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June 18, 1905

November 27, 2011 by debraWriter

In the year that Grandma Chuy (Maria de Jesus Jimenez) was born in Mexico, in 1905, Theodore Roosevelt was the President of the United States, a postage stamp here cost two cents, and Albert Einstein proposed his Theory of Relativity. In Mexico, roads were of dirt or cobblestone, travel was mostly by horseback, by foot and by burro, and the Great Rebellion that would lead to the Mexican Revolution of 1910 had just begun.

Grandma Chuy at age 103

When Grandma was about eleven, Pancho Villa’s men came to town. They were a dreaded presence, and locals took shortcuts to race ahead on horseback and warn of their imminent arrival. Which was just in time for Grandma’s father, a store owner who would be a natural target for the bandits’ robbing and murdering ways – anyone with money was targeted. So Grandma’s father was escorted into the nearby Sierra by two of his workers, and stayed gone for 3 days. Grandma and her siblings had little warning, and Grandma hid under a bed for several hours, frozen with fear. When she came out, two of her father’s men were swinging by their necks on the front porch, having paid with their lives for not divulging her father’s whereabouts, and being unable to produce the money the outlaws were seeking.

Oh, the things I have seen in this life, she would tell me. The life I have had, she would say, shaking her head in disbelief at her own life story.

Sometime before 1925, she married a wife-beater because he looked at her when he came to her father’s store, and he showed interest in her. He came more than once to the house and tried to speak with her on the front porch, even reaching out to touch her hand – which Grandma tried to avoid, but his hand did touch hers, just barely. And after that, Grandma assumed no other man would want her, that she was already tainted somehow with this man’s interest alone. She assumed the whole town had seen that fateful brush of his hand upon hers and that everyone would now assume she was his, and so she might as well be his since her fate was sealed. How stupid I was, how ignorant, she told me, shaking her head with amazement that she had ever been that naive.

They had 5 children, all boys, and it was a hard life once the wife-beater’s tendencies came out. It wasn’t long before any money he made turned into alcohol and the beatings began. Grandma recalls seeing stars more than once, and wondering at times if this would be the one to kill her. Sadly, he beat the children, too, and terrorized them all. Many a day was spent without food due to his drinking problem, and Grandma often went hungry just to give a little more to the kids. They slept on the floor, huddled together for warmth, and covered with jackets and a single blanket, hoping their slumber would not be interrupted by another 3:00 am rampage.

Her own family wanted to help her, but her humiliation was so great, she somehow could not accept it. They wanted her to leave him, once and for all, but she says she couldn’t see any hope for her future and was completely paralyzed with despair – it took her many more years to come to that decision. Gradually, she began finding work as a maid and earning enough money to (barely) support her children, with charitable help from the church and the community. Until finally, little Grandma says she was walking down the road one day with her children, and one in her arms, and she saw the pitying way the people looked at her, with her ragged clothing and the bruises she had on her face. The next day she woke up and finally knew she could do it, that she didn’t deserve this anymore and that she had the power to change it. She also had a new baby to protect, and she couldn’t bear the thought of seeing one more child go through the nightmare. So when her youngest boy was only 6 months old, she left her marriage (but never divorced or re-married). Grandma was 40, and little did she know, but she still had 66 more years to live!

This courageous act (especially at that time and in Mexico) was the beginning of her becoming the beloved and respected Matriarch of the family, the beginning of her rapid evolution into a wise and wonderful woman of strength and humor and faith. She became her true self and lived the rest of her 60+ years on a completely different level. When her husband was dying of cancer several years later, Grandma went to attend to him until he died. She told me she felt sorry for him and that she forgave him, although she never regretted leaving him.

Maria de Jesus Jimenez was unafraid of new things, she was an intelligent and curious person, she had a cracker-jack memory and wit, and her heart was full of love for all of her family and extended family. A devout Catholic with her own favorite Saints and Niños, she prayed twice a day, every day. I feel honored to have been on that prayer list for the last several years, ever since I met her and brought her to the U.S. on her first-ever plane trip – at age 90! That was followed by her first-ever boat ride on the San Francisco Bay, with a very nervous Grandma ‘Jesus-Mary-and-Josephing’ her way down the gangplank to get on the ship. I found out later that she had always (for some unknown reason) been deathly afraid of going on a boat. But she did it, and we had fun.

It will be strange to go back to Mexico now without her there – Grandma Chuy passed away on November 14th, 2011 at the age of 106 – and though her hearing had faded and walking was more difficult lately, she was mentally sharp until her very last moments. She herself could not believe she had lived so long, and I remember when I was there for her 103rd birthday, I made her a coconut cake and she took a long time just staring at the burning candles on the cake, shaking her head in disbelief and saying, can you believe it, I’m this old?

We had 3 more years after that, and it was a gift. And that, more than anything, is what Grandma taught me – it’s all a gift. All of it.

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Posted in Cultural Musings | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment »

007 Housewives

September 4, 2011 by debraWriter

A tale of what not to do when in Mexico…

This story is completely true – only the name of my friend, Nanette, has been changed to Jeanette, for reasons that may become obvious as the story continues, and it’s not about Central Mexico this time, but it does take place in Mexico…

So my friend, “Jeanette”, had this funny (as in – odd) job, wherein she went around the USA “testing the cellular networks”. This involved lots of flights and rental cars, and just plain old driving all over rural places, pulling off to the side of the road and setting up some equipment that would send out signals and receive all of this apparently vital gobbledy-gook techie stuff in return. For the first year or so, she never left the USA, and just went from state to state doing the testing.

