Papusas and Dow
Whenever there is a "moment with a stranger" that ends in me getting asked out by a man, it does not make the cut to get recorded in this blog.
Those moments with "courters" make me so grumpy, I've never equated them with my happy/funny/interesting moments with strangers I do write about.
Whenever I'm in the U District, I get pupusas. The only other pupusas in Seattle that I know of are at a Latin Folklore shop in Capitol Hill.
This is my experience with Capitol Hill pupusas:
"Can I have a zuchinni pupusa?"
"We're out," says the server.
"Can I order the pork and cheese without the pork?"
"Oh...we can't make it without the pork..."
...because they are pre-packaged, frozen pupusas? To be fair, this is predominantly a coffee shop.
But Juanaco's Tacos is a different story. They're all about the pupusas. You see them being made by hand in the kitchen while you order. This is the thing I miss most about D.C.
"You're from D.C.?!" exclaims Carlos, one of my newer students, a refugee from El Salvador. "There are lots of El Salvadoreans there!"
"Verdad, eso es comó yo sabe hablar español."
Carlos laughs and is forgiving with my rusty Spanish because he's glad I try. He and I have decided that everyone should know a few conversational phrases in Spanish, but as a teacher, I should learn how to speak it fluently.
So, I go to Juanaco's Tacoas and hope someday I'll be brave enough to practice Spanish here, but it always feels too presumptuous for me to start.
There's a crowd of novices in front of me, who seem to be reading each and every item on the menu a foot back from the counter. I fidget a little. "Are you all in line?" I finally ask, as sweetly as possible.
They shuffle forward with lots of questions. I'm doing my best to look super patient. "So, you must know what you're doing?" asks one of the group members.
I smile and nod as patiently as I can.
"Tell me," he says, "what's good?"
"Well, pupusas, obviously."
"What's a pupusa?" he asks.
Why are you here?! I respond in my head. But out of my mouth comes, "It starts as a ball of dough. They poke a hole in it and stuff all the fixins in there, whatever you want. Meat, beans, cheese."
"My favorite things! I love it already," he says.
"Then, they flatten out the ball and deep fry it, it's kind of like a tortilla but with all the good stuff inside already. You dip it in the spicy coleslaw or salsa."
This, of course, is the description of the proper way to make pupusas. Not the description of how Laura Beth and I made them for her school project. I came into the kitchen and she had already dissolved to rolling out a circle of dough, laying down a layer of cheese and beans, then putting on a top layer of dough, and pinching the sides together. It was creative, I'll give her that.
"Wow," he says, eyes wide. He hands me his menu, "Can you order for me?"
"Oh...I don't know." This has all the suspicion of turning into a pick-up ploy moment with stranger, and I just want some lunch.
"Please," he says.
It's our turn to step up to the counter and arguing will only increase the time it takes to get my pupusas.
"He'll have the #7, one pupusa with meat and cheese, one with loroco."
"What kind of beans on the side?" the guy behind the counter asks.
I look at the orderee but he smiles and holds up his hands.
"Black," I say, not wanting this to take any longer than it has to. I put the menu down. "I'll also have the #7, two pupusas with beans and cheese, black beans on the side."
We pay separately, neither acknowledging any other option. He thanks me and sits with his friends. He really just needed help ordering lunch. A truly nice moment with a stranger.
My other recent moment with a stranger was sitting next to the King County Executive at a fundraiser. "I just voted for you," I told him.
"That was nice of you," Dow said. Then he told me to pour him more wine. "Please," he said as an after thought. At least he's been good for transportation.
