Entries in Foodiness (4)
Uruapan vs. Patzcauro
The morning we leave Uruapan, I get sick. Hit hard by food poisoning, or stomache flu--something nasty that comes with vomiting and diarrhea, headache and 18 hours of nearly uninterrupted sleep: I sleep in the back of the van all the way to Patzcuaro, then through our entire first day there. Patzcauro’s grand plaza is prime car-camping real estate, but Tim gets us a $15 room at Posada Los Rosas. (My condition was not car-camping conducive.) The posada owner, an older woman who always had company and may or may not have had a husband around, kept an elaborate altar--candles, photographs, plastic flowers--to her dead son in the lobby and a potted garden on the deck.
Twenty four hours after it began with my head in our emergency pee bucket, the bug passed and I felt better. I woke to the sound of celebratory explosions at 7am. A fiesta was rolling through, setting off window-rattling fireworks. From our second floor window I saw that someone had snipped our orange rope and stolen the spare tire from the roof of the van. It was the first theft (unless you count the Ensenada police shaking Tim down for $20) of the trip. We got off easy. It was our spare, spare tire (we have two), not a broken window and the entire contents of Dolly’s spacious, well-stuffed interior. 
Town was packed with shiny new cars with Mexico City plates. Maybe it was the inordinate number of well-heeled couples wandering hand in hand through Patzcuaro’s quaint streets, but the town felt a lot like a Disneyland version of Uruapan. We prefer the larger, living, less-”preserved” city.Where Uruapan’s colonial architecture has been painted in the modern Mexican tradition--a two-toned motif of purple & orange, turquoise & lime green, yellow & fiery red, and the like--Paztcuaro is an antique: mauve & cream. Where Uruapan is a working city, the center of Michoacan’s agricultural heartland, Patzcauro’s entire economy seems wrestled from the outstretched hands of tourists. It does what it can to keep us coming. And it knows what we like: smiling, dancing “Indians” in traditional dress, clean public bathrooms at every turn, cobblestone streets, so many things to buy.
It e
ven has an ordinance--the Patzcauro version of a historical review board--requiring buildings to retain their Spanish character. Or some Disneyfied approximation of it. The streets of the town center are immaculate, the plazas perfect. The names of stores, cafes and hotels are all painted in the same maroon and black script--save for a few rebellious, ordinance-bending defectors. But there’s another challenger to Patzcauro’s quaintness. At every pleasant sidewalk café children hustle for pesos--playing tiny guitars, their voices cracking in song, to indifferent café audiences. On plaza benches, old women beg for food. Restaurant prices are set for tourists, while the town market feeds everyone else. SIDE NOTE, on the superiority of Mexico street and stall food: A near identical soup came with two different names and price tags at a market stall (caldo de pollo, $25 pesos) and a Patzcauro restaurant (sopa Mexicana, $50 pesos). The market stall, run by a mother and her two grown daughters, came with a full chicken leg, bone on, rice, fresh corn tortillas and a lesson on th
e preparation of chile rellenos. We stayed one more night in Patzcauro, sleeping in the van, plaza-side, waking up again in the morning to a procession of Purepechas in traditional clothing, setting off faux-bombs for Jesus. Though we thought the “holiday” weekend was in celebration of Cinco de Mayo, it was actually some regional religious festival that we could never quite get our heads around (it may have been the anniversary of the death of an “enlightened bishop” but we’re not sure). When Cinco de Mayo rolled around on Monday we’d moved on to Morelia. The day was a non-event. Everyone went to work as usual.
Posted on Monday, May 5, 2008 at 12:28PM
by
Freda Moon
in Travel Journal, Foodiness
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Freda Moon
in Travel Journal, Foodiness
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A Note from Ticla, on comida.
Playa Ticla, Michoacan
I woke up early. The sun hasn't yet pulled itself above the big coastal mountains. Finally, it's light is already starting to spill over, gently. The moon's still up, no longer as imposing as it was a few days ago, but still a presence. Somewhere nearby, as everywhere here, a rooster's calling.
But it wasn't the rooster that woke me, it was the churning in my stomach. Maybe it's my insistence on eating almost exclusively at street stalls (the food, really, is just too good not to...I cannot resist), but there's almost always something amiss in my belly, my bowels. I drink Pepto like it's Coke in a bottle and pop chalky, candy flavored Tums. It helps, but only until my next of $5 peso (.50 cent) tacos, smothered in picante. I take full responsibility.
I'm sitting on the beach, in a while plastic chair, wearing a towell and one of Tim's button-downs to keep warm. It can get cool in the mornings. Tim's still asleep. I thought the surfers would be in the water already, doing their thing. Like the pelicans, they're fun to watch. But nobody's up--not the surfers, not the pelicans, just me with my churning stomach. Maybe the pig tied up beside the ever-popular Ticla taco stand is awake as well. He's probably pacing on his rope. He's scheduled to be slaughtered today.
--
So, an incomplete note on why I cannot stay away from Mexican street food, comida corrida, central markets and the like:
Aguas Frescas / Jugos / Licuados: Increasingly, it's served in clear plastic bags tied at the top and served with a straw, for $5-$10 pesos ($.50 cents to a dollar). Fresh, cold, with chucks of fruit. It comes in every imagineable variety of seasonal fruit / veggie: beet, pina colada, strawberry, horchata (rice milk), guava, lime, regional fruits I've never seen or tasted before. Tim loves alfalfa, I'm more of a sandia (watermelon) girl.
Fruit: Vendors sell large plastic cups packed with fresh, perfect fruit, squeezed with lime and sprinkled with salt and chile. Don't knock it 'til you've tried it. It's the most delicious thing on a hot afternoon. If the chile seems like a bad idea, consider this: the heat keeps the heat at bay. I like a mix of watermelon, cucumber and mango. But they also come with jicama, pineapple, orange, strawberry, papaya and more...($10-$20 pesos)
Desayunos: Sometimes I think I could eat huevos rancheros every morning for the rest of my life.
Posted on Saturday, April 26, 2008 at 01:41PM
by
Freda Moon
in Travel Journal, Foodiness
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Freda Moon
in Travel Journal, Foodiness
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Two oysters and a shot of tequila
I still don't have much appetite from the flu, so I had two oysters for dinner and a shot of tequila at Hussongs. Hussongs is Baja's McSorley's. It's been here since 1892 and the evidence lines the walls in the form of old photographs and bizarre memorabilia. It's now a tourist bar, but, like McSorley's in New York, its not without its charms. It's a museum relic, sure, but it's a relic with good music, free peanuts and triple-shots of house tequila. Plus, I can take in the artefacts of the west while waiting for the burn in your throat to calm.
Change of Plans
We got hungry near Chapel Hill, NC and found Joe’s Joint, a straight
-forward, Elvis
-adorned bbq spot down a wet alley, with a $5.45 pork plate special with two sides (fried okra and black-eyed peas, aka “black beans,” for me please).