Nostalgic Evening

After a day of working in front of the computer I began to feel a bit of nostalgia about summer evenings while growing up. With the weather being pleasant, and homes being warm, it was only natural to go outside and grab a bite with your family to a nearby street food vendor. Eventually as I got older I was allowed to do it by myself along with my friends. If I was unlucky I would be made to drag my little brother to tag along with us. He was a bossy little brat, annoying as fuck, and I hated dragging him along. I also showed it.


In retrospect, I wish I had had the maturity to realize how cool he must have felt to hang out with the older kids.  But, I was only 10, and he really was bossy.

We wouldn't go grab a bite at a fast food chain because there were none around. Instead we'd go to a street food cart nearby. The options were many, from tacos, to tacos, to tacos (Only one of those was worth it, which one? Depends on who you asked...), to hot dogs, to one of my favorites (but only by a slight margin), the corn on the cob cart.

I greatly enjoy life now,  I love living in San Diego, but there's a charm that this city lacks that my birth city (Tijuana) doesn't. And that is the atmosphere of people out and about after the day has come to an end. Gathering around street food carts, with their families and their friends.


Sadly health regulations don't allow for that in my home town, definitely not within walking distance. You leave the confinement of your office/home only to enter another confined space.

Tonight I was craving corn like the kind I used to have as a kid. We would buy it from a guy that had a little push-cart that had only enough room for a huge pot where the corn  that he was selling would be steamed, and a space with a cutting board to prepare it. His wife would be with him, they both seemed to work in tandem, but he was clearly the one running things.


Your options were two: You could get corn on the cob, or corn in a cup. I liked corn in a cup, less messy, and tastier. Why tastier? I assume because by the time you get to the bottom kernels they already have been sitting in all of the juices from the top for a while. Also, if you eat it from the cob you end up with cheese and hot sauce on your nose.

The ingredients were the same. If on the cob he would fish into his pot for the right corn. If you were not too shy you could pick which one. I was too shy.

 He would stick a stick on one end, and then he would start to prepare it by covering the whole thing with butter, then he'd do the same but this time with a layer mayonnaise. With the wet ingredients out of the way, he would now sprinkle the whole thing with shredded cotija cheese, he then would add some drops of hot sauce all around, and then squeeze a fresh lime, sprinkle with salt.


If you chose to have your corn in a cup, he'd cut the kernels, he'd serve them in a cup, and then he'd top that with the same ingredients mentioned above in the same order. Then he'd drop a plastic spoon in before handing the cup to you.


There were some ingredients I was missing tonight, one of them the main one, fresh white corn, I only had frozen, and yellow. I also didn't have mayonnaise, so I had to make some from scratch (I'm amazed at how good it tastes! First timer here!), and I didn't have cotija cheese, so I used Parmesan instead. I also decided to steal some cilantro leafs from my plant outside and added them to my corn, I don't think he ever used that.


The end result? It all tasted like a summer evening from a few decades ago.