Carmen's Kitchen

Thursday, 28 January 2010 20:44

It's the focal point of the house, where everyone starts their day with a cup of coffee and shares their stories together at dinner around the table. It's also where you can find Maria Del Carmen Leon, the Sonoran cook.

Her kitchen is U-shaped and open to both the dining and the family room. It's the perfect place for everyone who comes to share the baked sweets and delicious meals that Carmen prepares everyday.

"I like to bake cookies and cake, usually I don't like to cook," said Carmen.

Carmen was born in Granados, Sonora, Mexico to a family of three boys and five girls. Her father had a small piece of land that he farmed and the family raised chickens, pigs, and a dairy cow at their house.

They used the chickens and pigs for meat. Carmen remembers her mother's favorite thing to eat was meat because she liked the flavor it added to a meal. Carmen, on the other hand, didn't have a favorite childhood meal.                  

"I liked to eat everything, but no sweets," said Carmen.

Her house had no running water so twice in the morning, afternoon and night she would carry two pails to the river to fill with water. Each day, Carmen carried 30 gallons of water back to the house so the family could cook, clean and bathe.

Carmen's mother stayed home with the eight children while her father worked.

"It was a different time when I was growing up. Women didn't use to work like men," said Carmen. "A lot was different."

Once Carmen reached sixth grade, her schooling stopped because there was no junior high or high school in Granados. After finishing school she stayed home with her mother and her older sister to help at the house while her eldest sister, who is ten years older than Carmen, was working in Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico.

"We would rotate the chores each week," Carmen explained. "So one week I would clean and she would cook."

It was when she spent this time at home that she learned to cook from her mother.

When Carmen was 23, she decided that she wanted to get a work visa and move to the United States.

"It was a big deal when my mom left because in those days you didn't leave Granados," said Carmen "Piri" Rios, Carmen's eldest daughter.

Carmen came and stayed with a friend in Tucson. It was while working and living here that she met her future husband, Cyril Leon.

"He was a family friend of the friend I was staying with," said Carmen.

Unfortunately, Cyril had already been married and had two sons, which Carmen's parents didn't approve of and also made him ineligible to be married in the Catholic Church. A year after meeting, the couple eloped.

These wouldn't be the only issues facing Carmen in her new environment. When she moved to Tucson Cyril's mother, Carmen's future mother-in-law, taught her how to drive a car.

"I wasn't scared [to learn], but my husband was very mad she had taught me," said Carmen. "He didn't want to worry about me driving around town."

This was a big difference for Carmen compared her hometown.

"Over there in my hometown, women didn't drive," said Carmen. "Only one or three people had cars over there - the rich ones."

Everyone else in Granados was accustomed to using horses or donkeys for transportation.

It wasn't until eight years after getting married that Carmen became pregnant with her first child, Piri. At that same time, Cyril's sons from his first marriage, Mike, 14, and Tony, 12, moved to Tucson to live with Cyril and Carmen.

"I'm happy I had a long honeymoon," said Carmen.

When Piri was ten-years-old, Carmen had her second child, Solano, and two years later her final child, Maria "Chacha," was born.

Her cooking skills came in handy when she found herself with two teenage boys to feed and a growing family.

"Mike and Tony liked the homemade beans and tortillas when they came to the house," said Carmen.

She even joked that Mike and Tony are more Mexican than her own kids.

"Tony likes menudo, tortillas, tamales, but Solano doesn't," said Carmen.

Like her mother, Carmen stayed home with her children and didn't work outside of the house.

"When I married my husband, I told him I wanted to work and he told me, 'It costs me more to have you work than to stay home with the kids,'" said Carmen.

But staying home was anything short of work. Carmen remembers other women telling her that she was lucky when she told them she was a stay-at-home mom, but she didn't feel lucky.

"When you stay in the house, you work more," said Carmen.

Now Carmen's children are grown with their own kids, her grandchildren. But she continues to cook and bake, taking the extra food to her children's homes for their families to eat. 

Follow along with Carmen while she bakes her favorite recipe, click here.

To see a map of where Carmen's life has taken her, click here.

Written by Whitney Misenhimer