amazing! Sad, yet genius - those tamales
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What a great read, thank you! I was actually thinking of turning leftover corn tortillas into tamales after grinding it into a kind of flour.
Matzo balls worked pretty well.
Instead of patting myself on the back like I was a genius I shouldâve been hitting up prisoners for advice!
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Inspirational read, thanks!!
We just happen to have a Costco Frito Lays assortment box. If we stay locked in, may just have try and wing this.
Maybe wash down with some Pruno. 
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"Last year, my motherâs health took a severe downturn. I visited her once a week in the hospital, bringing her a flat of sushi. My food was the only food she enjoyed and I fed it to her by hand in a vain attempt to keep her here, though she was steadily losing weight. I thought about my grandmother who fed her to keep her here too.
I had not made the sushi for my motherâit was from Japantown in San Franciscoâthough I was taught how to make sushi like it. I knew that the carrots were sautĂ©ed with soy sauce and dashi. The spinach was steamed, the water squeezed out, and the leaves placed into strips. The egg was whisked and then poured onto a special square pan at a high heat to make a thin and flat omelette. There was the whole matter of seasoning the rice to be neither too sweet nor salty, and of spreading it just-so on a sheet of seaweed without tearing the tissue. Making sushi like this takes hours of assemblyâhours which I did and do not have.
âThe sishi here is so tiny. You know? Like at Whole Foods?â the nurse said.
âSushi,â my mother growled.
âSishi,â the nurse repeated.
âSOO-shee.â My mother took a bite of her food and avoided further eye contact.
In the hospital, I told my mother that it was not necessary to correct the nurseâs pronunciation. She was, I insisted, doing her best.
âI want to go home,â my mother said, referring to the house she has lived in since she moved to America to marry my father, and where he passed away a decade ago. More specifically, she wanted to be surrounded by natureâher rose bed, orchard, and vegetable garden. It was from nature that she learned to forage for wild shoots, insects, and nuts to feed her family in the years after the war, when so many Japanese starved to death. âYou give just a little bit to a garden,â she always said, âand it will give back.â
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In sharp contrast to Ms. Mockettâs piece, hereâs an edgy one, on slut shaming and bread.
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Hi @ElsieDee!
This is a way late response to the article you posted on Lillian Harris aka Pig Feet Mary! I started reading it then got busy with work and life so set it down. When I went back it was behind a paywall. I should probably get a NYT online subscription. Anyway! I looked her up. Her life story is such a classic American story of migration, hard work, ingenuity and success - coming from the south with $5 and retiring a multi-millionaire. As Iâve mentioned I have older family members who lived and found success during the Harlem Renaissance. Lennox Ave was always talked about as the hub of everything going on in Harlem. I so wish they were still here and I could ask them about these pioneers. Her story made me proud and hungry! 
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Just a gentle reminder (to anyone reading) that you can access the NY Times with an LA Public Library account here:
I somehow overlooked that article when @ElsieDee posted, reading it now!
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I can also access it with my Sonoma County library card. As a library fan I urge you to check what riches you can get online through your local library!
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Could not have said it better myself! Libraries and librarians are truly amazing and are killing it right now during the pandemic with online resources, 3D printing PPE in LA, etc.
For anyone that ever has questions about whether or not to check out a cookbook definitely check to see if your library has it first. In LA Iâve been checking out a ridiculous number of e-books (Fuschia Dunlop, Madhur Jaffrey, An Everlasting Meal, Potlikker Papers, every James Beard nominated book for the past 15 yearsâŠ)
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not to mention the excellent selection of films for FREE through Kanopy
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Thanks @WireMonkey.
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I read that article about the Zankou Chicken Murders when it was published. Unbelievably tragic. Itâs why some locations are now owned by different family members and not affiliated with each other.
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Iâm glad you read about her, @TheCookie - and thanks to @WireMonkey for the reminder about library accounts and access to newspapers (along with a bunch of other amazing resources; @jackiecat and @LAgirl - weâre loving Kanopy - the movies AND the access to all of The Great Courses courses!).
Another interesting woman to learn about:
"Princess Pamela didnât let just anyone into her restaurant. She ran her Little Kitchen out of her railroad apartment in an Alphabet City walkup, one floor above a Chinese takeout joint.
This was the Manhattan of 1965. Would-be patrons would buzz apartment 2A and Princess Pamela, who claimed her real name was Pamela Strobel, would creak the door open, revealing little more than her eyes. She would accost her prospective clientele with questions: Who were they? Were they from the South, like she was? Sometimes, she didnât have to ask; she just had a feeling about them the minute she saw their face."
Some wonderful excerpts from her reissued cookbook, here:
(Btw, a websearch on âPrincess Pamelaâ may return some NSFW results, as thereâs an adult film actress who goes by that name.)
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"Around the time of the Crain theft, Rich Paloma, a police officer turned reporter at the Oakdale Leade r, a weekly paper based several hours south of Tehama County, Âbegan tracking high-Âvalue loads of nuts that had vanished. Paloma counted half a dozen heists, valued at more than $1 million, in the previous year. In the fall of 2013, he published an article speculating that the thefts were coordinated.
âWhen you look at the logistics needed to complete this crime,â he told me, all signs point toward an organized group. âYou steal 370,000 pounds of almonds, youâre not Âgoing to sell it on the side of the road.â
In recent years, nut theft has Âexploded into a statewide problem. More than 35 loads, worth at least $10 million, have gone missing since 2013. The number and style of the theftsâquick and professional, as if the characters from Oceanâs Eleven had descended on the Central Valleyâhave drawn the attention of federal organized-crime investigators and prompted the creation of a regional task force.
Why steal nuts? Theyâre worth an awful lot of money."
Good read! Iâd heard of this story but hadnât considered that it was a federal case. That makes sense, really- how are you going to unload a million dollars of nuts in one state?
Iâm not condoning it of course but theft and smuggling overlooked goods is fascinating and happens in a range of items as varied as nuts, cigarettes, maple syrup, cycads and more.
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Funny! Iâll check it out. Like a soul food speakeasy run by the soup nazi.
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This is a rather long, and quite fascinating, piece - touches on many of the âthings I like to read aboutâ (history, politics, âthe west,â immigration, community, foodways, etc.).
Meet Zarif Khan, aka Hot Tamale Louie:
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You might be interested in this old Chowhound thread (there are others), in which some of us share our memories of evenings at Princess Pamelaâs Southern Touch.
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Those are wonderful threads, @small_h - what incredible memories! Thank you for the links. 
I recall having some tangential awareness of this happening, @WireMonkey, but it was one of those things that dropped off my mental radar. Hoping to spend some time reading more about it this weekend.