But one day she told me she had just been sent on her first trip out of the country, and as it happened, it was a trip to Mexico. And not just any place in Mexico, but Ciudad Juarez, which is known for being seriously dangerous – as in lots of murders each year, in addition to hundreds of young women mysteriously disappearing. Every country has its dangerous city, I suppose, and this was definitely Mexico’s. When she got back from her trip, which she had taken alone, she told me one of the things that had happened when she was there – she was pulled over on a neighborhood street doing her testing thing, when a police officer kind of hesitantly came over to her car and told her that she was about to get robbed “within 10 minutes” and needed to leave asap. Then without waiting to see if she would even take his advice, he took off as fast as he could. Her response? She said she hated to stop what she was doing since the gobbedly-gook was in full progress by that time, but she reluctantly went ahead and packed it up, and left to go see if she might be able to get a good enough signal to do the testing from inside her hotel room. Fantastic idea, “Jeanette”.

So when she mentioned possibly going to Mexico again, this time flying into Mazatlan, I felt compelled to go with her – I’d be Chauffeur, Bodyguard, Cultural Director and Alleged Translator. At the very least, I knew I could help her order a Vegetarian burrito.

Once through the tiny Mazatlan airport, we went to the miniscule car rental booth. It was a very intimate little glass-walled building, about the size of two phone booths, just standing by itself in the parking lot, surrounded by asphalt and baking in the tropical sun. Once inside and in line, a man who had been on our plane began chatting with Jeanette. Turns out he spoke Techie, too, and seemed to know all about what she was doing. Little did he know that Jeanette was a Julliard-trained dancer and yoga instructor, so not exactly a true techie – it was just a job she found herself doing since she needed an income, since dancing for a living doesn’t really seem to happen that much in real life. He, on the other hand, was more of a real-deal tech person – a techie from Oregon who now worked for an agricultural manufacturing company. He was traveling to huge agri-farms all over Mexico, and lots of them were just north of Mazatlan, in the Mexican tomato-belt.

Next thing I know, we are rental car caravaning, following him to a restaurant in downtown Mazatlan, where I happen to notice that the two of them are enjoying a nice lunch together – at my same table, if you know what I mean. And coincidentally, this guy is staying at our same hotel, AND he’s also been to the city we are supposed to visit the next day – Culiacan – so he’s full of great info on where to stay there. That night at our mutual Mazatlan hotel, he draws a cryptic map on a cocktail napkin for Jeanette, directing her to the recommended hotel.

One of the problems with the company Jeanette worked for was the uncertainty – you never really knew what to expect as far as where you’d end up spending the night, since it all depended on the testing and the results – so if anything didn’t work, they decided on-the-fly as to whether she should find a hotel and stay in that particular town for the night. And they may not decide this until after midnight, because their ultimate goal is to never have to pay a penny they don’t need to pay, so they honestly have no problem letting Jeanette be on the side of some dark road in the middle of nowhere, just until they finally decide, yeah, well, okay – go get a room, and be sure to shop around for a cheap one. At 2 am. By yourself in a strange town. Because after all, if she gets a room, then they will have to reimburse her for that, which is a horrible thing to have to do, so therefore, each reimbursable expense must be individually approved. Every single time.

By now I’m thinking she may need to call them every time she’s hungry, just to get Burrito Reimbursement Approval. But it did add another layer of mystique to the day, so the next morning we both packed overnight bags (just in case!), grabbed our napkin-map, and headed up the coast and then a bit inland to Culiacan.

Looking back, we probably should have high-fived each other and shouted, “Let the Adventures begin!” right as we took off in our economy rental car.

Greetings of Culiacan

We arrived in Culiacan without any problems except that it was getting to be an awfully hot day, and somewhere between the bridge – where we were supposed to follow the river and turn left – and the Promised Land Hotel, we got lost. But who cared? We did have cell phones and the hotel’s phone number. And besides, Jeanette wanted to see if she could get a good signal and start some testing asap so maybe we could just go back to Mr. Oregon, I mean, Mazatlan, that same night without having to stay in Culiacan at all.

So I drove us up a steep hill into a really nice neighborhood that reminded me of where we lived in California – Jeanette thought that maybe from a hilltop, she could get a strong signal for the testing. This particular hill seemed to overlook the whole city – what a panoramic view! I pulled up in front of a nice big house with actual green lawn out by the sidewalk and alongside the driveway. So unusual to see an American-style front yard in Mexico! With a nice smooth sidewalk! And a lawn!

You couldn’t really see the house itself, except just the tippy-top of the roof because they had a big orange-painted stucco wall running all around the front and the side of the house, and then a big iron gate across the driveway. Like a mafia compound, or something. But of course that did not cross my mind at the time. Nope, not for a second.

I parked under the nice shade tree they had by the street and Jeanette began to get stuff out of the car to “set up for testing”. She opened the trunk, got out some cables and grabbed a black hard-case from the back seat, then asked me to pop the hood so she could access the car battery. She connected a long black cable to the battery, ran it alongside the driver’s side of the car, and then into the window behind me, across the back of my seat and into the black case, which was now sitting between our two front seats. Then another thinner black cable with a cone-shaped thing at one end was pulled out of the black case and strung out the same window behind me, up to the top of the car, and suction-cupped to the roof. Instant antenna! Finally, she got into the passenger seat and hooked her laptop into the black case for power, started typing and also dialed the USA on her cell phone.

