Mexican food revisited

Nearly 2 weeks ago, I attended a Mexican-themed potluck holiday dinner. It was fantastic. There were many wonderful dishes, and lots of effort was put into authenticity. As I was cooking my contributions (chicken mole and esquite), I couldn't shake the feeling that something was missing. It wasn't an ingredient I was searching for (though I made some minor substitutions to reflect what I could get), nor was it the wonderful weather of Mexico City (though I would have preferred it to the icy conditions outside); I was mostly just lost to be cooking Mexican food without one of my beloved balls of fire in the kitchen. My current rental kitchen might not be fabulous, but in over 3 months of using it I have not yet had a single fireball shoot out of my oven. Strange.

Sadly for my chicken mole, it was served in the kitchen with the other crock pot foods. This was a bummer, since everything else was served in the dining room and attendees mostly forgot about the second room of food. As a result, Keating has been eating chicken mole steadily for nearly 2 weeks (I spent last week presenting my Mexican research findings at a conference in California). I think he's ready to put aside the Mexican food again, fireballs or no.

The buildup to the conference kept me fairly busy, so I have taken longer than intended to post more stories from Mexico. Over the holidays I will try to post about our Buffalo-Mexico-Saint's Day-4th of July in between hours spent with family and spent polishing up a research proposal I'm working on. Happy holidays!

Goodbyes

Tonight is my last night in Mexico. Trying to get everything ready for the move back to the states as well as complete work down here (I spent this last week in the field) has been hectic enough that I've failed to update this blog for a month. Fortunately (or not?), I have a stash of stories yet and will continue to make updates for a while. Who knows -- maybe I'll even change the "Life in Mexico" part of the title and keep writing. We'll see.

This past spring while in Cancun, my friend Jackie asked me what I missed most about the US. My mom was sitting with us and chimed in with "Her dog!" While I miss my puppy wildly (thank you again Mom and Dad for taking care of him!!!), that was not the answer that was springing to my lips. Family and friends, while greatly missed, weren't my top item either. The number one thing I miss the most about the US: flushing toilet paper. It is so nice when it just goes away after you use it instead of letting it collect for a few days and then having to empty the trash. Unfortunately, Mexican plumbing (like that in much of the world) is unprepared to handle flushed paper. I think that flushing some TP might be my first act back in the US, shortly after crossing through Customs and Immigration. I don't care if I don't need to use the facilities; I will simply walk into a stall, rip off a square of toilet paper, and merrily flush it away. It will be good.

In honor of leaving Mexico, I wanted to make a quick list of things I've missed about the US and things that I will miss about my temporary homeland, Mexico. In no particular order:

Missing the US:

1) Flushing TP. Yup... still number one.

2) Friends/family/dog.

3) The freedom of having my own car again.

4) The stars. The light and air pollution here is such that you can't see them in Mexico City.

5) Road berries. My mom gagged when I mentioned this one to her, but it' snot nearly as revolting as it sounds. When I was visiting Michigan in July, I had a wonderful time picking and eating wild raspberries along the side of the road while I walked my dog. There were at least 3 varieties, and they were all delicious.

6) Really good desserts/chocolate. Most of the desserts/chocolate down here are very bland and end up tasting a lot like processed sugar. I have not seen a single fudgy/gooey/caramel-y/decadent dessert down here.

7) Buffalo wings! Watch out Duffs! I'm coming back!

Missing Mexico:

1) Friends down here. They've been great. The people as a whole have made the entire experience worthwhile.

2) Public transportation. It can be scary at times and quirky at others, but it can also be a lot of fun. At the very least, it's pretty empowering knowing that you can competently maneuver around this city on public transit. It's like, "If I can do this, I can handle anything. Bring it!" And then I wave my jazz hands.

3) The food. Oh, tortilla soup, pozole, tacos al pastor, pambazos, elote, esquite, etc, what will I do now that you won't be a food cart away???

4) That amazing sense of (self-indulgent) coolness that comes from living in a foreign country. It's pretty darn cool. This alone is enough to get me past the occasional melt-down day when I just wish everyone down here spoke English. It feels great to do something that feels so different, and to be doing it in a foreign language.

