Chorizo and Eggs

A taste of memories and memories of a taste

              I went through a sort of flaccid midlife period in the early 1980s, coming to the view that, stuck as I was in the soggy South, my life needed some dry Western air, a whiff of creosote bush, a bit of cactus and lots of rocks and mountains.  I had fallen in love with the Chiracahua Mountains of southeastern Arizona on a collecting trip in 1969, so in 1982 I fell for a scheme devised by a local rancher who, no longer able to make a living by raising cattle or eggplants on his meager land, decided to raise mortgages by selling off lots.  A clever move, at least for a while, because in Arizona, if you don't want cows munching your herbage, YOU, not the rancher, have to fence them out.  His cows got their cake and ate it too.

              My 40 acres, fondly nicknamed The Propiddy, lay where the shady, secret alcoves and cliffs of a rocky canyon gave way onto the airy chaparral of the alluvial apron. Clearing a rough, driveable (with care) track so I could camp at the top of The Propiddy took me 10 days of dizzying, sweating labor with muscle and mattock.

Colored pencil drawing of my Mexican Blue Oak, made while resting in its shade during the heat of the day.

In the center of the camping place stands an iconic, unforgettable tree, a Mexican Blue Oak, white-trunked, with a dense crown of bluish-grey, stiff leaves.  Every year it aborts thousands of acorns in an endless and mostly futile war against acorn weevils.  The tree is not tall, but strikingly solid, with thick, rough, checked white bark, an unmistakably commanding presence of a tree.  When the sun rises over the Pelloncillos across the valley, the tree glows like fire, in the heat of the day I nap in its dense shade, and in the night, as the coyotes yip and howl, it is a comforting sentinel in the flickering light of my campfire. I love this tree.

The morning sun shining on my Mexican Blue Oak as viewed from my campsite.

But there is another thing I love here, and the two have become inextricably associated.  The tree has become Pavlov's bell and I have become Pavlov's dog, for the very thought of camping near this tree reminds me of chorizo and eggs on fried tortillas, and the my saliva begins to flow.  

The drive from the Tucson airport to The Propiddy takes me through the (now former) copper smelter town of Douglas, on the Mexican border, and there, mingling with underpaid mill workers, I take on groceries at the down-scale Safeway.  The core of this grocery supply is several pounds of store-made chorizo, glistening deep red and fatty in the meat case, the wooden paddle ready to scoop out an order.  But man cannot live on chorizo alone, so a stack of Señor Patty's corn tortillas go in the basket, as does cheddar cheese, bunches of cilantro, fresh tomatoes, romaine lettuce, corn oil and finally lots of eggs. 

Señor Patty’s Tortillaria in Douglas, Arizona. Starting with 100 lb sacks of corn, water and lime, the owner made outstanding tortillas, and I have often returned to Tallahassee with large stacks of them.

Upon arrival at the campsite, the chorizo goes into the pot on the fire, yielding a pool of fat rendered brilliant red by the chili.  To prevent spoilage, I simply cook it again every day, the flavor deepening with every reheating.  Assembly goes like this:  spread a couple of tablespoons of chorizo on a tortilla, fry in corn oil until crisp, slap on a couple of slices of cheddar and a sunny-side up fried egg, garnish with tomato, shredded lettuce and a handful of fragrant cilantro.  To eat this concoction is very messy, but eating only three or four requires great self-control (which I often lack).  Three meals of chorizo and eggs a day creates a state not unlike Nirvana.

In the days before fresh tortillas and chorizo could be found in Tallahassee, I returned home many times with four or five pounds of chorizo and ten dozen of Señor Patty’s tortillas in my carry-on luggage. I even convinced the butcher to share his recipe after I promised I would not go commercial and anyway, I lived 2000 miles away. Sadly the down-scale Safeway has been closed, replaced by an upscale Safeway across town, and their store-made chorizo does not come up to the lofty standards set by the original.  I have tried the recipe the butcher scribbled on a pink slip of paper, but the meat you buy here is far too lean, and dividing a recipe that starts with 100 lbs of pork and beef and 2 lbs of dried, ground chili inevitably goes off the rails. 

Loss is an inevitable part of life, and the value of what is lost is often not apparent until afterwards.  But what survives is the memory, and whenever I think of my iconic blue oak, I still salivate in anticipation of the flavor explosion that follows a bite into a crispy tortilla with chorizo and eggs.