When I was growing up, my grandmother lived with us, and we had a very extensive family. My grandmother had 21 children, including stepchildren and children she adopted, but she treated them all the same. It was a constant surprise at dinner to see who was going to show up. We were incredibly close, and my sister and I, and sometimes our mother, would spend summers traveling on a Greyhound bus to visit her children in rotation. That’s how we stayed close. During the holidays, when lots of family members were around, we made tamales on the assembly line, with the kitchen filled with aunts talking about what had happened during the year, old boyfriends and what they did when they were young. We children were always super quiet and really listening, because we didn’t want to be chased out of the kitchen. My aunts were beautiful, talented women who were incredible cooks, and they came from all over, where they were very accomplished in their new lives. Their stories about growing up allowed me to imagine what it had been like at my grandmother’s ranch in El Rito. My kitchen holds those memories — like ghosts in the kitchen. That’s the joy of being in the kitchen — being able to cook with really talented cooks and getting to learn from them. I learned so much. They were so gracious and gentle, and they taught me so much more than just cooking. But I learned our family recipes from those women and my grandmother, and how cooking together, sharing the making of tamales and empanaditas, can be joyful. Empanaditas* were always the true sign that the holidays were upon us. Just as the torta de huevo and red chile were signs of Pascua (Easter), the food we looked forward to were posole and empanaditas at Christmas and New Year’s. The reason why the empanaditas became part of the holiday season is because they’re so portable. We used to hide them because we didn’t want the little kids to run through, grab one, take a bite out of it and leave the rest. The empanaditas were such a special treat that we treasured them, and they were in such short supply that we didn’t want them to disappear. From Thanksgiving to New Year’s, our tiny

house was filled with family who came home to celebrate. There were plenty of cousins to play with, and because empanaditas were always a really special treat and very portable, we would stuff them in our pockets to eat on the swing set or while we were playing. For Christmas Eve, we’d go to midnight mass at La Iglesia de Santa Cruz de la Cañada, but leading up to Christmas, families in our larger community would host Las Posadas on different nights. We traveled to each house, where the hosts would offer what they could, sometimes chocolate and cookies or appetizers, other times a whole meal for all their guests. Everyone’s house, big or small, was always so festive, because the Christmas trees and garlands were up, and they were filled with light. It was very, very beautiful. The houses filled up with people shoulder to shoulder, very snug, singing traditional songs and very happy to be together. All the songs were in Spanish; Vamos todos a Belen is still my husband’s favorite song. People would play the parts of Mary and Joseph looking for room at the inn and being turned away. Our favorite night as kids was New Year’s Eve, when the adults trusted us enough to leave all the cousins with a couple slightly older ones and go out to their dance. We’d pile our blankets on the floor, turn the TV on to Dick Clark and load up on food that the adults had left on every surface. There was homemade peanut brittle, fudge, biscochitos and empanadas. There were tamales and posole and beans in the refrigerator. It was so much fun! In our family, we made our empanadas in the traditional way, with beef tongue. We used to slaughter our own meat as soon as the weather changed; we did lamb in the spring and pigs and beef in the fall. We saved the tongue along with the head; they were very inexpensive cuts of meat at the time. Now they’re really expensive or you have to special order them. We picked piñon to use in our empanaditas, and we all had our individual saltshakers that we used to crack them. Grandmother used her molcajete (mortar and pestle) to crack them. We canned a lot of things, and my grandmother is on my mind as I can this year. In Northern New Mexico, there is still a very extensive system of barter. I had a very good chile crop and gave some to my neighbor. My neighbor gave me damson plums and apples, so I made jam. *The words “empanadas” and “empanaditas” are used interchangeably here. Empanaditas are smaller, similar to turnovers or pastries. As a fourth-generation New Mexican, Patricia Greathouse is fascinated with our traditional foods and the way they’re raised. During childhood visits to her grandfather’s dryland farm in Rio Arriba County, she had to get used to the flavor of free-range eggs and warm milk squirted from the cow.