The Jade Notebook by Laura Resau

Author:Laura Resau [Resau, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-375-89941-6
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2012-02-14T05:00:00+00:00

The next morning, when I show up at Doña Lupita’s house, I’m groggy from a sleepless night. She gives me a big hug that smells of smoky chile and cinnamon. Today she’s wearing a silvery dress with a pink flower pattern under her checked apron. I wonder if every dress she owns looks like her garden.

She sits me down on a tree stump and immediately places a steaming cup of chamomile tea in my hands.

I force a smile, determined not to let my bad mood put a damper on our cooking lesson.

She claps her hands. “¡Empezemos!” Let’s start! Then she takes out a large clay plate—“our comal,” she says, patting it. She balances it on cement blocks over the cooking fire. Then she plucks an array of dried chiles from a basket and drops them on the comal. As they roast, she pours a heap of almonds onto one area, cacao beans on another, then sesame seeds, cloves, pumpkin seeds, and cinnamon sticks in other areas. From time to time, she stirs each ingredient with a wooden spoon. The smell is heavenly—sweet and spicy and earthy. I jot down the ingredients as fast as I can.

Over the next few hours come plantains, raisins, onions, peanuts, garlic … so many ingredients, I can barely keep up. It feels good to focus on this smattering of smells and tastes and textures and heat. Lupita shows me how to turn over the chiles and stir the seeds, until everything is almost to the point of burning, but not quite. Then she has me scrape the roasted ingredients into a giant stone bowl, add a little oil, and, with a big pestle, grind everything together in a paste.

“So how’s your boyfriend?” she asks, watching me work.

For a moment, I tense up, not wanting to break the spell of the chocolate and chile and spices. Struggling to control my emotions, I tell her about his art school news, how cold he’s been acting.

“Will he take the scholarship?” she asks solemnly, understanding the gravity of this situation.

“He claims he doesn’t want to,” I say, pounding the pestle with more force than necessary. I wipe the sweat from my brows. “But I know I’m the only reason he wouldn’t take it.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“To tell the school he needs more time to decide.” I pause to stare at her. It’s as if she can see through me, right into my selfish center. “I want him to stay,” I admit. Then, glancing at our mole, I add, “He’s the main ingredient in my paradise.”

She considers this. “Is he happy staying?”

“Not since he got the email. If he passes on this opportunity … I think he’ll regret it.”

She hands me a cacao bean. “Bite.”

I do, and grimace. “Bitter,” I say, instinctively spitting it out. An old dog moseys over to inspect it. After a few sniffs, he deems it not worth the trouble, and settles back down under a tree.

“Yes, bitter,” she says, “but if you add the right ingredients, this bean becomes mole.

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