Ingredients

2 cups walnut halves1 ½ cups sugar½ cup water¼ teaspoon cinnamonbutter

Combine all ingredients in a large heavy skillet, set over medium heat. Stir constantly with a wooden spoon until the sugar has melted and turned a brown color. It should coat the nuts evenly.

Drop the nuts onto a lightly oiled cookie sheet and allow them to cool completely and harden. When hardened, remove them with the aid of a metal spatula, breaking up nuts that have stuck together. This is the traditional method for making candied nuts in Mexico. Alternatively, the syrup-coated nuts can be spread out on a lightly oiled cookie sheet as soon as the sugar has melted, and baked at 375º F until brown. Serves 8 as a snack.

Link to source articles
Mexican Christmas menu ideas: Posadas, Noche Buena, Navidad
Mexican holiday sweets: Cookies, candy and more

Ingredients

1 ½ pounds jicama, peeled and cut into julienne strips1 lime¼ cup naranja agria (sour orange) juice or substitute 2 parts lime juice, and 1 part each grapefruit and sweet orange juice1 small cucumber, peeled, seeded and coarsely diced5 mandarin oranges, peeled and sectioned, seeds removed3 small, dried chiles, finely chopped3 tablespoons cilantro, choppedsalt to taste

Step 1: Peel jicama. The skin of this root vegetable will peel right off after you insert a knife between the skin and the flesh. Remove any traces of brown or remaining skin with a vegetable peeler. To keep the vegetable from discoloring as you work, rub it liberally with lime juice. Cut jicama into julienne strips. Toss in a large bowl with orange juice.

Step 2: Peel cucumber, seed and dice. Meanwhile, peel oranges and separate into sections, removing any seeds. Toss oranges and cucumber with jicama.

Step 3: Add chile and cilantro. Toss and check for seasonings. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Link to source articles
Mexican Christmas menu ideas: Posadas, Noche Buena, Navidad
Cooking in the Yucatan: Bright flavors and unique ingredients 

1, 1857 Conservative general Tomás Mejía assaults the British consulate in San Luis Potosí and steals $240,000. The British government subsequently demands that this sum be included in the external debt owed them by President Juárez.

1, 1873 The birth in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco, of the Mexican novelist, Mariano Azuela, who won the national literature prize in 1949. Azuela’s single most famous work, still widely read, is “Los de Abajo” (The Underdogs). Azuela dies March 1, 1952, in Mexico City.

1, 1873 The opening of the railroad linking Mexico City to the Gulf coast port of Veracruz.

2, 1838 The people of “Upper California”, especially those in Los Angeles, persist in disobeying Mexican laws, and claim independence from Mexico. They don’t achieve it until 1847.

2, 1863 Lucía Zárate is born in San Carlos, and weighs in at 1.1 kilos. A glandular problem causes him to grow very slowly and he becomes the world’s lightest ever adult, weighing only 2.1 kilos at age 17 and 5.9 kilos at age 20. He dies in 1889, aged 26.

5, 1543 The Spanish priest, Bartolomé de las Casas, arrives in Campeche. During the early colonial period, De las Casas is known as one of the greatest defenders and recorders of Indian traditions and lifestyles.

5, 1864 French troops, under the command of Castagny, capture the city of Guadalajara.

6, 1536 The College of Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco is founded, to provide higher education for the “natives of these lands”. Sixty students begin classes.

6, 1862 The English fleet joins the French fleet in the port of Veracruz. Supported by Spain, the two countries launch a joint intervention as a result of President Juárez’s decision to suspend payments on Mexico’s foreign debt.

7, 1907 The strike of Río Blanco, in the state of Veracruz. Textile workers strike after President Díaz rejects their petition for better salaries, shorter hours and improved working conditions. The strike is crushed by brutal force; many men, women and children are massacred.