Wow. This was my first time to see the actual set-up, and it was a bit much to take in – we now had a slightly popped-open hood with a big cable coming out of the engine area, an antenna on our roof, and cables running in and out of windows and laptops. Just like the 007 Housewives that I was sure the machete-wielding gardener across the street must be thinking we were, as he slowly swung his heavy blade of dark metal back and forth, pretending to cut weeds. Only he wasn’t really cutting weeds, he was really more like staring at us. I couldn’t blame him – we did look about as freaky-weird as probably anything anybody had ever seen. 007 Housewives – at your service!

The ultra-suave house we were parked in front of was on a corner – the street took a sharp right turn just after this. Across the street on my left were three big 2-story houses with large garages, then down past them on that same side of the street was just a blank spot, where the land appeared to drop down steeply. Which is where the gardener vanished, only to reappear a few minutes later – still wearing his straw hat, but minus the machete.

Meanwhile, I had settled-in and began to observe my surroundings as I patiently waited to see if Jeanette would get the info she needed. I actually felt somewhat comforted when I noticed that almost every car that drove by was a late-model expensive one – lots of BMW’s, Mercedes and plenty of gleaming SUV’s were zipping around that corner in front of me, coming and going in both directions. I was surprised I had not seen one single small or beat-up looking car in the 15 minutes we’d been sitting there. So that was nice – just like back home. Thank God I’d at least picked a nice neighborhood for us to look so ridiculous in. In fact, it must be the absolute best neighborhood I’d ever seen in all of Mexico.

Which unfortunately was still not ringing any bells.

But Mr. sans Machete was just about to. ‘Cause when he magically reappeared from the blank spot, he crossed over to the sidewalk alongside us and was now walking by, ever so slowly, openly examining the contents of our unlocked and open-windowed car as he crept by. Jeanette did not even notice him walk by right next to her, at a snail’s pace. Then he did it again, back the other direction – just in case he missed anything the first time, like the actual e-mail address of Jeanette’s boss or something. Again, she just kept working while I tried to see if I could catch his eye and give a nice, polite, reassuringly housewife-ish smile – but no such luck.  Next, he stepped off the curb and went into the street in front of the car, turned toward us and walked alongside the driver’s side of the car, right next to me – ever so slowly, within inches. I realized that if he did decide to open my car door and yank me out onto the street for a more formal introduction – there was absolutely nothing to stop him. As he passed by, he took out a cell phone from his beat-up blue jeans’ pocket and put it to his ear.

I was afraid to turn around and look, but I snuck a peek in my side mirror and saw that he was behind our car. Then a big black SUV roared up the hill behind us, from the same direction we had come – from the city – and the black iron gate in the driveway just behind our car swung open automatically. The SUV disappeared into the gated compound, with a wave from the gardener to the SUV’s driver.

Kinda different.

Mr. sans Machete was giving me the creeps by now and I wished he would go in there, too, but instead, he passed by on the sidewalk again, right past Jeanette, then crossed the street kiddy-korner over to the blank spot and disappeared down the hill, step by step.

The next thing that happened struck me as quite odd. A rusty, rattle-trap, sputtery little car (with a taxi sign on its roof and a pizza delivery sign on the side), zipped around the corner from in front of us, seemingly on its merry, shaky little way to the city. But when the driver saw Jeanette and I parked in front of the gated house, he looked like he’d seen a ghost – his eyes popped out in alarm, he slammed his brakes on – and suddenly one of the big garage doors across the street opened up, and he pulled into it! Then the door rolled back down and the taxi-pizza car was gone from view.

Hmmm.

A taxi/pizza-delivery car, and an old rusty, falling-apart one at that, had just pulled into the garage of a very big fancy house across the street, probably using his own remote to open the door, after apparently having some sort of big reaction at seeing us. Things were not completely adding up, but my James Bond radar was definitely beginning to crackle and sputter to life.

I asked Jeanette if she was almost done and told her I thought we needed to leave – right about NOW. I explained that things were getting a bit strange and so we really should be going. She was still busy and not really catching my drift. But Mr. Machete’s re-emergence finally convinced her. Because when he came back up the hill this time, he positioned himself directly in front of us, only about 20 feet away. He crossed his arms and glared directly at us without so much as a blink. No machete needed.

Which finally got her attention, so she got out of the car, took our antenna-cone down, removed the cable from the battery, and tossed it all hurriedly into the back seat. I took off – flipping a U-turn and heading back down to the city as as fast as I could. Jeanette was on the phone with the hotel people, trying to get directions. Many of the street signs were missing along the way, so the navigation was from one landmark to another. Did you pass the church with the tiny angels near the roof? Yes. Do you see a city park up ahead on your right? Uh-huh. Have you passed the Taqueria with the red umbrellas by the sidewalk? Yeppie-doo.

Finally, we made it to the hotel, but of course we still didn’t have word as to whether or not we should actually get a room (!), so while we waited for the Papal blessing, I thought it best to wait over in the big empty parking lot that was to the right of the hotel’s entry drive, as opposed to the full-of-cars parking lot on the left – I didn’t want overly-eager valets coming out and trying to take our bags when we still weren’t sure if we’d be staying or not, and from inside the hotel’s lobby, you could not actually see the parking lot on the right, so I picked that one. We took our pick of the wide open spaces and parked in the shade.