5) My garden. It is scary-easy to grow plants down here, and my lilies, impatiens, ivy, mums, bougainvillea, etc. are absolutely thriving under my diligent neglect. I actually feel like an accomplished gardener!

6) The complete surreality that exists down here. I can round a corner and find myself facing a 6 foot tall bush molded into the form of a duck. Or my bus might stop in the middle of a 5 lane road and all of the passengers have to do a Chinese fire drill and board the bus behind us. Or accidentally finding a tarantula in the wild. Every single day has some hidden gem down here.

7) Looking up on clear days and being surrounded by majestic volcanoes.

While I'm moving back to the US for a new job, I will always have a part of me in Mexico. I've got a conference down here in November, continuing field work in March, and every intention to continue to work with Mexican volcanoes in the future. They certainly haven't seen the last of me here! For now, though, I'm tired and ready to see Keating again. He's been in the US for the last couple of weeks sorting out our new apartment, job hunting, etc. This time tomorrow, I'll be asleep in our new place, catching a few hours rest between my midnight arrival and my 8 am job start. Nothing like cutting it down to the wire, huh? That said, I'm off now to catch a couple of hours of sleep before my early flight.

Hasta pronto.

Back in the kitchen

Last night I decided to have some fun in the kitchen. I've learned the trick to sweet-talking my violently combustible oven and I refuse to use the grill after Keating's exploits, so it was a low-key event. I made up some stone-fruit pie 'cause I'm a geologist and that's the sort of thing I do. The pie was filled with an amazing combo of fresh nectarines and red plums, seasoned with brandy, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and featured my first attempt at a homemade crust. For dinner, I decided that I was too lazy to follow my normal obsession of stuffing food inside of food and decided to turn my pear, sweet onion, and edam cheese stuffed chicken breasts into a layered casserole served over seared portobello mushrooms with fresh green beans on the side. Very Mexican, I know. Despite it not having a single chili pepper in sight, the dinner came out AMAZING. As in, it was so good that Keating and I immediately divvied up the rest into jealously guarded Tupperware for today's lunches.

Now, as proud as I am of last night's dinner, I realize that it makes for terminally boring blogging. I am writing it mostly in an attempt to convince my parents that I really CAN COOK. You see, the kitchen gods hate me when it comes to cooking for my parents. In recent years, I have repeatedly set off the smoke detector (which was really awesome since I was cooking so that my mom could lie down with a migraine), overcooked chicken into shoe leather, nearly ruined my mom's pans, and accidentally got drunk while cooking the dinner at which Keating and I were introducing our parents. On this last trip home, I managed to put all that to shame.

I was trying to recreate a recipe I had made up down here and had completely wowed Keating with. I coated chicken breasts with breadcrumbs, fresh ginger, raw oats, and a dash of nutmeg and then baked them. These were then served with a homemade mango-chipotle salsa. The whole effect was sweet-and-tangy with a mildly nutty flavor. It was great. What I made for my parents was not. I shaved the ginger wrong (lengthwise) and over-baked the chicken, resulting in what looked like dusty turds covered in hair. That was nothing, however, compared to the salsa: I'm pretty sure it qualified as a chemical weapon. I don't know whether the problem came from using a different brand of canned chipotle peppers or if I somehow absentmindedly quadrupled the number of peppers I used, but it was hot enough to literally take my breath away despite having been eating Mexican-grade spicy since December. As soon as I could breath again, I gasped a warning to my dad before he could take a bite. Sadly for him, I think he assumed I was joking and took a nice, large forkful. I will never know quite how he managed to keep from spewing it back out, but he managed to not only swallow it but try to smile as though it wasn't actually as bad as it was, all while huge tears welled up in his eyes. It was at this moment that my mom walked into the dining room, having just finished a phone call with my brother. Fortunately for her, Dad and I were able to convince her to scrape all of the sauce off of her chicken without even trying it. Perhaps we were more convincing because we were both still choking and crying a little bit. Keating was spared the entire event as he was still in Mexico at that time and didn't arrive until I had already been informally barred (yet again) from being "helpful" in the kitchen.

Given my track record, I think I need to stop trying to cook for my parents while I'm ahead. They may never be convinced that I really do make some great food, but they will also never be able to blame me for a nasty case of salmonella (I think I gave Dad chemical burns, though). From now on, I think I'll just have to rock the pizza delivery option when offering to take care of a meal while I'm visiting.

