Making Tortillas the Old Way

Early one Sunday morning a while ago, Kelly and I went for a walk in our town of San Juan Cosala, heading roughly westward out of town on Calle Zaragosa. When we came upon this woman making tortillas outside her front door, I asked her permission to take a photo to show my friends. She kindly consented. Quite a few people still make them by hand for special occasions or in restaurants, though the widespread availability of machine-produced tortillas means that relatively few Mexican women are doing this before dawn now.

She's flattening the dough between her hands, from the metate or grinder in front of her, then cooking the tortillas on the wood-fired griddle.

Are the handmade ones tastier? Yes!


We continued our walk into the nearby area called El Limon, where we admired these rock walls.

(This is one of a series of posts I wrote before going to the US for a while. We're currently in Idaho, and about to head for Colorado.)