Hotel Lucerne in Culiacan

And there we sat, waiting for some engineer in the USA to analyze the data Jeanette had sent them to see if it passed muster, and if we could therefore go back to Mazatlan, or if we needed to stay and try again tomorrow with more testing. After just a few minutes of sitting in the car, I heard a loud noise. Suddenly a big, fully camouflage-painted GIANT helicopter came over the tops of the tall, skinny palm trees and began circling our car – Yes, CIRCLING OUR CAR – the only single solitary car in this particular (entire) otherwise empty parking lot. There was a man wearing a dark jumpsuit and a helmut, hanging out the open passenger doorway – obviously harnessed-in so he wouldn’t fall from the weight of the amazingly huge canon-of-a-camera he was holding. The telephoto lense of that thing was as big around as a sewer pipe, and it was pointed straight at us.

As the helicopter chopped the air and trimmed the palm trees MASH-style, the jumpsuited photographer began taking photo after photo of us – like a paparazzi photo-shoot from on high.  From the front, the sides, the back, and around to the front again. Don’t forget that license plate! It dawned on me that this may have something to do with being 007 Housewives in front of Mr Machete’s boss’s house, so I just looked up and smiled and waved. Hi, guys! How’s it going? Blink blink, cute smile, little wave. Toodle-oo.

I looked over at Jeanette – Yoo-hoo! Anybody home? Guess what? There’s a GIANT helicopter flying over our heads, taking LOTS of pictures!!

She hadn’t really noticed, of course – still busy on the telefono to see if we had permission to sleep tonight. Holy crapolie, Jeanette – do you realize what just happened? That was a military helicopter! Gigantic and camouflaged!! They must have followed us from the mafia kingpin’s house! Wow, they’re good – I didn’t even see anyone follow us, well, maybe except for the pizza-taxi guy, but nobody else! Oh my god – we may be interrogated at any moment – I just hope they speak REALLY GOOD English because if they don’t we could be here for days – Days, I’m telling you!

I figured the nice interrogators and policemen would show up any second now and invite us to exit our vehicle, palms to the sky, then face to the pavement. I was mentally preparing for a day in jail under bright lights, a new diet of just beans and coca-cola, with maybe the President of Mexico giving us a pardon or something, after I was allowed to make a few phone calls.

But nobody came. Nobody said anything.

So then I thought, well, of course they could investigate all they wanted and what would they find? The rental car rented by Jeanette in Mazatlan, and all of her info – Boring!! Me? Well, 007 Housewife did have a certain cachet, I mean it’s definitely not every day that one gets chased by a helicopter, and a huge camouflaged one to boot, but then again, I really think I prefer my Paparazzi hiding in bushes – at least that way you can see their faces and kind of get a feel for who they are as people. These helicopter guys seemed a little on the deadly-serious side. I mean, just because someone parks in front of your house and turns their car into some sort of prickly-pear space-mobile of electronic Surveillance, and maybe one of them accidentally tries to see if you happen to have an open wifi network they can join, just to do a little e-mail or something while they sit there patiently waiting – well that’s no reason to become completely paranoid. Right?

So we sat there silently digesting the moment for quite a few minutes, then unceremoniously got out of the car and went inside to get a room, only to find out they were booked solid. By now, I was definitely beginning to feel a conspiracy brewing. Did you see that slight smile on the lady behind the counter’s face? Almost  a smirk, really. That means they DO have a room, but someone has probably told them to tell us they don’t, so that we’ll have no choice but to walk back out to our car and THEN – guess who will be there to whisk us away!

We left the lobby and walked outside, but nobody was waiting. We got into the economy rental car and drove to the next hotel. We spent the night, did more testing the next day – from the hotel room (!), had some good food at a sidewalk Mariscos taco bar next to the hotel, then went back to Mazatlan to swim in the hotel’s pool and enjoy a nice dinner by the beach. Nobody followed us.

End of story.

Mazatlan

Posted in Cultural Musings, cultural travel, travel mexico | Tagged , , , , , , , , , |

Step-by-step Chile Rellenos

August 24, 2011 by debraWriter

Chile rellenos were always something of a mystery to me – I loved eating them, but whenever I asked a Mexican cook how to make them, I was always told, “oh, it’s a lotta work”. They seemed to be perched high atop the peak of Mexican cookery, along with maybe making tamales, or your own mole’ sauce from scratch. So I happily continued eating, but not cooking, chile rellenos, until I finally got the gumption to go ahead and figure it out.

chile rellenos, fresh and hot

And it’s really not difficult – just keep following the step-by-step process and you’ll end up with a fantastic dish. My goal in making Mexican food, which is the same as when I attempt to re-create any type of ethnic cuisine, is always to make it taste homemade – to make it so authentically that even a native of that country would never-ever guess it was made by a Gringa. And once you taste the difference between a restaurant or store-bought chile relleno and your own freshly-made ones, you’ll have no doubt that these are definitely worth the time to make and they just may become your new special-occasion, wow-the-guests favorite. They are both delicious and impressive – try it!

Here is the step-by-step chile relleno recipe that I have come up with over time. Using authentic ingredients is of course key, so although you may not be able to shop in Mexico, there are things you can do that will boost the flavor and give it that wonderful homemade taste: The cheese you use to stuff the chiles, makes a huge difference (see the “Cheese, please” posting for a story about my favorite cheese in Mexico: http://gringatraveler.com/2011/06/26/cheese-please/), the oil you fry them in should be fresh and bland-flavored (not olive oil or any strong-flavored oil – use safflower or even a good quality corn oil, since corn oil is normally what they use and it does give a certain flavor profile to the food), the tomatoes should be vine-ripened/Farmer’s Market/home-grown if possible, and I also prefer to use organic eggs for the batter. All in all, everything adds up to enhance the flavor of the dish, and after all – in the rural places in Mexico where the cuisine tastes the best – they have their own fresh chicken eggs, they grow or obtain vine-ripened chiles and tomatoes, and they know who makes the best homemade cheese in town.


