A Fear of Menudo...

   Living in El Paso has always been like living in limbo. You live on the border of 3 states and 2 countries with basically 2 cultures your either Mexican or "Mexican't" ! I myself have always called myself Hispanic or New Mexican. That's how I grew up, even though I pretty much grew up a Coconut ( brown on the outside, white on the inside) my upbringing was always New Mexican, Northern NM if you wanna be specific. There was a short time in the 1970's that I was a "Chicano" that was the cool thing to call yourself then though, it was always kinda tough or rebellious, I always felt like I should of had a switchblade or been a member of the Brown Berets calling myself a Chicano!

  So moving to Las Cruces/El Paso was a culture shock for me, I could write about this endlessly and will in other entries but right now were gonna talk "Menudo"... I was brought up eating Posole which was a hominy with pork stew some times made with chile (I make mine w/o and add it later). I had heard about menudo but never eaten it, it looked gross! Most of all though it contained "TRIPE"!  I quiver when I say it!!! When i was  a kid I spent allot of time at my grandparents house in Taos New Mexico. My grandpa always had 5-6 cattle that kept him busy and outta my grandma hair, which she liked. Well once or twice year he would slaughter one for the meat. It was so cool we would walk it down to the slaughter house down the cammanito(dirt road) and he would do the deed and then we'd go pick up tubs of cut, unwrapped meat and wrap each steak or cut of meat like Christmas presents!

  This is where the horror begins... One of the weird scary things that we would bring back was the stomach! My job was to cut open the stomach and wash all the digested or un-digested grass/alfalfa outta the stomach. So here I was about 8 or 9 years old forced to wash out the grass outta the stomach which looked like some sorta Sci-Fi monsters skin inside, all diamond shaped honey combed and stunk like all hell. All I would think about was the poor cow and felt like the stomach was gonna come to life and swallow my hands up at any moment! I would cry sometimes and gag then was told to "Go wrap meat with your Grandma!!" That kinda scarred me to this day... I tried to eat it and just could not, it was rubbery and greasy and always took me back to that laundry room work sink where the horror began!

   Which brings me to this past weekend. My daughters had a Menudo sale for their Folklorico group and I went for support, I didn't plan on eating any but my daughter asked " Aren't you gonna have some Dad, all the other parents are?" Then the guy who made it asked too! So I "Cowboyed Up" and got a bowl ( second time in my life I had it...)  and carefully separated the tripe from the hominy and doctored it all up with oregano, lime and onions and swallowed a few spoonfuls for offspring approval and claimed I was full from breakfast, which I was, Thank you Oatmeal!!! Then walked away like a gunfighter with the greasy menudo behind me... cue "The Good,Bad and the Ugly" music here...