PHOTO GALLERY: Market Day & Tortillas

A young woman working with a metate

 The village was just beginning to wake up, I could hear the Indian women preparing the tortillas for the day at the crack of dawn.  The sound of the early birds chirping and the patting of the tortillas could be heard next door.  

Patting tortillas

Market day was one of my favorite days.  Once a week we would follow Dad down the mountain to the village center.
We were always interested in making a little money.  When we found out that we could sell our empty food containers, cans and glass jars, we would set up shop along with the others and make a few centavos. 
Once the shopping and selling were done, we helped Dad carry all the groceries up the mountain to our home in round baskets.

We did not have a refrigerator so almost everything we ate was fresh food.  Avocados and oranges were picked from our trees out front.  We ate lots of beans,bolillos, sweet bread, tortillas, eggs, and chicken, etc.  When chicken was on the menu, we ran outside to catch one.  Dad would bring out a bucket with scalding water, I held the beak, and Dad would chop off the head, dip that chicken in the hot water, taking off all the feathers.  Then I would watch him disembowel and cut it up and mother would make soup or fry it.  Mother got really good at making Mexican fried rice.  She would cook it in one of the clay pots that had two handles.
On market day, Dad would buy lamb and occasionally we would have beef.
Mother used the pressure cooker a lot to tenderize the meat.  That pressure cooker used to scare me to death after an explosion.


On cold days, we made jello, set it on the window sill of the kitchen window and the next day it would be set.  For the most part we drank the Nido powdered milk, warm or cold if set on window sill over night.  I was not fond of that milk.  I do remember one or two times when a neighbor's cow had milk and shared some with us.

Totonac Indian women working at the metate, a flat stone that has a shallow depression in the upper surface for holding maize/masa or other grains to be ground with a stone grinding rolling pin for a more fine masa.

Corn kernels are soaked and cooked in lime.  The girl in the back is cooking the tortillas on a comal, a smooth, flat griddle typically used in Mexico to cook tortillas

MARKET DAY IN ONE OF THE VILLAGES ~1948 or 1949

Grinding corn into masa

Dad shopping on Market Day~In Zapotitlan it was on Sunday

The Meat market

MARKET DAY- In Cuau it was on Thursday

The flower market ~probably in Puebla

Market Day in Zapotitlan or Tamazunchale

Using an old-fashioned type hand crank meat grinder to grind the corn

Elena Dominguez, an Aztec woman working in the kitchen

Indian woman sitting at the market

One side of our kitchen ~ The covered pot behind the Nido can was our drinking water that we boiled.  Notice there is no sink, just the basin.  This is where I learned the basics.  The basket on left cabinet usually held eggs.

My sister & I playing Market Day

(Some of these photos were from slides I scanned.  Dad would show slides along with sharing about the work in Mexico while on furlough)