Step-by-step Chile Rellenos (serves 4-6)

Ingredients:
• 6 fresh Pasilla chiles (select straight, smooth, dark-green and thick-fleshed chilies with thick stems strongly attached, if possible)
• 12 slices (or enough to fill the chiles about half full) of meltable Mexican queso fresco, or fresh creamy Farmer’s Cheese
• white flour or dry tamale masa as needed for dredging chiles
• 1 small ripe red plum/paste tomato, diced
• 1/2 small light-skinned zucchini, diced (or any squash you like such as patty-pan or yellow crookneck)
• 1 tall stalk celery, sliced
• 1/2 medium-sized yellow or white onion, thinly sliced (not diced, you want slices of onion)
• 10 to 12 medium (ping-pong ball sized) tomatillos, peeled of outer husk and rinsed (or double this # if using smaller tomatillos)
• 1/2 of a fresh jalapeno, seeded and chopped (optional)
• 1/3 to 1/2 cup of mild chicken broth
• 7 large eggs
• Plain-flavored oil as needed for frying

Prep and Make the Sauce:

1) Slice celery & onion, dice the tomato & zucchini, peel outer husk off tomatillos & rinse

tomatillos, browned

lightly brown tomatillos

2) Brown (caramelize) tomatillos on all sides in non-stick skillet coated with approx. 2 teaspoons of plain oil. Once slightly brown, cover and cook slowly until soft, then cool.

saute veggies

3) Cook the sliced celery, onion, and zucchini over low heat in 1-2 T. of oil until soft (do not brown), then add the raw diced tomato when the other veggies are soft

Chile Relleno sauce

Chile Relleno sauce

4) Pureé cooked tomatillos in a blender with all of the juices from the skillet and 1/3 to 1/2 cup mild chicken broth, plus the chopped jalapeno (if desired), then pour into celery-onion-tomato-zucchini mixture; taste for salt; cover and keep warm. Note: chicken broth is meant to provide additional depth of flavor, but without adding a noticeable chicken flavor which can overpower the sauce, so taste to be sure – if your sauce is too thick, you may also thin it with plain water

Prep the chiles:

chiles black

Chiles with skins blackened

5) Broil the chiles on all sides until outer skin puffs and blackens. Let stand 2 minutes, then peel.

stuff the chile

Stuff the chile with cheese

6) Cut a short slit vertically up the side of each chile, pinch out the seeds, and lightly stuff chilies with cheese (approx 2 slices per chile, or as desired, but best not to overstuff)

Chiles dredged in masa flour

7) Close chilies with wooden toothpicks and coat outsides of chilies thoroughly with white flour or dry tamale masa

whipped eggs

whip whites stiff, add beaten yolks; fold together gently

8) Separate 7 eggs; whip egg whites until medium-stiff; whip egg yolks on high speed for 1 minute or until lemony-yellow, then fold both together very gently (egg mixture should remain very puffy)

chile frying

Fry golden brown

9) Dip chile into egg mixture or directly spoon egg mixture onto one side of chile and place into pre-heated oil – immediately spoon more egg mixture over the top of the chile. Fry golden-brown.

finished chile relleno

Top with sauce & ready to eat

10) Drain on paper towels, remove tootpicks, then plate and top with relleno sauce; garnish with crumbled Mexican cheese or sour cream

Enjoy!

Posted in Food Frenzy | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Chickens don’t have boobs

August 7, 2011 by debraWriter

When I first visited Mexico, I had lots of enthusiasm but pretty much no Spanish language ability, so I read lots of books, had the most coiffed hairdo in town, swept the patio, picked the lint off my clothes, and basically looked forward to phone calls from home like a prisoner in solitary confinement.

One day I decided to make chicken soup for my newly-adopted grandmother, Grandma Chuy.  It was the least I could do, being a guest in her house and being married to her grandson and all. The best part was that this would require at least 5 trips to different places, and of course that’s not even counting the time to check-in back at the house and say hello, take a little time to rest, then head out again for the rest of the ingredients – shopping in Old Mexico is a wonderfully long, drawn-out process. Perfect!

For the veggies, I needed to walk about 10 blocks to the Mercado. The Mercado was in the center of town, inside a 400-year-old building directly across from the 500-year-old main church.

It was the original-style Mexican shopping – a place where you could have a nice friendly chat over a dead pig’s head laying right on the counter, enjoy a handmade breakfast gordita deep-fried right in front of you in a huge copper kettle swimming with hot oil (watch out for those grease pops), or buy tiny little fresh quail eggs from an old lady with long braids down her back (tied together at the bottom with strips of black fabric, Native American style).

Inside the Mercado, the fruit and veggie sellers arrange their perishable wares in baskets and plastic bowls on tables covered with tablecloths. When you decide what you want, the proper way is to tell them and let them pick it out for you. They make quite a show of picking up each piece of fruit and examining it like the most critical customer, like they’ve never seen their own produce before – then place them in your bag with a proud smile. Shopping at the Mercado was fun, it was happening, and it could be wonderfully time-consuming to shop there, especially if you knew anyone – just the chats alone could add an extra full hour to your shopping time, once you made your way around from one purveyor to another, but unfortunately my lack of Spanish prevented that for me.

