The Kitchen

One of the elements of the Holy Week festival in the ceremonial center is food.  Within about 10 minutes of arriving in town, a young man about 20 came and offered us food.  He escorted us to one of the two “cocinas” set up in the main area of town.  His father, we learned, was one of two that had the privilege of providing food for the festival goers for the 4-day festival.

The kitchen was a roof with 4 half-walls chest high.  There was one entrance.  In the middle was a raised work area knee high made of adobe.

In the far corner was a stove.

This stove is similar to what the people use to cook in their homes.  It is heated by a fire under the metal discs.  The fire is fed through a hole in the wall from the outside.  They cook their tortillas directly on the discs and sit their pots of beans on the discs to heat and cook.  People usually only have one metal disc on their stoves in their homes.

In the other corner on the far wall was a corn grinder.  This is the first grinding the corn gets on it’s way to become a tortilla.

These are the pots/serving bowls that the beans were served in.  We grabbed a small clay bowl and filled them up with beans.  We grabbed a pinch of salt sitting that was sitting in a bag on the raised work space.  Then, we heated a couple tortillas up on the metal disc stove and “Bon appetit!”