P.S. - I swear that this is not the reason why Keating has lost ~40 lbs since we moved here. That's all exercise and fresh fruit/veg. I swear. Back me up on this, Keating???? Please????

Adventures in grocery shopping

I have been absent from the blog for a couple of weeks while I enjoyed being lazy up in Michigan with my family. The university is closed for most of July, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to get out of town and escape the rainy 65-degree weather. We got back to Mexico City early Thursday morning, returning to an apartment with little more than crackers and cocoa mix left in the cupboards. Today was grocery shopping day.

As previously discussed, grocery shopping is probably the single most consistent stressor in my relationship with Keating. Today it was for different reasons. Our plan was simple: Keating would call me after work (yeah, he teaches on Saturdays) and we would meet up at the Superama on his way home. This would have worked out wonderfully, except that I didn't realize until after his call that I was locked IN the apartment. I have locked myself out of places plenty of times, the best example being the time I had to break back into my house in Buffalo and got stuck halfway through the large, street-facing window in my living room and my neighbors all decided to neither help the mysterious flailing legs nor call the cops (either would have been appreciated). This was the first time I've accidentally locked myself in. I ransacked the whole apartment, but couldn't find my keys anywhere. This was doubly bad because our landline is a complete POS and has never once successfully dialed a cell phone and I have refused to get a cell phone. Not only was I trapped in the apartment, I couldn't even call Keating to tell him. For his part, Keating was waiting for me at the Superama, reading under a ledge to kill the time and escape the downpour. After a couple of failed attempts, I was finally able to get through to Keating's cell phone using skype (Mexican cell phones use different location codes than landlines) to ask him to rescue me. Checking his pockets, Keating realized that he had both sets of keys and agreed to come home to let me out. Unfortunately, he then wandered inside the Superama to pay our gas bill and left his umbrella behind. By the time he realized that he had left it, his umbrella was gone and he was faced with a long, wet walk home. I'm pretty sure I've seen him drier when stepping straight out of the shower!

Fortunately, in the end all turned out well: I was freed from the food-less apartment, Keating eventually dried out, and we bought food and a new umbrella. Given the frustrations with just getting to the store, the actual grocery shopping was a complete cake-walk! Now we're just hoping that the rain stops long enough to allow us to do our post-trip laundry (our clothes dry on a line in the garden).

Notes from the field 2: advising

Dear Future Self,

As promised, I will now remind you of the awesome joys of advising. I know, it hasn't always gone well. There was that time that you kept catching your undergraduate advisee drinking out of a ditch. Or that time when you couldn't take their energy any more and challenged two advisees (including the ditch-drinker) to push the pickup truck down the dirt road and see if they could get above a specific speed. Or how about the time you asked a different undergrad advisee to make a graph that would illustrate results in a data set he had been working on, and he gave up and wrote an ode to dirt instead?

Never fear, Future Shazta! We are learning!

For the record, this advisement activity went well. Your student was bright, motivated, friendly, and enthusiastic. You handled it like a pro when the equipment broke and didn't even curse in front of her too much. Great job! Now, here are a couple of things to keep in your pocket for the future:

1) No matter how wonderful a student is, she will have her breaking point just like anyone else. Done with style, it can be fairly (sadistically) amusing to find this point. Consider it helping her to establish her own boundaries for the future. If she manages to get through pulling 7 ticks off of herself in a 5 minute period with only a minor freak-out, break out the big guns: without batting an eye, translate for her (without lying) that the muddy pond she is about to row onto with you in an inflatable children's raft is actually infested with alligators. The poor girl will be too terrified to bother looking terrified. Watch for all of the blood to instantaneously drain from her face. With any luck, Future Shazta, you will also be offered the use of a larger and sturdier boat that must be driven in by the ranch manager since he's worried you might get eaten in the inflatable. This will sooth the assistant considerably, making you feel like less of a jerk for accidentally terrifying her. I'm just bummed that we didn't get to see any alligators in the end.

