In the old days, women woke before dawn to make tortillas, but by the time my grandfather inherited this daily task, it was a daytime venture. First he mixed the ingredients in a bowl bigger than his head. My mother’s secret was to add a drizzle of hot milk to her dough to make tortillas “as soft as a baby’s behind,” but Grandpa stuck to the original recipe. Flour, hot water, baking soda, salt, lard.

Grandpa let the dough rise; then he pinched fistfuls, rolled them in his hands, and lined them up in rows like an army. After these troops had rested under a clean kitchen towel, he rolled them out into perfect moons with a wooden rolling pin. Clunk-CLUNK, clunk-CLUNK, clunk-CLUNK. Grandpa pat-patted each tortilla in his calloused hands a few times to stretch them before placing them gently on the comal. I watched them bubble and inflate and marveled at how he could flick them over with his bare fingers without burning himself, the house gradually filling with the warm scent of tortillas and the heat causing the kitchen windows to weep.

These were not my mother’s tortillas but a bigger, thicker, hardier variety, like the giant Martian sunflowers Grandpa grew in his backyard. At the end of his labor, there were huge dusty tortilla towers, enough to feed his three adult offspring and two grandchildren who lived with him, and a little extra for guests. Tortillas to accompany the daily soup. Pigs’ feet soup. Meatball soup. Tripe soup. Chicken soup. Soups with pasta shaped like melon seeds. Meals that could be stretched by adding water. He even made the canned dog food stretch by spreading it onto tortillas like pâté. Well, he was a practical man.

During the Depression, Grandpa bought flour and rice and beans by the sack and by the barrel. He made sure his family never went without. Often a hobo would be invited to share a meal even though my grandparents had nine kids to feed. Maybe only those who have been poor understand what it is to be poor.

I think the memory of not having enough to eat must have haunted Grandpa forever, because he was never stingy with food. Ever. Sacks of oranges brought out from his bedroom off the kitchen when you least expected. Watermelons rolled out from under his bed. He spread newspapers on the kitchen table and on the floor and carved slices so wide we had to hold them with two hands, wedges so thick they hurt the corners of your mouth when you took a bite.

Like the people of the Mexican countryside, Grandpa didn’t hug, kiss, or even talk much.

The language he spoke fluently was food. “El camino a la boca nunca se equivoca,” he liked to say: One never doubts the route to the mouth. And then he would hand me a flour tortilla, still hot from the griddle, with a dab of butter and a dash of salt. Or maybe he would improvise; a tortilla with canned tuna. Or fried bologna with mustard. Or his most memorable innovation—a peanut butter taco.

Add peanut butter to a warm flour tortilla fresh from the griddle or reheat a flour tortilla on both sides on a griddle. A spoonful of peanut butter will do because it will spread. Fold the tortilla over. The peanut butter melts and is even more delicious than on bread. Nowadays I substitute almond butter for peanut and leave the tortilla on the comal a little longer till it’s extra crispy. Is there anything better for breakfast with a mug of café de olla? I can almost hear Grandpa saying, “Buen provecho.”