PELICULAS PIRATEADAS

A friend, who will remain nameless just in case the pirated dvd police are reading this blog, told us she couldn't get this movie to play in English on her dvd player.  Even though it's set in England, the characters insisted on speaking Spanish.  How frustrating for her.  

This is a movie we wanted to see:  we've been big Colin Firth fans beginning with Apartment Zero many years ago (and despite the unfortunate Mamma Mia).  So we invited our friend over to see if it would work on our machine.  El sr J, very clever at technology, figured out how to do it.  So the three of us watched it, made some snarky comments about the royals, and drank some tea, too.  Every once in awhile "Property of Weinstein Bros.--do not copy" was displayed across the top of the screen.  At a cost of 20 pesos, this "do not copy"copy is probably a better bargain than renting from Blockbusters (pay for the bus to get there and back, pay the rental fee, pay the late fee when you forget the due date).  Bloody illegal, of course.  Our friend has a lot more movies.  We have Black Swan for tonight.  Should we feel guilty?

UNAS CENAS

El sr J is the chef/cocinero in our household.  In the morning we discuss what's for dinner and by late afternoon he has his mise en place assembled.  Here are two of our recent dinners:

Basmati rice with spinach, beef with peppers in a salsa roja-salsa soya reduction.

Garbanzo-avocado salad and green chorizo with onions, carrots, peppers and cilantro in a white wine-garlic-ginger sauce.  He makes these things up:  a French-Mexican-Asian fusion. And I have fish sauce.  Yum.   Note the absence of re-fried beans (but he does them well, too). 

  

DESAYUNO

Mangos are in season.  

The big ones on the left are good green, too.

Breakfast:  fresh squeezed orange juice, fruit, yogurt (sin endulzantes) and home-made granola.  The granola is made with the honey in the previous post.  Oranges are 4 pesos a kilo, about 15 cents a pound.  We also have toast (French bakery) and coffee (from Chiapas, Mexico).

LAS JACARANDAS

The jacarandas are in bloom all over the city.

Somebody wrote a song about them.  Want to hear it?  Here's how it  goes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITxP9mmrPvEhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITxP9mmrPvE

MIEL DE ABEJA

Local bee honey.  There are at least three different ways to buy it here.

1)  Many stores, including our fruit/vegetable store, carry this brand in two different sizes.  We've also bought the same thing at the organic mercadito.

 2)  Roving vendors, some of them children, sell it in the street and in market.  While I was buying vegetables in market last week, I heard Mimi talking to someone behind me.  I looked around and saw a woman with a rolling suitcase in one hand and this in the other.  Since Mimi wanted to buy it, she had to carry it home.

3)  Down the street and around the corner on Reforma is this place which sells honey from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m.  We haven't tried this yet, but we've talked about it.

ALMUERZO EN EL MERCADO

On Sunday, Mimi and Alain's last day here, Mimi and I wanted to have lunch in the market.  The spouses were not too keen on this idea, but you know who won that debate.  We decided to embark early on our big adventure, at noon, because the food stands are small and we wanted to beat the crowds and be able to sit together.  

We paused at this one, Fonda Tomasita, because it was on a corner and there was room for the four of us if two sat together on the empty benches on each side of the corner angle.  While we were consulting about who would sit where and looking at the menu, the woman below hauled out a table and four chairs, positioning them in the aisle.  We had to sit down.  Together.  At a table.  In the aisle.

El sr J, after many years of our traveling together, knows not to ask me to translate the menu.  I generally have no idea what food the words on the menu refer to.  My custom is to surprise myself by ordering something I've never heard of, hoping that I don't get any organ meat or other parts of animals I would be loathe to eat.  In Querétaro, for example, there are gorditas (little fatties), sopes, sincronizadas, and volcanes.  Agua fresca, which you would think would be fresh water, is fruit-flavored water with sugar added.  On the Saturday tour (previous post) I saw a food place advertising gringas.  Female Americans?  I asked the Mexicans what they were.  Graciela, from Tijuana, had no idea.  Papa Rabadán described them as ham and cheese in a tortilla sandwich.

