I have to reveal the fact that my mother never made a flauta in her life. Neither have I. I think I ate flautas a couple of times, in a Mexican restaurant, decades ago.
Mom liked Mexican food, and I have memories of eating with her at Moosehill Cantina where, if one is lucky, they will be seated in the booth below a huge, moose head attached to the wall, watching over the room. Now I wish that I would have gone out for lunch or dinner with Mom more often, though it’s a futile and brutal exercise to want to go back and appreciate what felt like routine or obligation in the past and to make it right. I can’t do that with her, but I can be more present and generous with people in my life now.
My favorite part of flautas was the guacamole. Mom wouldn’t eat it. I don’t know if she ever tried avocados, smashed or sliced
This card from Mom’s recipe box gives instructions on how to bake store-bought, frozen flautas. Cover with chili sauce, heat in oven twelve minutes at 350 degrees. Or they can be heated in the microwave.
I’m curious, thinking about the need for writing the directions on a card instead of using those on the wrapper. For some reason, I like this mystery. It gives the heating up of the flautas a more personal feel. It gives my mom more power in the creation of a meal. I have to believe that she wrote this card after my dad’s death, when she only needed to heat one or two flautas for herself instead of a whole package for two. I can tell that she didn’t write this card in her last year. It is written in her almost-perfect cursive, learned when it was important to form letters correctly. More recently, her handwriting showed evidence of how hard it was to use a pen, due to the arthritis that enlarged and bent her joints over the years.
I will never use this recipe card for making flautas, yet I can’t yet throw it away.
