Atole

Atole (pronounced ah-toh-leh) always brings warm memories of Zene (my grandmother) and her kitchen. When she passed, I was gifted with her “atole pitcher” – a ceramic pitcher that she painted at the local ceramic shop. I remember when I asked her how to make atole . She said “pone agua, (something), canela, y clavos en la estufa y cocinar hasta que est listo.”

Um. Yeah. “Zene, what is “(something)?” Zene gets her kitchen stool out (that she didn’t do a great job paining – I loved that about her), climbed up and reached in to the spice cabinet and grabbed the corn starch. OH! Corn starch! “Si.” she tells me. <sigh>

One hurdle passed.

“How much of each do I use?” I mean, how am I supposed to write this down??? You all know this. We went through the same thing when she taught me how to make tortillas. LOL!

We agreed on how much atole the recipe would make (enough for her and me to share) and the same was going to be enough since I was heading off to college in a few years and wouldn’t be making much more than that at a time.

“Dos tasas de aqua, una cuchara y media de ‘corn starch’ (thanks, Zene!), y canella, clavos, y leche como te gusta.”

• Tasas = amount of liquid you can get in a coffee cup, not a measuring cup
• Cuchara = a heaping soup spoon, not a level measuring tablespoon
• Must do some conversion here …

Half way there! I wrote down the list of ingredients and not much else. We made atole together and sat down to enjoy our atole and visit.

Our conversations were like this, truly. I could not (and still cannot) speak Spanish, so I spoke to her in English. She did not speak English unless she had to, so she spoke to me in Spanish. It worked for us and we loved each other so much in spite of it. 🙂

She was not my abuela, nor my nana; she was my Zene. It was always “Zene & Papá” or “Tío & Zene.” I never asked my cousins why they never gave her the honorific “tia.” I grew up so close to them, then I kept in line and named them “Zene & Papá” because “Papá” was not my “tío.” HA! It was my honor as their first grandchild. Later, when Kathy and Steven came along, Mom transitioned them to “Nana,” but Teri and I kept “Zene.”