The signboard at Fonda Tomasita said the daily special, the comida corrida, was 40 pesos.  It also said there were twelve guisados.  Guisado is a word I've seen around, and I thought it meant something like a dish or platter.  Tomasita, the gordita in the photo, named the twelve guisados she offered, of which I remembered only the last two, mole rojo and mole verde.  I ordered the mole verde.  Then she gave me a choice of meat, pork or chicken.  I chose chicken.

Mimi, who speaks Spanish really well and is usually not shy about asking questions, just folded for some reason and ordered the same thing.  Alain, who is French, depends on Mimi to order something for him and she got the same thing for him.

This is what we got.  A chicken leg covered in green mole, with beans and rice on the side.  Big deal.

El sr J, not taking any chances, ordered huevos rancheros.  Eggs in any form are his comfort food.  While we ate, we watched Tomasita's young son gnaw on a plate full of boiled chicken feet.  

When we got home I looked up "guisado."  Guisar:  to cook.  Guisado:  stew.  You can see my problem, but it's nothing to stew over. 

TURISMO

On Saturday we went on a tour with Mimi and Alain and:

Graciela from Tijuana.  After spending some time in the US, she started working in an electronics maquiladora in 1973 and worked her way up the ranks until she retired with a nice pension that allows her to live comfortably and travel.  This was the first time I had ever heard anything positive about maquiladoras;

and the Rabadán family, Lourdes, Laura and. . .we forget Papa Rabadán's first name.  Graciela commented that they had an unusual last name and Papa said it was arabe.

First stop was the town of Bernal, the main attraction of which is the Peña de Bernal, which you see here.  On Monday,  21 March,  hordes of people dressed in white will celebrate the Equinox by coming here to be purified, or something.  It's a New Age hot spot.  There were some already there on Saturday.  According to the guide, the San Andreas Fault is responsible for this formation.  We didn't climb up.

In the town of Cadereyta, we visited a cactus preserve.  Cacti have an amazing number of uses--cosmetic, culinary, medicinal, etc.  The guide criticized Queretaro for planting non-native species and then having to water them instead of planting varieties of cacti.  I bought a baby agave.

Outside of Ezequiel Montes we visited a winery, Orlandi, where we sampled some too sweet tinto.  More interesting than the wine was the busload of cowboys/vaqueros/rancheros that drove in while we were sampling.  Cowboys are a special breed, so to speak.  You know them by their hats, belt buckles, boots and outgoing personalities.   We once shared a plane in Argentina with a herd of gauchos and were amazed by their boisterousness.  I asked these guys if I could take a photo when they emerged from the men's room.  They not only gave permission, they smiled and put their arms around each other.  I think Willie Nelson has a song about it.  Too bad I missed the boots.

The last stop was Tequisquiapan where we were supposed to shop until we dropped.  El sr J and I were already about to drop, so we spent an hour in the park listening to the birds.

ALAIN

Alain on the patio.

It's great to have a friend who can read your mind.  I had read about this booklet and I wanted to get it, but it wasn't on Kindle.  Alain brought it for us, unbidden and most welcome.   Hessel is a 93 year-old Frenchman, a WWII resistance fighter and concentration camp survivor.  In this pamphlet he's trying to fire up younger generations to, among other things, reject the "insolent, selfish power of money and markets and defend the social values of modern democracy."  It's a best-seller in France, and, as you can see, it's been translated into various languages.  I'm so happy to be able to read it.  Don't expect me to get too outraged, though.  Been there, done that.  It didn't work.  As Jerry Garcia once said, a door opened briefly, then shut again.

Here is Carlos, as promised.  Thank you, Alain.

And he brought three more films.  We have one left to watch.

No Netflix in Mexico, so we are fortunate to have personal delivery of new and interesting films.

MIMI Y ALAIN DE VISITA

We are entertaining guests, escapees from the snows of West Virginia.

Mimi is a baker.  And a birder.  She got this book in anticipation of seeing different birds in Mexico.

It's easier to spot them from the roof.

We took a tour bus to el Cerro de las Campanas to see where Maximiliano was shot.  She took her binoculars along and saw a vermillion flycatcher.  New on her life list.

A woman of many talents, Mimi used to be an enfermera.

She offered to give el sr J his B12 shot in a different spot.  He can't reach his arm.

No, don't even think about it.  I'm never going to do it.

