by the time she was in her midthirties, with six kids and a husband in jail, her face had become a puddle of indistinct features held together by worry. But I was a kid and, except for the nickels I needed for candy and comic books, money meant nothing to me. Moreover, it was different being poor in the fifties and sixties than it is today, at least in Gardenland. Drugs and gangs had not yet entered the picture, nor were the poor despised as they are now, because poverty was still considered a circumstance that could be improved rather than a moral failing that could not. And Gardenland, as its name suggests, was a rural neighborhood where people grew some of their own food in vegetable gardens and old women, like my grandmother, kept flocks of chickens for eggs and meat. Moreoverâand this is the most important thingâGardenland was an isolated community, not so much on the wrong side of the tracks as a place the tracks never reached. We all lived the same way. There was nothing to which I could have compared us, that would have shown
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