After the Mercado, it was on to the tortilla place for some fresh tortillas, to another veggie store for just a couple of things they didn’t have at the Mercado, then over to the Chicken Guy for my special chicken, which naturally, had just been killed a couple of hours earlier that morning. In fact, chickens are normally a special order kind of thing wherein you place the order the day before in order to assure yourself a chicken for the next day, so I was lucky to even get one – only one other chicken was in the case ready to be sold. Two more chickens were also there, but these were alive in small cages on the floor, apparently standing by just in case anyone had a chicken emergency. I felt a little bad, but they seemed blissfully bird-brained-oblivious to the corpses of their dearly departed inside the glass-cased cooler.

I was also surprised at how few chickens were available in the entire town – I guess chicken is not as popular as beef and pork. But it really should be – the ranch-raised chicken (as opposed to Agri-business chicken) is so good in Mexico, with such a delicious chicken-y chicken flavor. Like they are if you raise your own and feed them the best food – they taste like I wish all chicken tasted, all of the time.

After all of my hunter-gathering, I brought everything back to Grandma’s and took my time constructing a delicious soup with layers of flavor – brimming with tender veggies, delicious broth, and of course – pieces of that wonderful chicken-y chicken. I even threw in a little rice for good measure, since I found out she liked it that way.

At the magic moment, little Grandma came into the kitchen and politely sat down on one of her old, worn-out kitchen chairs with shiny chrome legs. She shyly folded her wrinkled, weathered Obi-Wan Kenobi hands in her lap and sat waiting patiently. I knew she was watching me intently, but the moment I glanced her way, she looked down demurely as though nothing had happened. She was just checking her fingernails to be sure they were clean.

I began ladling the soup into her bowl. What part of the chicken do you like, I asked her, en muy bueno Espanol, as I delved into the huge pot, probing for body parts. “No pechuga” she answered, which to me sounded just like “No pjhekdkckjh” My mind went blank. “No ___?” I asked. ”No pjhekdkckjh” she answered, this time waving her little Vienna sausage index finger back-and-forth sideways, in the classic Mexican “No” - with emphasis.

Oh, dear, she did the sideways finger-wag thing. What is that word?

This was my very first time cooking for her. Not to mention this was her first time to sample The Americana’s cooking, which apparently was almost impossible to believe since everyone knew that American women could not cook. At all. Whatsoever. They all thought (Grandma would confide to me later) that we either went out to eat or put frozen stuff into a microwave and simply pushed a button, so this was a big surprise to find out that I would actually be cooking for her. She probably wasn’t even entirely sure it would be edible.

“No pjhekdkckjh” = I had no idea. What??? She saw the look on my face, so to explain further, she gestured with her fingernails lightly rubbing against the very top of her chest, just below the collar-bone.

Suddenly I understood, and what’s more, I knew the actual word for it – I’d learned that word from my husband!! With a relieved smile, I said in my best Spanish, “Oh, you don’t like boobs? You don’t want any chicken boobs in your soup?”

95-year-old Grandma kind of lurched forward in her seat, and her hand flew quickly to cover her mouth. She looked a bit surprised, but she wasn’t saying anything. I thought maybe she didn’t quite hear me, or maybe my darned accent was the problem – that was probably it. So I repeated myself, this time a bit LOUDER, and with confidence – “You don’t like the chicken BOOBS, right?”

Well, this was the best thing I could have possibly said, because serious little Grandma began to chuckle uncontrollably. Like a schoolgirl in church – trying not to, but not being able to stop. Her eyes watered and she whipped out her handy little handkerchief to daub them. She’d look up at me for a moment, try not to laugh, then repeat. Finally, all I could do was laugh, too – not even knowing why. What the heck did I just say? I really didn’t know, until that phone call from home later that day…(“You asked my Grandma if she wanted boobs in her soup??!!! Oh, my God, I can’t believe you said that to my Grandma!”) Ha ha. Rub it in, Hubby-Dearest.

But it was worth it, because ever since then, Grandma and I have been the best of friends, joking around and cracking each other up, just being ourselves without pretense – and I give all the credit to chicken boobs for setting the tone of our relationship.

Grandma Chuy just celebrated her 106th birthday this year, and I wish her many more!

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Wheelbarrow cookies in Zac, Zac

July 1, 2011 by debraWriter

Zacatecas, Zacatecas. Like New York, New York, it’s a city in a state of the same name. Named after the Zacatecos Indians that held this land before (and during) the Spanish invasion into Mexico. To get to Zac-Zac, drive north from Guadalajara, through Aguascalientes. Once past Aguas about a half hour or so, the terrain dramatically changes and you begin to snake your way up a mountain – Zacatecas will be your reward, about 8,000 feet up. Looking out the window, nothing is familiar as the ground turns to gray gravel and beige sand and the trees become sparse and give way to cacti, then back to trees at an even higher elevation. Depending on the time of year, there could very well be snow. It snows in Zacatecas!

Zac Zac

Zacatecas, Zacatecas is a bustling University town with plenty of tourists, compared to most other parts of central Mexico. Busloads of British tourists arrive on red coaches and follow their megaphone-speaking leader; Americans and other visitors pass by with cameras hanging from necks. Zacatecas has its old, original downtown, and its newer downtown, complete with screamingly-60′s buildings and George Jetson-type architecture. Head for the old downtown.