7, 1986 The death in Mexico City of Juan Nepomuceno Carlos Pérez Rulfo Vizcaíno, better known as Juan Rulfo, one of Mexico’s foremost novelists. His two best known works are Pedro Páramo and Llano en Llamas (The Burning Plain).

8, 1824 Francisco González Bocanegra is born in San Luis Potosí. He becomes a distinguished literary figure and the author of the words of the National Anthem. He dies in Mexico City April 11, 1861.

8, 1910 Alberto Braniff pilots the first flight in Mexico. His plane, the “Voisin”, built by Gabriel Voisin in Paris, takes off from the Balbuena plains near Mexico City and flies for 1.5 kilometers, reaching a velocity of 56 kilometers an hour and the dizzy height of 25 meters.

9, 1521 The last Aztec Emperor, Cuauhtémoc, begins his reign. There is no ceremony since the Aztecs are busy trying to fend off the Spanish conquistadors.

11, 1847 The Cahuenga Treaty which gives control of Alta California to the U.S., is signed by Spanish General Andrés Pico, governor of Alta California, and General John C. Fremont. Pico later becomes an American citizen and a California state senator.

11, 1861 Finally victorious in the bloody Three Years (or Reform) War, Benito Juárez enters Mexico City as president, re-establishing federal powers.

11, 1962 The country’s record low temperatures are recorded, in the state of Chihuahua in northern Mexico. At Ciudad Juárez, the mercury drops to -23 degrees C; Ahumada records minus 29 degrees C.

12, 1571 On this black day, King Phillip II of Spain establishes the Inquisition in New Spain, to investigate and punish those with “incorrect” beliefs and customs.

13, 1916 The death in El Paso, Texas, of Victoriano Huerta, who had been responsible for the assassination of Francisco Ignacio Madero and José María Pino Suárez, respectively the national President and Vice-president.

13, 1920 Dr. Eduardo Liceaga dies in Mexico City. Liceaga had fought for the installation of potable water and drainage systems in Mexico City. In 1904, he led the successful campaign to stamp out an outbreak of bubonic plague in Mazatlán. Liceaga also brought the first anti- rabies vaccine into Mexico, after meeting Dr. Louis Pasteur.

14, 1811 The China Boat (also known as the Manila Galleon) arrives in the Pacific coast port of San Blas after its last voyage from Asia to New Spain, now in the throws of the War of Independence.

14, 1831 José Antonio Facio, War Minister in President Bustamante’s government, conspires with Francisco Picaluga to assassinate General Vicente Guerrero. For 50,000 pesos in gold, Picaluga invites Guerrero to a meal aboard his boat, “Colombo”, anchored off Acapulco. Guerrero is taken prisoner and the boat sails for Huatulco, Oaxaca, where Guerrero is handed over for summary trial and (February 14) execution.

14, 1866 The National Music Conservatory is founded.

14, 1916 Venustiano Carranza declares that Francisco Villa, Rafael Castro and Pablo López are outlaws as a consequence of Castro and López raiding a train in Santa Isabel, Chihuahua on January 10, killing 15 people including U.S. miners on their way to Casihuariachic.

14, 1931 A strong earthquake (6 degrees on the Mercalli intensity scale) rocks much of Mexico for four minutes, with damage reported in numerous states, from Tabasco to Guerrero and from Chiapas to Guanajuato.

16, 1902 A strong earth tremor destroys much of Chilpancingo, the capital city of the state of Guerrero, with heavy loss of life and considerable property damage.

17, 1811 Insurgent forces, led by Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, lose the decisive battle of Calderón to Royalist troops. Thousands are killed; Hidalgo and other insurgent leaders take flight for northern Mexico but are subsequently captured and executed.

17, 1821 The government of New Spain gives permission to the U.S. citizen Moses Austin, to colonize, with 300 friends and relatives, the territory of Texas. The only requirement is that the families must be of Catholic faith and citizens of a European country.

18, 1911 The U.S. Navy has to abandon its Magdalena Bay base in Baja California Sur, when the base’s permit, originally conceded by President Diáz, expires.