SALSA DE PESCADO

El sr J used to grimace when I added fish sauce to his "perfectly flavored" sopas in the US.  And apparently it's a real travesty to add it to cream soups.  I may, however, be addicted to it.  When we moved to Mexico, I surreptitiously looked for it in the supermercados, but none of them carried it.

We went to the store behind the market today where el sr J gets Basmati rice  

.

and other hard-to-find-elsewhere products.  This place is almost always crowded and customers have to take a number and wait.  Everything is behind the counter--most things are out of sight--and a clerk must take your order and search for your stuff.  Then you have to go to the caja, where a more important clerk takes your money and hands you your stuff.  So 1940s.  I usually sit on a bench and wait.  Today, though, nobody else was there.  So I piped up and asked, "es algo raro pero hay salsa de pescado?"  And the clerk said, "Sí."  In fact, she had two kinds, both from Thailand.  Here's the one we bought.  As my sister says, it doesn't taste like it smells.  El sr J thinks that is a distinction without a difference.

Friday night's concert:

The pianist was a young heart-throb.  And he played without the score, as in the publicity photo below.

PARA TI, CARLOS

Some of you tercer edaders will remember when Carlos "the Jackal" was terrorizing Europe and the Middle East.  When I saw that the the 5 1/2-hour French film about him was out on DVD, I really, really, really wanted to see it.  Two problems:  we didn't have the DVD or a screen to see it on. I wondered if I could importune any new acquaintances here to borrow their tvs if I could get my hands on the DVD.  There's a Blockbuster (not bankrupt here, I guess) next to the Mega store where we shop, so we stopped in to inquire.  There was an amazing array of bad movies in no perceivable order on the walls, so I asked the young man to look for it on his computer.  He kept asking, "just Carlos?"  So I educated him with a brief bio on this Carlos and told him the director was Olivier Assayas.   He didn't seem impressed and he didn't see the movie anywhere on his computer.

Then Mimi and Alain e-mailed us and said they would bring a copy when they arrive this coming Monday.  Hooray!  Now we needed the screen.  El sr J started researching plasma, LCD, and LED, and we went to various stores to compare prices.  We ended up where we always do, at Viana, picked one, and told the young salesman we wanted it delivered.  He said they don't deliver "small" items.  El sr J started making noises about how light it was, so I had to put my foot down and tell the young man, Hugo Antonio, we would not buy it unless it was delivered.  He asked his boss for permission and followed us home with the LED screen on his shoulder.

So, it's about to happen--5 1/2 hours of terror or revolution, depending on your viewpoint.

The young Ilich Ramírez Sánchez.  His father taught him to be a Marxist.  Don't know who taught him that smirk.

In court in Paris, appealing his conviction for (allegedly) killing 2 French agents.  He doesn't look very repentant, does he.

 
The Venezuelan actor Edgar Ramírez, who plays Carlos.

The screen we're going to watch him on:

MAMEY

The Kroger in WV didn't have this fruit.  It's mamey, a larger version of zapote, which we haven't bought yet.  The consistency is buttery, like an avocado, but the taste is very sweet.

FRUTAS Y LEGUMBRES

This is where we buy most of our fruit and vegetables.  It's on the street behind the market.  We like it because we can stand around and argue about discuss what's for dinner without being pressured to buy.  The friendly guys take orders on the phone and will deliver to your home, or you can go there and just stand around and ask them to pick a ripe papaya or pineapple for you.  Or you can choose your own, which we always do, after which they will weigh your order and write down the prices, things that usually don't happen inside the market.  It's a pleasurable experience.

And we know them by name:

Tony

Mi primo Juan

Choly

EL CULO FEMENINO

Skip this post if you're offended by cultural generalizations/stereotypes.

We were walking through the centro when el sr J said,

 "Mexico is a butt culture."  

"What do you mean?"  I asked.  

And then I looked around.

Add a pair of spike heels to these jeans and you get the picture.

Now I should say something about my own culture--the USA.  

I think the USA is a breast culture.  

My evidence?  Hooters, the bimbos favored by Tiger Woods and Eliot Spitzer, and a little inside information:  many young Mormon women have breast enhancement(s). 

 Don't ask; I'm not telling.  Neither is el sr J.