Taken by Eneas De Troya, August 16, 2009

Because as soon as you enter the original downtown, the several-block area that was built by true Spanish craftsmen in the mid-1500′s to early 1700′s, you’ll feel as if you’ve entered into a golden and peach-hued post card. It’s that picture-perfect and gorgeous, and very deserving of its UNESCO World Heritage site status. Zacatecas is a colonial-style Spanish beauty, with beautiful buildings, grand plaza staircases, gardens, cobbled streets and narrow alleyways. It’s still a place where people not only sweep the sidewalks in front of their homes and shops, but also mop the sidewalk on a daily basis.

The old downtown also has some very nice trendy shops with a decidedly European flair. In fact, you could say that the whole of the old downtown has an old European feel to it, but with modern, eclectic influences – it’s a place where you can go out for Italian food, grab some sushi, or perhaps enjoy a cappuccino on a sidewalk cafe table near the old courthouse. Which is just what I was doing, when a nicely-dressed man in his 50′s came by with an old metal wheelbarrow lined with white cloth, and holding bundles of something.

He parked his wheelbarrow right next to my table and unveiled one of the bundles. It was a neat row of brownish-red colored cookies that he said his mother had just made, and that she only made them in the afternoon on Tuesdays, and would I like to try some with my coffee? Of course. So I bought 3 and soon wished I’d bought 300. So delicious, and unlike any other cookie I’d ever tried. Crisp, but not overly crunchy, dark and spicy-looking, but with a mild, unique flavor and dusted on top with a snow-cap of powdered sugar. Scrumptious. Don’t ever assume, as I did, that cookies from a wheelbarrow might not be so great – be sure to try one before you decide how many you want, before the man disappears and you never see him again.

Avenida Hidalgo, Zacatecas, Mexico

Posted in cultural travel, Food Frenzy, travel mexico, zacatecas mexico | Tagged , , , , , , , |

Cheese, please

June 26, 2011 by debraWriter

In the beginning, there was Dona Lola, the Mexican Julia Child cheese lady of Nochistlan, Zacatecas. I could never remember her name, so I always referred to her as Dona Queso. (Madam Cheese) – and of course, the “n” in the word “Dona” is supposed to have a tilde over it, so you know to pronounce it with an “en-ye” As in Dohn-yah. But darned if I can figure that out in Blog Land.

So Dona Queso was a tall farm-woman-of-a-cheesemaker, with a voice kind of like Julia’s, too – all high-pitched and twittery, despite her tall, semi-gangly size. And her “shop” was her living room and dining room, converted into a sweatshop cheese-making factory. Just kidding. It was only one or two ladies helping her, and one of them was her adult daughter, so not exactly a factory, although it must be admitted, they did sweat. Daintily of course, and for good reason. Because in Mexico, the real cheese, which is a type of fresh “farmer’s cheese” as we’d call it in the USA – can only be made in warm weather – it won’t work if it gets too cold, and being of a higher elevation in the Central Highlands region of Mexico, it does tend to get chilly at night and downright cold during the Winter months, when cheese-making is forced to stop.

Dona Queso and her husband owned a “ranch” (but keep in mind, everyone here calls their country property a ranch, even if it’s more the size of a burial plot) outside of town, and I frequently saw Mr. Queso coming to their house/cheese factory in his huge, old beat-up pick-up truck and unloading buckets and buckets of milk at the curb. Unpasteurized, I would assume, but super-clean. And the cheese made from that milk was super, amazingly, melty, creamy, tangy, delicious good. Damn it, so good. Anything you made with that cheese would win you a gold star, or a month’s supply of Brownie points, even if it was just a simple quesadilla – the cheese itself would elevate any dish to the pinnacle of gourmet achievement. I’m not even kidding, and I’m a good cook.

April 2011: Well, the up-to-the-minute, less-than-romantic news is that Dona Queso’s popularity seems to have ruined her quality – I guess they somehow started cutting corners, or maybe it was just that she got old and her daughter took over the business and doesn’t have the same touch, and now the word on the street confirms the news in my mouth – her cheeses are no longer superb, just pretty good. And pretty good just won’t cut it for me anymore, ironically all thanks to her. Hers seem more like mozzarellas now, more rubbery and with less buttery-ness.

So this time I found a new source. There’s a new ranch in town making cheese*.

wrapped and still frozen, straight from the suitcase

It’s too far to walk, but they do have a phone so you can call ahead and order, then take a taxi up there to get them, which is a $5 round-trip. (it’s worth it) And if you order more than 4, an old jalopy jeep will come to a rickety halt in front of your door and deliver them, no extra charge. They are every bit as utterly scrumptious as Dona Queso’s used to be – in other words, perfect. And a bit larger, too – pretty good size, actually – maybe almost a pound each.

And guess what? –  it’s legal to bring them home on the plane! (to the USA)

So I order a few to be ready a day or two before I have to fly home, then freeze them solid as cheese-bricks and place them inside zip-lock freezer bags in my checked luggage – by the time I get home, they are only partially-thawed which doesn’t hurt them at all, and I take one out for now and stick the rest in the freezer for later. (if I don’t have enough room in my suitcase, I simply give away some of my clothes)

See the beautiful texture?

They are heavenly – and so far, nothing like them here, even though we have a large population of Mexican-Americans where I live. Could be the milk, due to what they feed the cows over there, or the fact that it’s made from raw milk, rather than pasteurized or ultra-pasteurized like we mostly do here. Or all of the above.

