(Post 69 of 233. Thanks again to those who participated in the Fundrazr!)

My dentist says I should be done with braces by Christmas! I’m through the part I was dreading most, the elastics. My teeth have been achy and sore and loose for five straight weeks thanks to them and I’ve been limited in the foods I could eat. As expected, the “braces diet” was good for my weight, but not so much for morale! So I decided to look for a visual reminder of how far I’ve come in the last ten months. I remembered that back in December, just after my consultation appointment, I had treated myself to a Reese’s peanut butter cup and taken a photo of my dental impression. So I picked one up today while running errands so I could compare my dental imprint then from now. I think this picture says it all!

My dentist/orthodontist here in Mérida is Dr. Javier Cámara Patrón of Quality Dental. I can’t recommend him or his team too highly. They really care about their patients, do excellent work, and their rates are affordable. I’ll have spent about 9,000 pesos in total by the time this is done, and the most I had to shell out at one time was 2,000 pesos. That’s about 425USD or 550CAD total for the entire year-long treatment. I could never have had this work done in Canada and, like Dr. Susana in Mazatlán told me, it’s not just a cosmetic issue. It’s helping with the wear on my teeth. It has also eliminated some pain on the left side from all the work I have had done on the top back teeth so that after nearly 15 years of only chewing on my right side, I now chew all but super hard foods on the left side as well. I have also been plagued most of my adult life by random shooting jaw pain that appears to have been resolved!

(Post 68 of 233. Thanks again to those who participated in the Fundrazr!)

After being dumped on by Tropical Storm Gamma, Yucatán is being walloped by Hurricane Delta. As of 11:08 CST on October 7th, here’s Delta in relation to me.

We’ve had steady rain for days and just a few minutes of it and the wind picking up. Coastal communities that are still cleaning up from Gamma are being much harder hit. Friends in Playa del Carmen and Cancún report that the storm was much less severe than everyone was preparing for.

This is my fourth hurricane season. I’m glad to be inland as I don’t think I could handle the stress of another hurricane season at the beach (we were on Nate watch on this day in ’17 when I was in Chelem). Mérida has only had a couple of devastating hurricanes (notably Gilbert). As I was following the news about Delta, I wasn’t too concerned and even took on jobs for today.

(Post 67 of 233. Thanks again to those who participated in the Fundrazr!)

My house is located close to a lot of little independently owned shops. I don’t have to go too far for things like hardware supplies, beer (when there’s no restrictions), and common groceries of all types. But if I want fancier groceries (like European butter) or to take out cash from an ATM, I have to go about 2KM north, east, or south of my house. In another climate, 2KM is nothing to walk, but here, it might as well be 20, plus Mérida is not pedestrian-friendly. It’s like I’m both super centrally located and in the middle of nowhere at the same time.

Well, all of that has changed.

There is now a giant Walmart an 8-minute walk from my house! I needed some cash today and instead of taking my truck (it’s been raining on and off all day, so too risky to walk 48 minutes roundtrip to my bank) and going to the nearest HSBC ATM, I was able to walk between downpours to Walmart, pick up a few things I needed, and then get cash as a withdrawal on my debit card at checkout. I was home in under 30 minutes, and that included taking the time to go through the store to get an idea of the layout and what departments it has. I can’t even get to the bank and back that fast in my truck because of the traffic!

I will leave you with an untouched, true to nature, sunset picture. We got a moment of respite from two days of solid rain, with more days coming. This has been an interminable rainy season…

(Post 66 of 233. Thanks again to those who participated in the Fundrazr!)

I had a laugh today. The doorbell rang late morning. I thought that maybe Walmart was super early for once. Nope.

It was a woman selling prepaid funeral packages. 😂 It must be the current context that makes her visit so funny!

I later learned that Walmart will no longer surprise me because they now send an email letting me know my order has gone out. The timing ended up being perfect for me to have a beer with dinner. We have strict alcohol sale restrictions right now, like having to have it delivered, so I haven’t had a beer in weeks because I don’t need beer badly enough to order it by itself. I was waiting until I could add it to another order. When I got a call this morning that they were out of XX, I was a bit bummed, but gave them permission to sub whatever else they had except Corona. So I was delighted that, somehow, they got XX by the time the order went out, and that it even arrived cold-ish!

A long-time reader and online friend arrived from Saskatchewan recently. I put off us meeting until I felt comfortable that he hadn’t picked up anything during his long layover in CDMX. Last night, I had him over for tacos. I texted my favourite taco place up the street at 6:15 to get in line for a 7:30 delivery. I wanted fixings for 12 tacos, plus 1 litre of horchata. They told me it would be better value to get a half kilo of al pastor meat with all the fixings, so I told them to go ahead. There ended up being enough meat, tortillas, and fixings for 15 tacos, and there were beans (frijoles charros) and totopos! We got through the meat and tortillas, but I still had a ton of salsas, chopped onion and cilantro, beans, and totopos left.

I’m on a soft/easy to chew diet this month due to my braces, so I can’t eat crunchy totopos. But I can eat them soft in nachos… I happened to catch the cheese guy this morning, so I had fresh Oaxaca cheese. So for dinner, I blitzed the beans/peppers/bacon almost smooth and soaked the totopos in them for a few minutes, then added cheese and heated the whole thing through.

Then, I added generous ladles of liquid fire (salsa verde and salsa de chipotle) and creamy garlic sauce, as well as a good sprinkle of fresh onions and cilantro.

My improvised nachos turned out very close to what you can get in restaurants here (my beans were much soupier, though) and were super tasty and braces-friendly. I only wish I’d remembered I have pickled jalapeños in the pantry! It was an excellent use of leftovers.

Bonita would like me to add that she loves Oaxaca cheese. I gave her a nice chunk with her dinner and as I was chopping up my portion, she came into the kitchen, sat at my feet, and looked at me with the most forlorn look that I had to give her more. 🦊🥰

(Post 65 of 233. Thanks again to those who participated in the Fundrazr!)

Yes, eggs have officially taken over my life. 😆 I have a long list of foods to rediscover! Today, I decided to try my hand at making crêpes, my mother’s speciality. Whether I get off a plane late or it’s the first morning of a visit, there will be crêpes waiting. They always give me a stomach ache, but they’re worth it. Well, behold crêpes that don’t hurt! 😋

The recipe I found called for four eggs and I had one really large duck egg in my last delivery. I decided to halve the recipe and use just the single large duck egg in it, then adjust the quantity of milk. Look at that pretty yolk! You’ll notice a lot more yolk than white. So you can’t just substitute duck eggs for chicken eggs without making other adjustments to the recipe. The rule of thumb is one duck egg for two medium chicken eggs, and that might work for something like crêpes, but not necessarily in a fancy cake. I have a lot of experimenting to do!

Can you spot a bit of shell on the yolk? Duck eggs are very difficult to crack!

I can’t do real milk anymore, so I just added almond milk until I got the consistency I wanted:

“They” say the first crêpe or pancake is always the worst, but my first turned out to be the best one!

My non-stick pan is way too big, so I ended up with three giant crêpes. I might have ran off to Amazon after brunch to order myself a proper crêpe pan. 😇

My mother usually makes her crêpes with buckwheat. My favourite addition to those are stewed prunes (🤷‍♀️), but I like maple syrup on regular crêpes. I treated myself to a container of it last time I was at Costco. I have not had maple syrup in eons. It’s one of those things that flows through my veins that’s a bit dangerous to have in the fridge. But boy was I glad to have it today!

I cannot believe how perfect these crêpes were. Excellent first effort. I’m such an amazing cook to be doing so well with difficult things like poached eggs and crêpes on the first effort! 😆