medium · Act reading

The summer my grandmother taught me to make tamales, she rarely spoke of measurements. She would press a bit of masa between her fingers, frown, and add a splash of broth without ever consulting a cup. When I begged her for the recipe in writing, she laughed and said the recipe lived in her hands, not on paper. Years later, standing in my own kitchen, I finally understood that what she had refused to write down was not stinginess but a kind of trust: she believed I would learn the dough the way she had, by failing at it until my fingers knew the answer. The narrator comes to understand that her grandmother's refusal to write down the recipe was primarily an expression of:

1. a belief that the narrator would learn best through hands-on experience.
2. frustration with the narrator's repeated and insistent questions.
3. a wish to keep the family's tamale recipe a guarded secret.
4. her own inability to recall the exact measurements she used.

Sign up free to see the explanation and track your rank →