Here's how it melts, in just a few seconds

* of course, in a town of 50,000+ people, there are many people making cheese, not just Dona Queso or the ranch that I found, as well as those buying it and bringing it to their stores in town from the bigger cities. But since I am a foodie, to put it politely (super-picky, hyper-critical food fanatic to put it a bit less glowingly), I am only really talking about the cream-of-the-crop, and also of course – the ones that I have discovered myself and can vouch for.

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Life-endangering dog walking

June 25, 2011 by debraWriter

My Mexican doggie! Well, first of all, I seriously doubt he will be mine, even though they are willing to let me bring him home. (the chocolate labrador puppy I fell in love with back in December, when visiting friends in Nochistlan, Mexico. (for background, see: Does your dog speak Spanish?).I returned to Mexico this Spring, to stay at my favorite place – Grandma’s (actually my ex’s grandmother) and hang out for 3 weeks, while getting some dental work done in town. Kind of a dog-training-root-canal vacation.

But knowing I’d be hanging out with the doggie, I planned for the trip by purchasing a training collar and retractable leash. They call him “Cappie”, a nickname for “El Capitan” (Grandma named him), and I was excited to take him out for his very first walk. Up till that point, his life was just eating, barking and jumping up on the gate for attention when people walk by into the kitchen (his chain-link gate is right next to the kitchen door so he sees everyone going back and forth across the patio and in and out of the kitchen).

Here he is, ready to go

So the very first time I take him out into the neighborhood – wouldn’t you know, we’re not 1 minute down the street and around the corner when another dog (a white, body-builder pit-bull mix) comes up to Cappie to give him a warm welcome to the outside world. And of course this Mr. Muscle Dog Welcome Waggon is not on a leash, he’s just free as a bird. The two dogs barely get started with the how-do-you-do, nice-to-meet-you and feel-free-to-sniff-my-butt formalities, when Cappie gets a bright idea and decides he’s going to do the invitation to play, but he does it in a certain kind of aww-shucks dude, let’s-be-best-friends kind of way – he sits down alongside the pitbull and puts his giant paw and long-ass arm up over this other dog’s neck. Yep, that’s what he did.
Did I mention that he’s much, much taller than the other dog (even sitting down), and apparently the other dog did not happen to notice the big smile on Cappie’s face, so Mr. Grouchy pit-bull goes nuts attacking him to teach him who’s boss. Cappie falls to the street and rolls over squeeling like a baby, showing his belly and playing appropriately submissive. Everything instantly stops, as you’d expect it to, if you speak Dog.
I’m yanking and pulling on Cappie’s leash, and it’s having no effect whatsoever. The dogs are now face to face again, and El Stupido still doesn’t get it, so this time he does his invitation to play by jumping straight up into the air in front of this dog like a pogo-stick. Boing! Boing! I’m spring-loaded! Watch me jump! Wonderful. Mix it up a little bit, Cappie. I like that kind of creativity in a dog.
Need I mention that this is obliged with another attack, and this time worse – biting Cappie’s rear-end pretty good, but no broken skin. Yikes, right next to the nuggets of gold, if you know what I mean. Yes, when everything’s in slo-mo, you do notice so many of the vivid details.
So I grab this lug of a dumb-ass puppy and give a mighty heave-ho on the leash to pull him away, and the collar comes clean off! Completely, magically, OFF, and now there’s nothing but two completely naked dogs standing before me, with one of course ready to kill the other one. It’s a heart-attack moment, but without any time for the actual heart attack itself – I am completely dumbstruck and in an alternate universe of disbelief – here is a dog on his VERY FIRST EVER walk in his LIFE, we are right around the corner from his house, not even one single minute away, and he’s now foot-loose and knows absolutely nothing, about anything. He just met me once about 3 months ago (at Christmas) – and after all, I am not the one who feeds him every day, and plus, how could he possibly have a clue as to his whereabouts when he’s never once been taken out – never smelled a single bush, telephone pole or blade of grass in his own neighborhood, he does not, and has never had, any reason to come to anyone when called, and now he has no tether, no collar, no nothing. I just about died right there.
But thank GOD this other mean, ornery, son-of-a- dog had a strong (and perhaps a bit alcohol-infused) male owner close-by, who was by now trying to get his dog to leave Cappie alone and continue their walk in the opposite direction. And thank GOD that all Mr. Stupid puppy-brain still cared about was playing, so amazingly, he didn’t actually take off – he could have run to California from there, for all I knew. I somehow got ahold of him again and tried like hell to squeeze him between my legs and get the collar back on while I leaned against the front grill of a parked car for extra leverage, but he wiggled free. Finally the pissed-off guy was getting even more fed-up with the whole ridiculous scene, so he helped me by grabbing Cappie until I could get the collar back on, leash still attached, and then finally we were on our “merry” way. With my shaky legs quivering all the way down the nice country lane.
When I got back to the house, I took two links out of the collar! (another great dog training tip, free from me to you) I also started taking a big stick with me each time to keep other dogs away. Because by the time my 3 week visit was over, that same white pit-bull mix had attacked him 4 times (with Cappie himself getting more aggressive each time in response), a few other dogs had thought about it, and I stopped him from getting it a 5th time from the pit bull, thanks to my giant pointy stick and grim determination. I wished I could have had an electric-shock bull-prod instead. So I don’t really recommend dog walking in Mexico – much better to stick to the food and sightseeing.

Posted in Cultural Musings, cultural travel, dog stories | Tagged , , , , , , , , , |

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