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Midwest Birria, page 2
Deep in the American Midwest, Tom Gibbs hosts a down-home Mexican barbeque and jarocho jam session.

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By Tom Gibbs
Posted Saturday, August 2, 2003

continued from Previous: Page 1

Otherwise, things have been kind of slow back here….Cinco de Mayo was cold and windy so the celebration was in the Church basement. The comida was provided and thus not up to snuff. There has been a string of pregnancies amongst our younger friends which has kept them pretty busy with their own situations. We are likely to get padrino'd twice out of this group. We've had successful July 4th fiestas the last few years up here at our place with Calixto as the cocinero de carne…..carne asada, pollo, salsas from roasted ingredients ground in the molcajete, agua de jamaica, elotes with mayonaise, powered cheese and chili, and of course, beans and rice. The music is always great. When Romeo gets a playing gig somewhere that requires his old Veracruz sidekick Jesus G. to come to town to help out, we fire up the grill; and we have some great jam sessions. Those two guys played up and down the coast of Veracruz for years before coming up here.

There is nothing like a couple of jarochos to make your spirit turn to alma. "Tu Solo Tu", "Como Fue","Veracruz", "Mi Viejo San Juan", and on and on. Otherwise when Romeo's in a resting mode I put a stack of everybodies favorite CD's on the stereo. Under Romeo's tutelage I have become knowledgeable enough to have collected a good sized bunch CD's of the greats from the "Epoco de Oro" on the cheap from the mercados in Mexico, as well as many comtemporary figures. Frankly, I think that if you like the food and like the music, you are almost family already. Trust and friendship would be pretty abstract without these ingredients. And rightly so, who could trust a friend without alma?

Some time ago we signed up for the DirectTV Para Todos package. At $32/mo. it is a very cheap immersion language program. I've taped 30-40 Mexican movies from Cine Latino, which not only has been a good language tool, but has warmed a few of our friends hearts when loaned out on winter weekends.

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