Last Monday, a group of Bezaleel students—the ones who are participating in the vocational arts program—went to market to hawk their wares. My husband went with them while I stayed at home to do other work. But I didn’t get much done because my husband kept interrupting me with phone updates.

Him: They’re actually selling stuff!

Him: I can’t believe how much stuff is selling! Are you going to come in?

Him: Are you coming in soon? No, no, you don’t need to rush.

Him: When are you coming in? No, no, you don’t need to get a taxi. You’ve got time.

Him: Where are you? I’m sending a taxi!

The kids—with permission for the market overseer—had staked out a part of the road at one end of the market. They were selling shirts, bakers’ caps, and baby huipils (sewing class), flowers (agriculture), bread (baking class), grates for holding pots set over the fire (welding class), and little chairs and assorted shelving (carpentry class). And the stuff was selling!

After admiring their handiwork and buying some bread, I sat down on the curb, camera in hand, for some focused people watching. This is what I saw.

A woman with a cloth-wrapped bundle on her head buying bread. Or a shelf?

A woman with a basket on her head.

As you already know, I am drawn to pictures of mothers and babies. And of mothers carrying their babies. And of mothers breastfeeding their babies. Really, anything mother and baby, I’m all over it. So I got an extra big kick out of the following pictures.

Here are two mothers. One is nursing and the other is carrying.

Do you see how she is carrying the baby? In an over-the-shoulder cloth sling made from a bed sheet.

Here. Take a closer look:
 
It took me a good long while to figure out that there were real, live babies in those shoulder “bags.” (And we in the States fret over suffocation via a loose crib sheet or co-sleeping, ha. Something tells me these mothers aren’t exactly plagued by those worries.)

Here’s another one:

Instead of an over-the-shoulder effect, this mama is sporting the across-the-forehead look.

As is this mama:

Once they get too big, just plop them on the back like so:

In the photo below, can you find the nursing baby?

Or, shall I say, the lump of nursing baby?

Babies are everywhere!
Sacks of babies.
Bags of babies.
Babies, babies, babies, babies!

It’s never ending. Never ending, I tell you!

Ps. I have yet to see a baby carried in a basket on top of a mama’s head. If I do, I’ll be sure to share. Pinky promise.

Last weekend when I made the black bean chili, I made a cornbread to go with it. Except instead of regular cornmeal, I used Maseca flour.

The only cornmeal I’ve been able to find here is instant polenta. Actually, I found a box of cornmeal once, in a hole-in-the-wall shop, but I didn’t buy it (silly me) and I’ve never seen it anywhere else since.

The instant polenta works fine as cornmeal. The resulting cornbread is a little heavier than normal (I prefer my home-ground yellow popcorn), but still yummy.

The cornbread made with maseca, however, was completely different. There was none of the coarse grittiness that comes with cornbread. It was soft and tender. It was like cake, but with a corn tortilla-y flavor. We loved it.

(I still love my cornmeal cornbread, but after reading this post, I do wonder if maseca cornbread might have some nutritive benefits.)

Of course, considering that the K’ekchi’ love anything and everything related to corn, I taught the girls how to make it. We made only six double recipes and sold it all, much to the disappointment of those who didn’t jump-jump into the buying and eating frenzy.

Maseca Cornbread
Adapted from my standard recipe.

Updated: The results of more experimentation (no white flour and nearly all maseca and then some whole wheat, maseca, a bit of cornmeal, etc) were all a success!

1 cup maseca flour
1 cup white flour
1/3 cup sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoons salt
1 egg, beaten
1 1/4 cups milk
1/4 cup oil

Mix dry ingredients. Whisk in wet. Pour batter into a greased 9×9-inch baking dish and bake at 350 degrees until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Serve warm. Pass the butter and honey.

Ps. All photos, except for the one of the flours, are from the baking day at Bezaleel.

This is pretty much exactly what I feel like right now.

After a morning of more-intense-than-normal Spanish, my brain is fried, sizzled, zapped. I have a pile of emails to write and documents to create, not to mention what feels like 26 blog posts almost boiling over on the back burner of my mind.

I like The Busy, make no mistake, but I can only sit in front of a computer screen and tap out words for so long before my eyes cross and my shoulders seize up. So forgive my lack of blog inspiration.

Or lack of discipline required to force myself to write out the blog inspiration.

Or just my plain old shortcomings in general.

Whatever.

I gotta go make pizza.

Ps. I’ll probably be back tomorrow with some sort of verbage for you to muddle through, but for right now I’ll pretend that I’m one of those bloggers that considers her blog a job and therefore actually doesn’t blog over the weekend because those are her days off. I don’t know what “days off” are, though if my life continues to careen along at the rate it went today, I may need to figure that one out.