Hello masa-heads,
I hope you all had a lovely holiday and New Year!
Thank you all for a successful end of year Tamal Feast, I really enjoyed making tamales this year and I hope you all loved yours. I will do my best to offer seasonal, weekly tamales at all of our pickups, so keep an eye out for these.
I took a little break to deal with end of year and start of year business admin things, and to do some planning for 2022. As new variants arise and cases numbers increase, I’ve had to cancel some classes and dinners that were planned for January. I was able to book the event space in my kitchen for a few dates in January, and will hopefully be able to open a few more dates for classes. Our Alice Collective classes will be capped at 6 people per class and you will learn how to make better tortillas, tetelas, tlacoyos, sopes, gorditas and huaraches. I will provide you all with masa and tools to use during the class as we explore these masa shapes. I ask that all attendees be vaccinated and wear a mask, and the ventilation system will be on full blast with one open door. We will get to meet some like minded masa-heads and hopefully learn a thing or two. Open Classes are on Wed 1/19 and Wed 1/26. Private at home classes are also available to book here.
Pop-Up / Market Dates and Group Masa Classes
Thursday, January 13th - Oakland, Preorder Pickups at 272 14th Street Oakland 5:30-6:30 pm. Pre-Orders will go live on Friday 1/7 at 12:00p to Wednesday 1/12 12:00p.
Wednesday, January 19th - Oakland, Class will be held at 272 14th Street Oakland 5:30-7:30 pm. Limited at 6 people, must be vaccinated & boosted, and masks are required. We will make tortillas, tetelas, tlacoyos, sopes, and huaraches. You will get to taste all of these masa forms and take 2lbs of masa home. Sign up HERE
Thursday, January 20th - Oakland, Preorder Pickups at 272 14th Street Oakland 5:30-6:30 pm. Pre-Orders will go live on Friday 1/14 at 12:00p to Wednesday 1/19 12:00p.
Wednesday, January 26th - Oakland, Class will be held at 272 14th Street Oakland 5:30-7:30 pm. Limited at 6 people, must be vaccinated & boosted, and masks are required. We will make tortillas, tetelas, tlacoyos, sopes, and huaraches. You will get to taste all of these masa forms and take 2 lbs of masa home. Sign up HERE
Don’t worry SF, I didn’t forget about you. More to come…
Private Masa Classes are Open too.
If you are interested in making tortillas, tetelas, tlacoyos, huaraches, gorditas and sopes in the comfort of your home, with friends and family, I got you covered. Classes are designed for 4-6 people. You host at your home. I bring everything you need and you all get loads of masa to keep practicing at home. Great for families, gift for friends, or small group building activity!
The pivots continue or (how being an improv nerd paid off in unexpected ways)
As most of you know, I don’t disclose much personal information outside of this newsletter and I am a bit hesitant about being publicly front and center when it comes to social media. I don’t know why I’ve been hesitant to being photographed or becoming more of a public face for the Bolita “brand.” Maybe it’s because I want the focus to be on the masa, maybe it’s insecurity, maybe it’s just a FU to the way we consume food media and “chef culture.” But, there was a time when I was unabashedly public and literally throwing myself into the limelight all the time.
After taking a year off after high school, to work as a barista at a fancy Rutherford restaurant and read 52 books in one year, I eventually made my way to New York City. I wanted to get away from St. Helena, and NYC was the most exotic and exciting place I could think of. I enrolled at the Eugene Lang College at the New School University, to appease my parents, and I signed up for an Upright Citizen’s Brigade’s Improv 101 class, to appease my appetite for becoming a comedian.
Improv comedy consumed me. I took classes one day a week, practiced with my team/troupe twice per week, and saw shows at least four evenings every week. I threw myself into the NYC improv world and quickly became obsessed. Performing in basement theaters, bars and music venues became a weekly occurrence. Talking about improv until last call and then walking over the Williamsburg bridge as the sun rose became a recurring scene in my life. It was magical.
Improv provides a lot of freedom. Every practice and show was full of moments that were only experienced once, shared only with the people in that room or theater. These moments were created by genuinely reacting to what our scene partners said, did and made us feel. All of these organic moments built off one another, and were guided by a set of principles that allowed the freedom and spontaneity to exist in a way that was productive toward a thematic show. Knowing and practicing these principles allowed us to build small talk and scenes about nothing into a fully fleshed show with themes, callbacks, emotion, and hopefully, laughs.
These principles have somehow stayed with me after all of these years. They’ve guided me in building relationships, friendships, and Bolita. The most basic of these is the idea of “Yes and…” This is the idea that when your scene partner says or does something, you accept it and then expand on it. Whatever this idea may be, it is now your reality. Bolita has been built through yes and-ing my way through problems and thoughts.
Commitment is incredibly important. I was always taught to commit as much as possible to an idea. In improv, commitment leads to establishing a baseline of reality, and this baseline allows for strange behavior or unusual choices to stand out—hopefully, acknowledging these breaks in reality leads to laughter. I like to think of commitment as an adherences to a set of personal rules. This way, if you ever break these personal rules, you can quickly acknowledge that you are breaking these rules. With Bolita, my commitment is to my mission values (I’ll get my laughs and humor elsewhere).
Pivoting and changing things on the fly is scary, and it can be very disruptive. But, improvising my way through building Bolita has been fairly easy because of my commitment to my values. Making decisions has been easier knowing that I am committing to our sourcing policy. We always use non-gmo ingredients, and try our absolute best to use ingredients that are produced ethically. We support POC and Latinx producers, aiming to put as much money back into our communities as possible.
As we encounter another variant, more and more restaurants close temporarily, and our consumption patterns change with the New Year, I’m accepting all of these changes and improvising with commitment. Expect our masa and tortillas to get better, expect us to make more dishes and host more dinners. 2022 is going to be a a fun year.
For more visual content, you can follow my Instagram @bolitamasa