18, 1915 More than 600 people are killed in a train crash near Guadalajara, Jalisco.

18, 1955 Luis Enrique Erro, a renowned novelist, journalist, politician and astronomer, dies in Mexico City, where he had been born January 7, 1897. Erro was the founder, in 1941, of the National Observatory of Tonanzintla, in Puebla.

20, 1523 The city of Colima (now the capital of the state of the same name) is founded.

21, 1656 The city of Querétaro (the capital of the state of the same name) is founded.

21, 1779 Ignacio Allende y Unzaga is born in San Miguel el Grande (today known as San Miguel de Allende) in the state of Guanajuato. Allende becomes one of the leaders of the Independence movement, but is captured and executed in Chihuahua on August 1, 1811.

21, 1876 Rubén M. Campos, a poet, novelist, and composer of folkloric music, is born in Ciudad Manuel Doblado, Guanajuato.

21 1881 Manuel Orozco y Berra (born June 8, 1816) dies in Mexico City. Orozco y Berra was an agricultural engineer, geologist and archaeologist who was president for many years of the Mexican Society of Geography and Statistics.

22, 1889 Rafael Alducin is born in San Andrés Chalchicomula, (now known as Ciudad Serdán) in the state of Puebla. In 1917 (March 18), Alducin founds the national daily “Excelsior”. He uses the paper later to promote the idea of “Mother’s Day” (“Día de la Madre”), which is celebrated for the first time in 1922. Alducin dies in Mexico City on March 29, 1924.

23, 1905 Antonio Bribiesca Castellanos is born in Mexico City. A celebrated guitarist, he is considered the true creator of the Mexican six-chord guitar sound.

23, 1907 President Porfirio Díaz inaugurates the port of Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, and the railroad line across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, between Salina Cruz and the port of Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz.

23, 1929 The medic, historian, museographer and writer Nicolás León (born December 6, 1859, in Quiroga, Michoacán) dies in Mexico City. León wrote widely on anthropology and history. He authored 344 published works and 75 unpublished works, as well as 9 translations into Spanish.

24, 1774 The expedition led by Junípero Serra sets sail from the port of San Blas towards the Californias.

25, 1553 The Royal University of Mexico (Real Universidad de México) begins to offer courses, in line with a royal decree issued by King Carlos V.

25, 1614 Rokuemon Hasekura becomes the first Japanese ambassador to the New World and Europe, arriving in Acapulco with 180 countrymen to discuss commercial relations with New Spain and Spain. Parts of Hasekura’s expedition are incorporated into Shusaku Endo’s historical novel “Samurai”.

25, 1868 Juventino Rosas is born in Santa Cruz de Galeana, Guanajuato. Rosas becomes a violin virtuoso and a prolific composer. His single best-known work is the waltz, “Sobre las Olas”. Rosas dies in poverty, at a tragically young age, in Batabanó, Cuba, on July 13, 1894.

26, 1938 The first female doctor in Mexico, Matilde Montoya (born in Mexico City May 14, 1859), dies in her native city. She became a surgeon in 1887 and spent most of her working life in Cuernavaca and Puebla.

28, 1875 Julián Carrillo Trujillo is born in Ahualulco, San Luis Potosí. He becomes an innovative musician, responsible for one of Mexico’s major contributions to the musical world: “sonido 13″.

28, 1934 Gregorio Torres Quintero, educator, writer and historian, born in Colima, dies in Mexico City. Torres Quintero developed the “onomatopoeic method” for teaching, which led to considerable educational progress and remained in use for decades.

31, 1917 After 66 regular working sessions, and one extraordinary session lasting three days, the new federal constitution is finally approved by the 184 representatives in Querétaro. The new constitution is promulgated on February 5, which is still celebrated annually by the “Constitution Day” national holiday.

History of Mexico Time-line

The main source for this series is:
Efemérides Mexicanas by Noé Solchaga Zamudio and Luisa A. Solchaga Peña,
published in two volumes by Editorial Avante, Mexico City, 1983.

