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Published: March 11th 2006
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chapolines
La famous quesadilla de chapolines (fried grasshoppers) y queso Since Marty and I are such food heads, I thought this topic deserved an entry of its own. The food is So Much Fun here, not to mention tasty, fresh, beautiful, weird, you name it, we've probably experienced it, or are about to. Three categories:
1. Plain and Raw--
Here's the thing: the yoga center where we're living is very health and nutrition-focused. So we all think and talk about food all the time. They consider raw foodists to be spiritually advanced beings. For those of you who aren't familiar with the raw culture, it means one who does not cook their food, period. So that means vegetarianism (though maybe sushi counts? don't know...), no dairy products, no eggs, no cooked grain like rice or oats, etc, no baked breads, no hot soup or hot tea, no pasta, no coffee (maybe cold-brewed? kidding... ). What DO they eat, you may ask? Some steamed veggies and tofu, but lots and lots of fresh vegetables, prepared in so many creative and gourmet ways, soaked and sprouted grains and seeds, from which they make raw hummous and other spreads as well as eating sprouts on salad, etc., lots of fresh and dried
lunch
Marty takes a bite (he likes it!) fruits, lots of raw nuts and cold-pressed oils for protein and fat, sun teas, and dehydrated ¨breads,¨which are soaked and/or sprouted grains and seeds, soaked dried fruits or veggies, and herbs and spices, mixed up and ¨baked¨in a dehydrator (the kind you'd use for making dried apples or other fruits, fruit leather, etc), which is a very low-temperature way of making the ingredients stick together as a bread or cracker or cake. The philosophy is that high temperatures kill the enzymes that are present in all fresh food, and reduce the nutritive quality as well as digestibility of food. There is a gourmet-trained raw food chef here, also a volunteer, staying for 3 months, and she has helped transform the meals they eat here, and has taught the rest of us volunteers quite a bit. Marty and I still cook (e.g. handmade tortillas, steamed and stirfried veggies, rice, oatmeal, etc), but we have increased our ¨comida cruda¨intake a lot. (hard to imagine a complete dependency on bananas, jicama, and avocadoes back in Michigan, but it's fun to experiment here, and get ideas for a Great Lakes Bioregion Raw Diet....)
2. Crunchy and Spicy--
Last week at the mercado
carnaval fare
Sample fare at Carnaval (in addition to ricos pans de nueses, helados, churros, micheladas, etc) in town, Marty tried his first quesadilla con chapolines (yes, fried grasshoppers, with cheese). I let him have the experience for both of us. Otherwise, we have both found so much yummy food at the street stands and restaurants, it's hard not to just eat all day when we're in town. Some examples: quesadillas (always with freshly hand-made tortillas, pref. blue, but white are good too) with anything from cheese to squash blossoms, mushrooms, corn smut (the famous huitlacoche, which is available from every corner quesadilla stand, and muy rico!), meat, potatoes, chiles, flor de colorines (red flowers that grow on a local tree-- grilled like squash blossoms), shredded nopalitos, etc. etc. And itacayas-- thick, triangular corn ¨tortillas¨which are sliced in half like a bun, and grilled, then topped with anything you can put in a quesadilla, and tlacloyos, another version of the thick, sliced, grilled tortilla with piles of toppings. The quesadilla senoras are everywhere, in the middle of the market and on the street corners, with big gas-fired stove tops that look like the end of a 55-gal. drum (or a steel drum crossed with a wok), where they make all the fresh tortillas from mountains of masa. They have rows of little dishes full of toppings, salsas, etc. And it is all so so so cheap that we have to pay way more attention to our bellies than our wallets to know when to stop!
3. Fruity and Creamy-
Two favorite items -- the juice bars and the ice cream shops! Fresh juice and licuados abound-- my favorite lately is carrot-celery-parsley-beet, but sometimes we'll get fruity and order fresh pineapple juice (comida del cielo) or a licuado with anything from fruit to oats to seeds to yogurt. And a fresh juice is about 9 pesos (about 90 cents US). unbelievable. (Misty, we think of you all the time here!) You can also get ¨coco frio,¨ an entire, chilled coconut (with the green husk still on, about the size of a bowling ball, not like the little brown things we get in the US), with a straw in the top. And the ice cream.... there is this shop called Tepoznieves, with several storefronts in town, with about a thousand flavors... everything we know from home, plus tropical fruits, cucumber with chile (no joke, and mango con chile, upon which people then sprinkle more chile powder! quien sabie...), hibiscus, tequila, corn, cheese, jicama con chile, you name it. We´ve barely made our way through about a tenth of the menu, and we're getting ready to leave next week. sigh....
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