2) There is some inherent humor in taking a Mormon field assistant to Mexico. She was wonderfully chill with the tobacco (we were working in a major tobacco producing area that even exports to Cuba) and alcohol ('cause your Mexican colleagues don't think lunch in the field is quite right without a beer). It was the coffee that did her in. Apparently, Mormons can't drink coffee or tea for religious reasons. This only became awkward when we were being hosted by a family whose children we had stolen for the field (more on that another time) and who wanted to show us their hospitality by serving us boiled milk from on of their own cows, mixed with Nescafe. Rule of politeness dictate that we consume whatever our hosts graciously provide, so we settled in on wooden benches to drink our milk-cafe and watch the final minutes of the Mexico-France World Cup game on a 6 inch black and white TV that was the only indication of electricity in the area. I am not a milk drinker since I don't really like the taste and it tends to cause phlegm problems (I know you wanted to hear that!) and I'm not a coffee drinker due to mild caffeine intolerance (I'm assuming the rest of the world doesn't drink coffee because they like the feeling of their heart racing and their stomach churning, but I could be wrong. Is that what it's supposed to do??), but I manned up and drank my mug. I had totally forgotten about the Mormon coffee thing, and while I sincerely doubt that Nescafe can actually be classified as coffee it was causing an issue for my poor, sweet assistant. Whispering through clenched teeth and a smile, she told me that she couldn't do it. Being the awesome person that I am, I casually switched mugs with her and told her to keep sipping out of the now-empty mug in her hand. Two mugs of the stuff later, I felt mildly ill but very proud of myself for watching out for my assistant. Then we got back in the Jeep to drive back down one of the worst dirt roads in Mexico. I am proud to report that I did not actually vomit.

3) Being responsible for an undergraduate field assistant means making sure that they are reasonably safe. Even from those alligators. While it was a bit crowded when we wedged 5 adults into a Jeep Wrangler to travel hideous dirt roads, at least everyone had a seatbelt. My assistant was further stabilized and padded/protected when we stole those two Mexican boys, ages 8 and 10, and managed to fit all 7 of us into the Wrangler. One of them was even sitting on her lap, helping to prevent her from flying up and cracking her head on the ceiling during bad bumps. See? Safety first!

We didn't once have to pull her out of a ditch and explain that the green chunky stuff in the water she was drinking did not count towards her vegetables for the day. Nor did we have to worry about her chasing bears or accidentally destroying 20% of the data set by writing the numbers in the wrong order. These accomplishments may have had more to do with her general awesomeness and less to do with our magical advances in advising skills, but we will take what we can get.

In my next letter to you, Future Shazta, I will remind you of the proper way to kidnap children in the field, eating wild berries, and creative accounting.

Cheers,

Shazta (June 2010)

Notes from the field 1: pre-field

Dear Future Self,

Having just gotten back from the field, it seemed like a good time to write down some things to remember for the future. First, though, let's backtrack to things you should remember from before going to the field:

1) You are very allergic to something you ate down here. Fortunately, your throat didn't seal up or anything, but the rash that produced the Melanie Griffith lips and the Dobby-the-house-elf ears was not cool. Never eat that again. Good luck figuring out what it was. Also, local meds don't seem to help much; keep a stash of Claritin in the house.

2) Buffalo is awesome, as are your friends and family there. However, trying to eat your weight in one weekend is a bad idea. Do not do this again. (You may have been too hopped up on the Claritin and Nyquil to recall this clearly, but it will make you ill such that you yearn for the gentle comforts of Mexican food again.)

3) When picking people up from the airport, just give up and call a taxi. Yeah, you can get there for under a dollar if you use buses and the metro, but something will invariably break down and make the trip last over an hour. Like when you went to pick up your visiting undergraduate field assistant and the metro got stuck for 20 minutes. Thank goodness her plane was delayed so she didn't think you'd abandoned her in the Mexico City airport! Just suck it up and pay the $10 to get across town in a reasonable time.

Got all that? Great! Next edition, we'll go over the things you should try to remember from the field. Hint: undergraduates and alligators.