It seems that one can never take anything for granted in the academic world, at least because there is always someone somewhere waiting to contradict everything that has been said previously. This is especially true of revisionist history.

Of course new evidence and different ways of interpreting the “facts” of history may justify revising standard historical accounts. However, one hopes that at least some thread of consistency may be found in a particular historical interpretation; that some justifiable confidence can be placed in a given historical record; and that the inherent bias of the historian or researcher will not completely obscure the “truth,” however one defines that elusive term.

However, when it comes to the hapless Aztecs of ancient Mexico, it is open season. The fate of the Aztec empire at the hands of the Spanish Conquistadores is so well-known, even among non-specialists, that almost anyone can be an expert with a new theory or re-interpretation of Aztec society and culture.

Much controversy has recently arisen over several collections of poems in Nahuatl, in particular the Cantares Mexicanos, a manuscript in the National Library of Mexico.

These poems are of particular importance because they appear to support a much different picture of the ancient Aztecs than we get from the tzompantli (skull rack) in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán or the horrendous accounts of Aztec human sacrifice left to us by the early Spanish soldiers and missionaries.

In place of the savage barbarian ever posed ready with obsidian knife in hand ready to plunge into the breast of yet another unfortunate sacrificial victim, we have, according to the orthodox interpretation, philosopher-kings and poets meeting in order to discuss the real meaning of “Flower and Song” (in Xochitl in Cuicatl), i.e. Poetry, and seek the “truth” here on earth. This interpretation advanced by two prominent Mexican scholars, A. Garibay and his student M. Leon-Portilla, is based primarily on the Nahuatl poems in the Cantares Mexicanos and the Pomar Manuscript of 1582.

This interpretation has been seriously challenged. In 2004 G. Payas delivered a scathing indictment of the orthodox interpretation of Aztec literature (“Translation in Historiography: The Garibay/Leon-Portilla Complex and the Making of a Pre-Hispanic Past, Meta: journal des traducteurs/Meta: Translators” Journal, vol. 49: no.3, 2004,p. 544-561).

In brief, Payas accused Garibay and Leon-Portilla of purposely creating a literature for the Aztecs by their slanted politically-motivated translations of the Nahuatl texts. Others have joined the ranks, including the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which states unequivocally that the Aztecs did not have any concept of “art for art’s sake,” and therefore it is potentially misleading to translate and interpret the recurring phrase “In Xochitl in Cuicatl” as “poetry;” rather, it is said, the phrase refers to artistic activity in general, such as composing and performing song-poems.

Since the Cantares Mexicanos comprises precisely poems that were obviously meant to be performed in a musical style, the philosophical subtlety of this fine distinction escapes me. A recent translator of the Cantares, J. Bierhorst, thinks the phrase In Xochitl in Cuicatl refers not to poetry but to songs intended to summon the spirits of dead Aztec warriors to return to earth to help their beleaguered descendants under Spanish rule. Some of these commentators seem unwilling to credit the Aztecs with any spark of originality or speculative ability.

Rather than reiterate all the charges and countercharges in this literary war of words I propose a different approach by way of analogy. It is undeniably true that distortions of various magnitudes have crept into our written sources from the time of the Conquest in the 16th century up until the present. However, if the orthodox interpretation is so wrong and the correct interpretation of classical Aztec society and culture is still hidden so deeply in the mass of historical works by Spanish missionaries and others, native codices, and official colonial documents, then perhaps we should look for parallel examples that might at least help to explain how (allegedly) pre-Hispanic texts such as the Cantares Mexicanos managed to get into writing. This might help a little in settling the matter of the authenticity of the poems.

