It’s so rare that I find myself chopping vegetables. Back home, the vegetables I find at the grocery store are of such poor quality that I’ve gotten used to eating frozen ones. I even thought that I liked them as well as fresh. But after just two months in Mexico, I don’t know if I’ll be able to get used to frozen vegetables again.
Carrots, potatoes, and onions are staple vegetables, are they not? Something that lasts a long time and can be kept on hand. Well, the carrots, potatoes, and onions that are for sale at my grocery store back home are disgusting. I’m pretty sure that they sell the previous year’s merchandise. The onions are usually fluffy with mould, the potatoes and carrots soft with rotten spots. It’s hard to believe I live in a farming region near major trucking routes.
Here, I get a few onions, potatoes, and carrots at a time and they are always fresh and wonderful. I don’t try to keep many on hand because the humid climate makes them go bad quickly and storing them in the fridge strips them of their flavour. So I’ve grown accustomed to produce that tastes like it was picked that day. I’m particularly fond of carrots, did you know that? I think that a freshly picked raw carrot is just about the perfect snack. Cooked, I like them caramelized with a bit of onion until tender crisp.
I haven’t had a huge selection of vegetables here beyond these staples, but the chayote, broccoli, and green beans have never disappointed. Chayote is a great addition to my diet since it keeps for a while and stretches just about any meal I make and keeps so well. I found a slightly shriveled looking one in my crisper tonight, but it was still perfectly good and added a little crunch to my meal.
Lettuce has been good when I can get Romaine, very crisp and fresh, like what I get from my neighbours’ garden back home when they are amenable to sharing.
Tomatoes haven’t been great. I’ve only been able to find Roma-type ones. They’re good the day I buy them from a veggie truck, but I can’t keep them on hand (humid climate again) and forget buying them at the City Deli, where they are always soft and scary looking. Back home, I keep working at getting productive tomato plants and if I return here next year, I will see if I can start some.
Avocados have been a huge disappointment. It’s hard to find some that aren’t on the spoiled side of ripe and they are very expensive. When I do get harder ones that I can ripen on my counter, I am happy with the taste!
Mangoes and pineapples have also been disappointing. The mangoes I’ve had haven’t ripened evenly and had some really good spots and some bad spots. I’ve bought two pineapples and examined countless others, failing to find a ripe one. Considering that I never had trouble finding a good pineapple in Yukon, I’m a little shocked by this!
Citrus in the form of grapefruits, limes, and mandarin oranges has been excellent. The grapefruits tend to have hard spots, but I eat around them. Limes are abundant, fresh, and so cheap! Mandarin oranges have been very sweet and juicy with lots of seeds. I haven’t had a disappointing one yet.
Bananas tend to be too ripe for my taste to eat fresh, but are perfect for the freezer to whip frozen in my food processor with a little almond butter. The odd green ones I find that I can let ripen at home for a few days have been much tastier than the bananas I get back home. I actually don’t much care bananas (they’re so slimy and bland…) and only eat them for the potassium, but the ones here are noticeably less offensive!
Apples are okay. I’ve had some mealy ones, but none so bad that I’ve had to spit out a mouthful! I like the local ones with a dull dark red skin, which are cheaper than other varieties. But like tomatoes, I have to eat them the day of, or else store them in the fridge, where they become only good for cooking.
Jicama is another new addition to my diet. I’ve only bought it once and had no idea how to shop for it. It was very crisp and had good flavour, so I’m guessing that, like chayote, is a reliable staple.
That’s pretty much all the produce I’ve been eating here simply because I haven’t been shopping all that much in Maz where there is more choice than here on Isla. Offhand, I miss kale and grapes and wish broccoli and green beans were easier to get on Isla (I really need to get an idea of the better veggie guy’s schedule!), but I’m otherwise satisfied with what I can get here.
Back home, I shake a handful of frozen veggies into almost everything I eat and I have frozen fruit almost every night, so can’t say I’m eating more produce than I do back home. But it feels like more because of the amount of prep work involved and because the fresh flavour makes everything so much more memorable.
One last point about produce in Mexico. I wipe everything down with bottled water, the way I do back home, but otherwise do nothing special to protect myself against the beasties I was warned about. I eat all edible peels (potato, carrot, tomato, apple, etc.) and have had absolutely no issues.