Love,

Shazta (version June 2010)

Trout pout

I am currently the owner of a trout pout that would make Melanie Griffith green with envy, and mine came naturally. I have no idea what I ate the other day that did this to me, but my lips are swollen and sting like I lost out to some bees. It started out as an inflamed rash on my soft palate and emerged just before I began my hour-long seminar presentation at work. Awesome. Now the rash is gone, but it appears that I did something incredibly stupid: I managed to scratch my inflamed lips and then touch my right earlobe, thereby spreading the allergic reaction. Not cool. Keating has been an angel, running around to stores near where he works to pick up benadryl for me. On the upside, I've had extra time to read in bed and just finished Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in Spanish. That at least counts as studying, right?

Wonderful weekend

Sometimes, it doesn't take much to make a weekend wonderful. Such was the case with the weekend when Keating and I finally found cheddar cheese down here. This weekend was similarly low-key but wonderful.

For one of the first times since we moved here in December, I got to go shopping by myself. I'm not much of a shopper, so roughly 95% of my Mexican shopping experiences have been confined to grocery stores... as was this trip. For those of you concerned that I may have lost my mind to be so excited about going grocery shopping alone, let me explain. Keating is wonderful, but we are never more stressed with each other than when we are in a grocery store. You can actually watch Keating twitch just walking past a grocery store. It's amazing! While that should normally be enough for us to happily leave him out of the food shopping, we are stuck. Without a car, we have to carry all of our food for the half-mile hike home. It helps to have two of us along.

Without Keating along, I was able to read moisturizer labels (mine from the states was running out and the store doesn't carry my brand), find a yoga mat, and even pick up some exfoliating body scrub and a replacement lipstick. When I got home I had a wonderful time pampering myself and feeling incredibly indulgent. Spoiling me further, Keating decided to cook dinner so that he could work out a Buffalo Wing Pasta recipe he'd been thinking about. Pampering and Anchor Bar wing sauce? Amazing!

The next day, Keating and I made the long walk to the town's central plaza where we enjoyed amazing Mexican food. If you haven't tried tacos al pastor, you need to find yourself a legit Mexican restaurant. Get a side order of grilled baby onions and guacamole, and finish it off with a cold Victoria beer (Keating) or horchata (me). We wandered the local markets and visited a book store to buy Spanish translations of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Narnia: The Magician's Nephew to help us with our learning. The weekend reached dizzyingly perfect heights when we got to play with 2-month old chihuahua puppies in the plaza. Cuteness overload!

For dinner, we ate candy and read in bed. Come to think of it, Keating had eaten ice cream for breakfast (we were having a power outage and didn't want to see the ice cream go to waste). Isn't that one of the advantages of being a grown up: getting to eat junk when you want to? That, and staying up late.

Anyway, we had a wonderful weekend. (Even though I didn't get to steal one of the puppies.)

Valentine's Day

Happy belated Valentine's Day! Keating and I had big plans for this year: we were going to go horseback riding in on of the monarch butterfly sanctuaries with another couple. On Friday, though, Monica and I made the Team Executive decision that butterflies are not nearly so much fun during a torrential downpour like the one predicted for Sunday, and that we should wait a week. As it turned out, the rain never actually arrived; Sunday was beautiful, sunny, and in the 70's (take that Buffalo snow!). Keating and I were sitting in our pajamas that morning trying to think of a new plan, when suddenly he was hit by inspiration: Baskin Robbins! I am on a more or less continual search for BR, home of the bestest ice cream ever (Jamoca Almond Fudge!!!!), but it has more or less eluded me for a few years. The ones in my part of Michigan all went out of business years and years ago. There was one on Niagara Falls Blvd in Buffalo for a while, but then the Dunkin Donuts it shared the building with expanded like an evil blob monster and took over the space. I don't even like doughnuts! Or coffee! How could they do this to me???? Keating, however, had spied a BR right here in Mexico City last week on that same fateful walk in which his shoes were force-polished. Even better: it was across a plaza from a McDonalds. We celebrated Valentine's Day this year with BR ice cream, Mc Donald's fries, and a split street-food cheeseburger. It was AWESOME! Best Valentine's Day ever.