Among the charges brought against the orthodox interpretation of Aztec literature is that Garibay was a “Christian Humanist” who saw Nahuatl literature in the wider context of Greek, Hebraic, and Hindu traditions (as if this were a grievous fault). According to Payas, Garibay saw an analogy between Classical Greek literature and Nahuatl and used it to justify his own methods and interpretations. In short, Garibay forced the Nahuatl texts into a contrived classical format and his pupil Leon-Portilla then interpreted the texts to correspond with his preconceived notion of the Aztec mode of thought.

Academic controversy is nothing new and this one reminds me of the old Homeric controversy between the Analysts and the Unitarians. Are the Homeric epics, the Iliad and Odyssey, the work of a single poet or a committee of hack composers, each throwing in their own little contribution? One Homeric question at least seems relevant to the Cantares Mexicanos — namely, the problem of the transmission of oral compositions into a written form. Were these Nahuatl poems composed before the Conquest and somehow preserved more or less in their original form? Or were they composed after the Conquest and so reflect Christian values? Or were they simply a reaction against Spanish domination, as J. Bierhorst thinks? In following articles in this series we shall attempt to find some answers.

As previously noted, it all got started with A. Garibay’s translations and interpretations of the Cantares Mexicanos and other poems in Nahuatl. In Epica Nahuatl (Mexico, 1945), Garibay classified what he regarded as Aztec epic poems, or at least epic traditions, into cycles reminiscent of the Greek epic cycles. These he named Poemas Sagradas, Ciclo Tenochca, Ciclo Tezcocano, and Ciclo Tlaxcalteca. He based his classification on a wide variety of sources, including references in non-Nahuatl sources and, in his Historia de la Literatura Nahuatl (Mexico, 1971, 275-329), he devoted a whole chapter to epic poetry in which he outlined in some detail the actual texts on which he based his comparative study of what he referred to as Epica Nahuatl (Nahuatl Epic).

The Homeric epics, Iliad and Odyssey, are the most widely known but they were not the only Greek epic poems known from antiquity. Many early Greek epic poets are known only from testimonials given by later commentators; some are known only from a few fragments or titles of lost works.

The cyclic poets dealt with two main themes, the Trojan Cycle, which completed the heroic story from the beginning of the world to the end of the traditional heroic period, and the Theban Cycle, which told the story of Oedipus’ double curse on his two sons with dire consequences for the royal house of Thebes. The Epic Canon included the most important epic poets, Homer, Hesiod, Peisander, Panyasis, and Antimachus. Details cannot be given here, but I simply wish to show where Garibay probably got his ideas about Nahuatl epic cycles.

With regard to native chronicles about the Conquest of Mexico in 1521 Leon-Portilla wrote: “It is no exaggeration to say that the dramatic force in some of these accounts is comparable only to that of the great classical epics. Whereas Homer in the Iliad recalled so vividly many tragic scenes during the fall of Troy, the native writers, who witnessed the struggle and the humiliation, also knew how to bring out the most dramatic moments of the Conquest and the events which followed it (Miguel Leon-Portilla, Pre-Columbian Literatures of Mexico, Norman, Oklahoma, 1969, p.150).

The main purpose of this present comparative study is to ascertain the extent to which Garibay (and later Leon-Portilla) were justified in setting Nahuatl literature beside classical Greek models, such as the Iliad and the Odyssey. It would be overly optimistic to expect that the comparative approach to the problem of the authenticity of texts in Nahuatl and Mayan can solve all the problems and establish with certainty their pre-Hispanic origin. The aim here is more modest.

Arguments from analogy can only suggest plausible ways in which the Iliad and Odyssey,and the Cantares Mexicanos may have been preserved and passed down from the oral to the written tradition. However, with the accumulation of sound evidence, we may be a little more certain that we are indeed hearing authentic voices from ancient Mexico unadulterated by Spanish or Christian influence.

This salad is open to individual interpretation, with the only constants being the beets and the lettuce. Pineapple and bananas are frequently added in tropical climates, apples and jicama in cooler regions. The ingredients should be artfully arranged on a large platter and tossed after it has reached the table.

