“If you want to be a good cook,” Loca started out in a solemn tone with her sister (who Loca was sure must have found it pretty hard not only to admit that she didn’t know how to do everything perfectly but that furthermore, Loca could do at least one thing even better than her), “you have to first learn to be patient.” Loca believed in doing things from scratch.

Most meals contained corn so it was necessary first to prepare the nistal by boiling it in lime water until the skin peeled off. Then it was washed two or three times; if you wanted to be an especially meticulous preparer of corn, you would follow with the ever-so-tedious task of “de-spiquando” the little black off the corn with a penknife, so that if you were going to make tamales, they would come out nice and white and smooth.

Since Loca had nothing but time on her hands, once she took care of the animals, she often did do this for which she eventually won the reputation at Crismas time of making the best tamales all throughout Valencia County. And above all, everyone loved her blue corn tamales, which took even more work since that corn required grinding on a stone metate.

“Now, another big secret to our cooking is in the chili sauce, naturally,” Loca told her sister the next time Fe came to take a lesson. Loca had actually kind of taken on a bit of an attitude with these cooking classes and Fe wasn’t sure if she cared for that dash or two of cockiness that Loca was blending in with her teaching.

The best, or at least the tastier, chili sauce was made from whole, dried pepper, not from the chili powder, although the second alternative was pretty good and a lot faster, especially if a person didn’t have the time or the patience to make it from scratch.

After carefully selecting your chiles (since Sofia grew her own, Loca had the advantage of being able to do this and not have to worry about going to the market for her chiles) you removed the stems and seeds and scraped off the veins. Next, you crumbled them in a puela, any good iron skillet, and covered them with water. You let them soak for a few minutes, and then worked them with your hands until all the meaty pulp was dissolved. Next, you strained it through a colander and poured it into a bigger puela containing pork lard, a little flour slightly browned, a cup of meat stock, a grated garlic clove, salt, and just a pinch of dry oregano.

Now you were ready to make La Loca Santa’s carne adovada: For two days you would soak pork meat in the above sauce (only you would put a lot more garlic in), and on the third day you cut up the meat in small pieces and would fry it.