New Adventures

1^st cooking class here in Mexico.  That is me rolling tortillas.  They were very yummy – but then warm tortillas, fresh off the grill usually are.  A young woman from the local Mexican ward is in cooking school and she taught a class for a group of us.  We also learned to make Pambazos, and Tinga de Pollo.  Pambazos are salsa-dunked sandwich (decided I will not do that recipe again) and the pollo was OK.

  So this leads me to a short discourse on “real Mexican food.”  Everything is HOT.  I guess I have a tender palette, but there has hardly been a sauce here that I can handle.  What happened to the “mild sauce?”  Is everyone is Mexico born liking hot food?  Is it hereditary?  If so, my Canadian genes are causing me problems here.  Often I just eat things dry because all the sauces are too hot.  Of course, Jim loves them all.  I guess it is his Scandinavian genes!

Things I do love here are:  the local guacamole – it can’t be beat!  Local mangos in season – yum.  Delicious chili rellenos, when you can find them.

But most food here just doesn’t taste like the Mexican food that I know.  Few fresh tomatoes, no cheddar and jack cheese, just some soft white cheeses they love, which to me seem quite tasteless.  Everything has a bit of a “mole” (with an accent on the e) taste to it.  If you’ve never tasted that, it is a kind of a sauce made with chocolate (unsweetened of course) of which there are hundreds of varieties, all of which I do not like.  Now I am exposing my narrow view of food here.  I hope by the end of our time here my taste buds will have learned to love all of these things.  In the meantime, where is “La Casa Real” when I need it?

                                       

Here is a picture of Jim and I in front of the “Doors of Hell” by Rodin.  They would make entering Hell quite tempting – absolutely gorgeous!  There are wonderful art museums here.  The one we are in here is not far and free. So we can go for short periods and really enjoy things.  It is also across the street from Costco so we are there quite often!

This is Dad’s “man purse!”  Pretty stylin’ wouldn’t you say?  I can’t believe I could talk him into it, but they are all over here and very useful indeed!

This is a group of us just having gotten our senior citizen cards for Mexico.  We were all very proud of ourselves because we had just spent the morning running from one place to the next trying to do things just as we were told only to go back to the government office and find we didn’t need most of them.  Mexico!  Of course, everyone was smiling and sweet as we went from one place to the next…just don’t be in a hurry, or expect the same rules to apply from one day to the next.  It’s good I really love these people, or you might be tempted to punch them!