Here is a basic version from Central Mexico; feel free to create your own version.

Ingredients

1 head lettuce1 pound small beets, cooked, peeled and thinly sliced1 jicama, cut into matchsticks4 oranges, peeled and sliced into rounds4 apples, sliced into thin wedges3 limes, 1 juiced and 2 cut into wedges½ cup olive oil¼ cup white wine vinegar (pear infused white balsamic is good here)1 cup chopped dry roasted peanuts

Line a large platter with the lettuce, either torn or separated into leaves, as desired. Arrange the beets, jicama, oranges and apples on the lettuce. Sprinkle with the lime juice.

Bring the platter to the table, dress with a mixture of the olive oil and vinegar and toss lightly. Serve on salad dishes, topping each serving with a sprinkling of peanuts. Serves 8.

Link to source articles
Mexican Christmas menu ideas: Posadas, Noche Buena, Navidad
A Mexican Christmas dinner: Tamales, turkey, tejocotes

End of year holidays in small Mexican towns have a very special meaning. Folks come home. Milking cows and growing corn or coffee isn’t everybody’s idea of making a good living, so they try to realize their golden dream and head for the cities, but Christmastime and Mother’s Day call them back home.

The highways are bumper-to-bumper with folks coming home. They are loaded with gifts for everyone. You can spend a few lazy hours sitting in the plaza counting the different foreign-plated cars cruising down the street. Most of our returning visitors come from California or Texas. Occasionally we see an Idaho, Montana or Oregon plate. Once in a while we might see a British Columbia one.

Home folks try to get their holiday decorations up by the 1st of December and they don’t come down until after January 7th. Some folks keep their decorations up until after Easter, and I know a few who never take their tree down, although I’ve heard it’s bad luck to leave them up all year. There’s something about carrying last year’s devils into the new year.

Very few country homes are adorned with the Christmas tree most of us know. Way back last summer the family may have spotted a certain limb on a tree they think can be festooned for their house. This tree limb won’t have green leaves on it, and it may look like a gigantic twig. It will be decorated with whatever is plentiful in the house. It might just be tufts of white cotton and silvery, shimmering dime-store icicles, but it will be their Christmas tree.

There will definitely be a nativity scene over in the corner of the front room or in the center of the main table. It seems that the more humble the family, the bigger the crèche.

Father Antonio Corona, who lives in the shadow of the forty-foot statue of Christ in Talpa de Allende, Jalisco, maintains a life-size crèche outside his front door year round. Doña Manuela dedicates her entire living area to a crèche every year. She picked up a stone on the beach when she could walk and calls it the Rock of Gibraltar. Not only does she have the traditional sheep, but she puts chickens, pigs, dogs, donkeys, horses and cows in her manger scene. The Three Kings are there with their gold, frankincense and myrrh, but she puts in some little figures of men lying by the roadside with tiny, empty bottles of tequila in hand. She gleefully points out, “Look, they got drunk and couldn’t make it to see the Baby Jesus!” Doña Manuela fell and broke her hip about a year ago, so this Christmas she sits in her wheelchair and directs her great-grandchildren on how to arrange her crèche.

Mexico has copied some of her northern neighbors’ habits in filling the stores with Christmas decorations and toys at about the same time they are displaying scary masks, plastic jack-o-lanterns and trick or treat bags. However, I see the lack of some of the excitement we experienced as children. What ever happened to Santa Claus? Is he still riding around in the sky with his reindeer and trying to get his bag of toys down the chimney? I’ve seen him in shopping malls in big Mexican cities, but he has never been on my street in the mountains of Jalisco.

Mexican kids get toys and new clothes at Christmastime, but we don’t practice the custom of waiting until Christmas Eve or Christmas Day to open gifts. “Buy it when you have the money and give it to them then” seems to be the motto. If you think about it, most of our country homes don’t have attics or basements where you can hide things from the children.

