I am still stuck at home, unable to go out, and in wait of the desperately needed internet installer guy! I hope he’s here today because Dale and I have made plans to go to Mazatlan tomorrow… and I am at the very end of my Banda Ancha plan, so I am going to run out of internet very, very soon. This post is mostly to let the non Facebook people know that I’m still alive. 🙂

It’s been a busy couple of days with lots of work to keep me occupied, as well as household chores. Dale spent an hour or so with me yesterday telling me about her great big shopping adventure on Wednesday. She brought me back an enormous (1KG) ball of cheese as prepayment on translation services I will provide next time we go shopping together. 🙂

My food stores are getting a little low, but I’ll be fine through to Monday since I have all that lovely melty cheese and produce. Brunch this morning was a quesadilla with… salad? Guacamole? Salsa fresca? Dunno. Avocado plus onion plus tomato plus lime juice plus salt. I wound up eating the whole bowl of it, about twice what you see in this picture. I’d been up for four hours and was hungry! 🙂

Tonight, I’ll do a potato gratin with the potatoes and onions I have left and make some additional veggies on the side, which will give me leftovers for tomorrow night since Dale and I are planning to have lunch in Maz, again provided that my internet guy comes today!

I’ve also frozen all my bananas so that I can enjoy them whipped with peanuts or almonds, having brought my food processor with me. I made my own peanut butter the other night, after spending almost an hour shelling peanuts, and the result was satisfactory. I’ll take the extra time and remove the skins if I do that again as the butter was a little on the bitter side.

I’m pleased with my diet at home in Mexico so far. I was worried about falling back into old habits, but the lack of convenience foods here and the higher cost of restaurant meals versus cooking means that I’m still on a healthy path, and, house confinement not withstanding, I have been getting lots of exercise!

I used to make what my family called ‘macaroni chinois’ (Chinese macaroni) all the time until I switched to using Japanese soy sauce. It’s a ridiculously simple mix of sautéd onions, carrots, elbow macaroni, and Chinese soy sauce to taste, a very inexpensive and reasonably healthy meal for a hungry student! Thinner Japanese soy sauce works okay, but doesn’t have nearly as much flavour in this application.

I added way more veggies than I normally used to, when I was pretty much guaranteed to have onions and carrots on hand, but not much else. Here, you can see red onion, carrot, green beans, chayote, and garlic.

Add in cooked macaroni and soy sauce and done! The macaroni gets much darker with the Chinese sauce than it does the Japanese. I also had to use almost a quarter of a small bottle to get a burst of flavour throughout. Still has that wonderful umami flavour, though!

The only thing lunch lacked was protein. I only remember after I was done that I had some almonds in the freezer! I’ll add some of those to my leftovers. 🙂

I’m not going to be eating vegetarian per se this winter, but definitely more so than I have in a while. I’ve read about shopping for meat in MX and I’m not sure I have the stomach for it on Isla. I know I could get packaged meat at a Soriana or other grocery store in Maz, but that’s not very convenient. The chicken lady will keep me stocked in poultry (that I won’t even have to cook!) and I’ll eventually get to the fish market. So far, I’m not starving and I’ve even lost a couple more pounds. 🙂

I’m homebound for the rest of the week because my internet installer is supposed to come by!!! My landlady said that if I miss him, I will likely never see him again!

I’ve finally got lots of work, so being ‘stuck at home’ for a few days is fine. Dale is off to the big city and is supposed to come back with Oaxaca cheese, a cheese grater (for shredding veggies), and ear plugs for me, if she can find all that, and she’s available to get anything I need at the store.

Since six this morning, I’ve been getting up at every chime and honk to see if I might catch one of the elusive veggie men. Moments ago, I did! I yelled, “¡Verduras por favor!” and he heard me and stopped.

This guy was younger than the last one and he had a lot more choice and better quality stuff, but I think that that is not a fair assessment in that I caught the other guy at the end of his day.

I went a little nuts and got all this, resisting the urge to get a pineapple, too! All for 58 pesos! My word of the day is very important as it is my favourite veggie: ejotes (green beans)!

I believe that’s a (pauses to remember the English word because she’s been working in French all morning and she can apparently only handle two languages at once) grapefruit at the top. I didn’t check because I like surprises. 🙂 There’s also a white onion, two avocados, a bunch of the best bananas I’ve seen in MX, two white potatoes, two carrots, two chayotes, four limes, two tomatoes, an apple, and two tangerines.

The produce I get back home at the supermarket is so dismal that the veggies and fruits here are a real treat. It’s also hard to keep fresh fruits and veggies on hand because I don’t go to town that often during the summer.

I’m eating an apple right now that is absolutely lovely, so I bought another of the same kind. The veggie man showed me that he had Red Delicious ones, too, but I don’t like them, finding them pasty. This apple is a bit pasty, but still has some crunch to it.

If I can get a load like this every couple of days, I’ll be very healthy by the end of the winter!

I went to the store this afternoon to get some additional items for dinner. I have a lot of time to kill right now and the store is a good distance away, making for good exercise, so I might as well shop daily as the availability of stuff appears random.

Hoping for an avocado, I looked through the box, trying to inconspicuously examine the belly buttons to find a bright green moist one. I was taught this trick by the produce manager at the H.E.B. in Port Lavaca and it has never failed me once so I am reluctant to potentially waste money on an avocado that does not meet this criteria. No luck. The veggie guy’s avocados yesterday were also dismal.

Bummed, I headed off to look at the cheese when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned and a man winked and handed me an avocado with a bright green moist belly button! I have no idea who this man was! He’s not the man who runs the store. I’m thinking he’s a local who got the one good avocado out of the box and decided to sacrifice to make a gringa’s day. Thank you again, Mr. Avocado Fairy!

So it was a familiar scene in my kitchen tonight, me in the mood for tortilla chips and frying my own to go with some awesome guacamole (and the rest of the refried beans)!

Since moving to corn tortillas as my ‘bread’ quite a while ago, I’ve been eating a lot of Mexicany-type meals. This is not me in Mexico trying to make local cuisine, but me in Mexico making a taste of home.

For those sick of the cooking posts, feel free to send me some transcription work to keep me busy on other stuff! 😉 I LOVE cooking. I kind of forgot how much I loved it over the past few years, but my dietary changes and the distance from Haven to restaurants has rekindled that passion. I can’t wait to go to a market in Mazatlan and get a whole bunch of unknown produce to try!

(Note to self: you need a colander and cheese grater or mandoline!)

The guacamole was so good I was halfway done before I remembered that I had beer, too! 😀 The store sells small 210ML bottles for just 8 pesos!!!