The Kitchen

True story: when I was in the 8th grade, I had to ask my mom how to use a toaster so that I could complete a writing assignment. In my defense, I knew perfectly well how to use the toaster oven in our kitchen and had no idea that we even owned a regular toaster, tucked into some back corner of the pantry. Mitigating circumstances aside, I was not terribly familiar with the kitchen. In fact, I was pretty anti-cooking, which is hard to explain since my mom is a fabulous cook who never seemed to mind cooking family dinner each night. Anyway, I could barely boil water up until I moved out of the dorms and into a rented house after my sophomore year of college. I was suddenly faced with a dilemma: learn to cook or starve (and the follow up: learn to cook decently or suffer from indigestion or food poisoning). I learned to cook.

Since then, I have fallen in love with occasionally experimenting in the kitchen. (Regular meal cooking is ok, but not all that fascinating when I get home late and am too tired to think about it much.) Over the years, friends have been subjected to bananas foster (Sunday dinner crew at Tech), cornish hens stuffed with cherries and wild rice (Abby), stuffed porkchops or chicken breasts (too many of you to count, really), zucchini boats (Keating probably sees these in his sleep), and endless loaves of banana chocolate chip cherry bread (I'm looking at you Marty -- it's just not that same now that I never find old, black bananas in my office mailbox anymore. And no, Mom, I didn't forget the nuts. I intentionally leave them out.), etc. While I love cooking, I will never be at risk of receiving my own cooking show, and all of my meals come with the promise that if it came out plain bad I will be the first to call for pizza (Andy: do you still have nightmares about that lamb stew back in 2003? I do. Note to others: never cook up something that you find in your freezer when you move into a new place, even if it was left there by a kindly older couple.).

Moving to Mexico has provided me with exciting opportunities to try new ingredients and cooking styles. A couple of weeks ago, I made parmesan breaded chicken breasts stuffed with apple and goat cheese. Fabulous! A couple of nights ago I made pork chops with a lime sauce. Edible! For Christmas, I stuffed a turkey with tropical fruits (some of which don't even have names in English) because I couldn't find what I wanted for "real" stuffing. The turkey was awesome, the stuffing inedible. We have been through tacos, quesadillas, rice, and appalling quantities of refried beans.

While I'm enjoying the challenges here, every meal must still be approached as a contest of wills. Every day, I must challenge The Oven.

Mexicans apparently don't like cooking with ovens. Most food around here seems to be prepared in a skillet or something similar. It took me a couple of weeks to even find a mixing bowl for less than the cost of my firstborn child, and oven-safe bakeware appears to be a local joke. Nothing related to oven-use even came with our otherwise fully-furnished apartment.

I have learned why.

The Oven is...fussy. I don't believe the temperatures on the dial (why should I? The burners on the stove operate at "on" and "off" and don't even bother with gradational marks on the knobs). I knew I was in for a battle when Keating and I toured the apartment before we moved in and our landlady showed us the pile of matches she had provided. The Oven must be hand-lit. Instantly, my head was filled with visions of exploding my kitchen, or at least burning off my eyebrows. That Christmas turkey mentioned above? It was pretty much a miracle that it came out ok after I succeeded in launching a fireball 2 feet out of the front of The Oven while trying to preheat. Keating, who missed the fireworks display, had to calm me down and re-fire The Oven.

No meal in our apartment comes without the risk of becoming Dinner and a Show. I think I've mastered the art of lighting The Oven, but I still get a little nervous every time I have to do it. I would give up on The Oven, Mexican style, but for one thing: the grocery store sells brownie mix. Keating and I have committed to making brownies to celebrate my first paycheck down here (yes, that's right...6 weeks on the job and still no paycheck or ID card to allow me into the building). Wish me luck. Because when that paycheck comes in and I attempt those brownies, they'd better come out ok. That's one battle that if The Oven wins will really ruin my day. And I might just have to get even.

Bliss

Keating and I had a euphoric weekend. It wasn't the Super Bowl (we did manage to find a bar to watch it -- imagine if Denny's decided to open a bar in a Holiday Inn). It wasn't any fabulous excursion. We found...cheddar cheese!

I wish I were exaggerating. We spent the weekend totally blissed out over a block of cheddar cheese. Oh, the tangy, yellowy goodness! We've been working our way though the Mexican cheeses, but they are all pretty bland. Ok, they're mostly white and tasteless. You can't even get a pepperjack down here except as a special import item. We've been slowly doling out our special cheese treat, trying to make it last.

Next on our search: tart apples and spicy mustard.