Grinding corn with a hand mill

For many of my generation, grinding corn with a hand mill was a task that gave us satisfaction and also taught us responsibility and how to help the family.

Personally, it was my turn in the afternoons when my grandmother needed that help for the arepas and almost all the adults in the house were at work.

Although it was possible to buy pre-cooked corn flour, my grandmother preferred to make them from corn, partly because she thought they were tastier and partly because corn flour was more expensive.

She would boil the maize and after cooling it, she would try to remove as much of the husk as possible from the kernels in order to grind it.

I agree with her that the arepas or empanadas with natural corn, which she made on dates when the week or fortnight was charged, were tastier, filled with mashed potatoes and cheese or chicken with lard.

As I said in another post, my grandmother was a popular chef and on many occasions she used that wisdom to make a little money, selling arepas, empanadas and even lunches, when a contractor company paved the streets in my neighbourhood.

Grinding corn in a device that was already considered rudimentary had its tricks, since grinding it too fast, besides making it more tiring, meant that the dough was not homogeneous, so it had to be passed through the mill several times.

Another secret was that the mill had to be at an ideal height for the user. In my case, my grandmother used to place it on a sturdy wooden table that she had and that allowed me to work comfortably.

When she saw that I was tired she would reward me with a lemon juice with panela and I would rest while I drank it while she was making the arepas with the flour that was already ready.