My cousin Mary lived with her husband in southern Mexico, in the Oaxaca region, and I had always thought it would be cool to go see them some time.

But when the opportunity presented itself for me to go down with 3 other friends, I was a little unprepared.

I can’t speak a stitch of Spanish.

Thankfully, my travel companions could at least read it – even if they weren’t confident enough to speak it.

We took the bus some 4 hours south of Mexico City and confidently departed near midnight at the necessary bus stop (because we had a GPS with us!).

We four girls stayed a week, helping hoe the corn fields, prepare juice for peddling, and cooking. And eating!

Mary was transplanted to Mexico after her marriage, but has mastered the local way of cooking, due to her mother-in-laws assistance.

Mary did her best to convert us into master Mexican chefs during our week there.

My friend Sara got the red rice figured out so well that she could make it unsupervised!

I was an expert veggie chopper . . . And then: TORTILLA CLASS!

We mixed up our own masa, from corn ground right in the village, learning how to tell if it was the right consistency for turning into balls.

Mary’s little 8 year old daughter was an excellent demonstrator!

Pressing them was pretty easy, which was largely my job, but the hardest part was plopping that flatted tortilla on the fire-warmed tortilla stone!

I know, it sounds silly, but it takes dexterity to move a flatted masa circle onto the griddle without tearing it.

There’s a certain way to pick it up, but the real challenge comes in getting it to slide off your hand . . . You had to hand-ball a certain amount of tortillas so that your hands were coated in masa to provide a bit of non-stickiness for the tortilla to slide off of.

And no simple flipping it on the griddle, but laying it down gently with a sideways motion while whisking your hand away before the heat caused the masa to soften and stick to your hand!

Apparently, I have hot hands . . . Or else I was trying so hard that my blood pressure was rising and pumping more hot blood to my extremities!

The other girls quickly mastered the tortilla pass-off, but they kept sticking to the heel of my hand!

I began to despair of winning the Mexican housekeeper award . . . Local tradition says that a girl is culinarily competent enough to be married when her tortillas “puff”.

And my tortillas couldn’t puff when they kept tearing!

But, persistence paid off, and long at last I successfully cooled down enough to pass off my tortillas!

And that blessed little tortilla set there on the hot stone, and PUFFED!