What we have that our northern neighbors don’t have are posadas, piñatas and street parties. It’s not uncommon to see an entire street blocked in these smaller towns at holiday time. People bring their tables and chairs out to the street and line them up with their neighbor’s table. The tables are set with kerosene lamps, a bucket of ice, sodas, cold beer and a bottle of tequila. The menu is generally the same; a steaming bowl of pork and hominy stew – pozole – topped with chopped radishes, cabbage, onions and hot green chilies, sprinkled with dried oregano. One of my neighbors tells me his father served pozole at the World’s Trade Fair in Chicago in 1936. Pozole is to Jalisciences like Dungeness crab to Washingtonians or creole gumbo to Louisianans. These parties may go on into the wee hours of the morning, or until they run out of food and booze.

For a true posada, you have to find a donkey. Usually the youngest girl in the neighborhood who can sit on a donkey’s back is dressed up as the Virgin Mary. Ours wears a long white dress that used to be a tablecloth and a blue mantel on her head. Saint Joseph, dressed in a yellow robe (which also used to be a tablecloth), walks alongside her. Mary and Joseph lead the throng of kids from house to house, asking for “a room in the inn.” When they are finally admitted to the party-giver’s house, the piñatas are hung and the fun begins. Little ones get first dibs on the piñata Sometimes they are not even blindfolded like the big kids. They may need a bit of help in swatting it hard enough to break, but eventually it comes apart and the wrapped candies and small toys fall out. Then the scramble is on.

Watching a piñata party is a bit like watching the Super Bowl Game. The main difference is our little players don’t wear shoulder pads or helmets.

In my neighborhood the young and the old are invited. Chairs are provided for the great-grandmothers, who may be holding a three-week-old babe in her arms while the mother tries to keep track of her other four of five kids. The trick to semi-managing all this happy bedlam is to invite a few school teachers.

Most kids love their teachers and are willing to obey the ground rules even in the effusive joviality. The hot dog man has set his cart out of the way of the scrambling feet of the piñata whackers, but his hot dogs are ready. A fruitade is served from a huge hollowed-out gourd, called a bule. The teacher blows a whistle for the children to line up. A more or less orderly procession begins; not too much shoving and pushing, their little faces aglow with the merriment and activity of the evening, they are all set for a bit of refreshment.

In our neighborhood, no child goes home empty-handed. There is a gift for everyone.

From our home in Talpa de Allende, we wish our readers a Feliz Navidad y Prospero Año Nuevo.

Poinsettia Image Copyright © 1999 Maria Elena. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

This recipe has appeared in several places, probably because it is the quintessential Mexican Christmas cookie recipe. The first time I saw it was in Patricia Quintana’s Mexico’s Feasts of Life.

Ingredients

1 ½ cups butter, at room temperature1/3 cup sugar3 cups flour1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract4 eggs, separated¾ cup sugarjuice of 1 lime2 ½ cups fruit preserves½ cup Grand Marnier½ cup confectioners’ sugar¾ cup chopped walnuts

Mix the butter, 1/3 cup sugar and flour until well blended. Add the vanilla and egg yolks and mix until a large ball can be formed.

Knead the dough 4 to 5 minutes, dust with flour, cover with plastic and refrigerate 30 minutes to 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Grease two cookie sheets.

Beat the egg whites until stiff, lower mixer speed and gradually add ¾ cup sugar and the lime juice. Beat for 1 minute, until the mixture is shiny.

On a large, floured surface roll out the dough. Transfer it to the greased cookie sheets and continue to roll out until very thin.

Combine the preserves and the Grand Marnier, then spread the mixture over the dough. Cover the preserves with the beaten egg white mixture and sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar and chopped walnuts.

Bake for 45-60 minutes or until egg whites are golden brown and crispy. Remove from oven, allow to cool and cut into squares. Makes about 2 ½ dozen.

Link to source articles
Mexican Christmas menu ideas: Posadas, Noche Buena, Navidad
Mexican holiday sweets: Cookies, candy and more