Maíz

I apologise for my lack of posts. Truth be told, I've been working a lot lately, finally - bien! But its making me pretty tired, I even turned down a sushi making lesson I'm so tired. Not cool. Anyway, before work upped my hours, I did manage to get half a photo project started and this is what I mean to share with you now. Those of you who know me well will not be entirely surprised at its agricultural and food theme.

I'll start with my inspiration (if you can call it such a grand name). The 174 bus has become a trusted friend to Ellie and I. It reliably takes us to the centre of town and back on a regular basis, it's just a lovely thing. Part of its route takes you past a market and every morning and indeed all day long, one may observe the row of about 8 almost identical corn workshops. The corn arrives in truck-loads and is sorted and prepared for sale by a group of ever so friendly workers. White corn is perhaps the most important Mexican staple, along with frijoles and chili of course! You only have to spend one day in this country to learn its importance: tacos, totopos, tortillas, pozole, tejuino (yuk!).... . Today we even accidentally made a corn-custard (don't ask), so we ate it with a faux-fruit cake, Merry Mexican Christmas! The Mexicans love their corn so much they include a picture it of the $100 peso note. Anyway, the point of all this is that it was at the corn workshops I decided to begin my impossibly exciting corn project. So Wednesday the 7th December (Happy Birthday Mum) my dear camera and I headed out on the 174...

Mexicans are friendly people, so Nacho and José were more than happy to spend some time explaining to me what they do. Each workshop belongs to a different worker (although a couple are shared), the different workshops do slightly different things but mainly they sort and prepare the corns for sale to the public. The corn is sold either whole (found offered by street vendors with the ever present cream and cheese - it's good!) or in grains (for Pozole, a  corn based soup, haven't tried it yet, will keep you updated). Some of the workshops made a corn mass for fresh tamales de elote (oh tamales!).

I'm going to assume my blog readers are not that interested in Mexican White Corn, those who wish may skip to the last paragraph before perusing and complimenting me on the photographs in the comments box (oh go on!).

Mexican white corn is the corn used in torillas and every day food. White corn is not the only available colour but its the corn local to Jalisco. Head down to Michocán and you can find blue, red, black and purple corn - fancy tortillas! The corn in this season comes from Sinaloa (famous for its powerful drugs cartel). In the rainy season I was told Jalisco is covered in corn but it hasn't rained for over 3 months now so my corny friends have to source from further aflield (oh!). I don't know much about corn farming in Sinaloa, but José and I did spend a while talking about the hardships of agriculture in modern Mexico. Basically, it's hard. Farmers are forced to buy expensive fertilisers, chemicals and one-life seeds and sell at wholesale prices. It's not difficult to see the lack of logic here. One would think that corn farmers in Mexico would be revered as kings, but alas, not so.


Every part of the cob is made use of by the men in the workshops. The leaves are used to wrap and cook tamales in. Alberto had come especially to get leaves for his home tamales company. The grains, well, they are found in everything; from computers to alcohol to many, many foodstuffs. The centres are used in chinese cooking I was told, and there are an abundance of chinese restaurants in Guadalajara. Anything left over gets thrown on a massive pile to be sent off as animal feed. And that my friends, is how we should do things, 0% food waste here!

After spending a good couple of hours chatting with and photographing my new pals, Ernesto led me to the tamales. Anyone who leads me to tamales is a hero in my books. At the end of the row of corn-workshops is Consuela, bless her, who uses the corn and leaves of te men to make little nuggets of pure ambrosia. God I love tamales de elote. And so I went on my way with my tamal and a couple of reels of film. I don't know if/ how to continue this project - I'm not about to shoot off to Sinaloa. Any feedback would me most welcome, but yes I know, the stupid flash was an issue on some of the pictures )-:

Enjoy!