April 2

Hola, everyone

As I write, the church bells are ringing and birds in my garden are chirping madly — they love to splash in the fountain.  There are gentle white clouds in the sky but it's mostly sunny.  It's been pretty warm these last couple of weeks, only in the 80s but the sun is very strong so it feels warmer.  I've taken to walking with an umbrella, and at night we sleep with an overhead fan and a floor fan.  We haven't been here in this season before, but I am told it starts getting warm in mid-March until the rains that start in June begin to cut the heat a bit.

Since I wrote last, I went to see Dido and Aeneas, an opera by Handel as part of the Baroque Music Festival, and the following day Rick and I, along with our friends Victor and Roberta, went to the final concert in the series.  It was held outdoors in the canyon at the Botanical Park just outside of town.  Such a thing would never, never, never, never be allowed in the US.  After a walk down a hillside, people were perched precariously on steep rocks, many near drops onto other rocks 50 feet below.  Just think what the liability insurance would cost!

In the photo below is Roberta, with the red umbrella, and Victor, with the shawl to keep out the sun.  They were on a rock a bit above us.

But it was an extraordinary scene:

And when the concert finally started, people watched monarch butterflies float through the canyon as they listened to the music.  The musicians are wearing white shirts in the upper middle of the photo below.

Towards the end of the concert, some people were concerned about the twilight and started leaving early.  When you consider that the footing for young people with perfect balance was pretty iffy — and the consequences of a fall on these rocks pretty frightening — it's amazing that so many people, including a lot of older people, wanted to be there.  I have to admit that I've done my canyon concert and see no need to go back again next year, especially because unless the wind was in the right direction, which it wasn't, it's hard to hear the music.  But I'm so glad I did it.

I have two cooking lesson recipes to give you!  On March 22 we made chicken molé and red Mexican rice.  Yurina tells me that red rice is served in fiestas.  For first, we made vegetable soup.  These recipes are for 8.

Sopa de Verduras — Vegetable Soup

8 pieces chicken (used also for pollo con mole)

Salt

Potatoes

Zucchini squash

4 Carrots

1/3 small cabbage

Celery

Any other vegetables

2 ears corn on the cob, cut into 4 pieces

Lime

Onion

Serrano chilis

Tortillas

Wash chicken and remove all fat.  Put in large pot with lots of water over high fire.

Add salt

Add half to one cup of diced onion

Add a large garlic clove

Skim scum from soup.

Add vegetables, hardest ones first (e.g. carrots)

Remove chicken when well cooked.

Cook soup another half hour.

Cut up small bowls of limes, Serrano chile (removing the veins reduces the spiciness), and diced onion to serve with soup when serving.

To serve, put one piece of corn in the center of soup bowl, add more vegetables, and broth.

Polle con Mole — Chicken with Mole Sauce

The same 8 pieces of chicken as for the soup

1 lb prepared mole sauce

A small piece of dark chocolate

Put mole in pot and add 4 ladles or more chicken soup from soup pot.  Mash and stir it smooth.  Add a small piece of chocolate.  Stir nonstop (!) for 30 minutes.

When chicken is thoroughly boiled, remove from soup and put in mole pot.  Cover with mole and let sit to absorb flavor for a little while.

Arroz Rojo — Red Rice

About 2 cups white rice (half a package!)

About ¼ to ½ cup fresh peas

4 roma tomatoes

¼ large onion

1 large clove garlic

2 large stems parsley leaves

2 tsp salt

3 carrots, diced

Olive oil

Boil peas in small pot about 40 minutes

Peel and cut tomatoes in pieces; liquefy in blender

Add onion, garlic, parsley and salt to blender; liquefy again

In large pot, add some olive oil.  When hot, add rice and diced carrots.  Stir until dark golden (rice for arroz rojo is cooked darker than for arroz blanco)

Pour in water to twice the height of rice, and add peas.  Add a couple of ladles of chicken soup from the pot.

Pour in tomato mixture from blender.

Cook over low fire until rice is done to taste.

And the following week, which was Roberta's last (she's shared my cooking lessons all four weeks she's been here), we made cream of corn soup and pork in tomatoes.  Again, recipe for 8.

Entomatadado de Puerco (Tomato mixture with Pork)

1.5 lbs green tomatillos

1 lb red tomatoes

2 lbs pork shoulder or other cut of pork

6 large cloves garlic

1 large onion

4 small-medium potatoes

1 small chipotle chile (canned is fine)

Parsley

Black beans

Put meat slices, with the bones, in a lot of water and cook until soft.  If it’s fresh it will take 1 to 2 hours.  Add four garlic cloves to the water.

Cut red tomatoes and tomatillos in small pieces.  Put in large frypan and cook gently over small fire.

Cut potatoes in small pieces; dice onion; dice 2 cloves garlic.

When the tomatillos are starting to turn a duller green, add onion.  Cook a little while and when the mixture is soft, add potatoes.  Add the chile cut in very small pieces, and the diced garlic.  Keep cooking over very low fire until potatoes are soft but not too soft:  al dente.  Stir occasionally and watch to see that it doesn’t burn.

Add salt to taste.

When the meat is soft, add to tomato mixture.  If too soupy, allow liquid to evaporate; if too stiff, add water from meat pot.

Garnish with chopped parsley and serve warm.  Also serve with black beans (frijoles negros) on the side.

Sopa de Crema de Elote (Cream of Corn Soup)

6 ears corn

½ liter milk

1 tbsp butter

A little dry rosemary, crumbled

Optional:  dry sherry

If you’re making this with the entomatado de puerco, you can boil the ears of corn (shucked, of course) in the same pot as the meat.

When boiled, cut off the kernels.  Reserve a small dish of kernels for garnish.

Put about a cup or more of kernels into the blender.  Add 5-6 ladles of water from the meat/corn pot.  Liquify.  Pour this stuff into a wire mesh strainer over a large pot.  Mash it down so that the cream of the corn goes into the pot and only the pulp is left in the strainer.

Put the pulp back into the blender and add another cup or so of kernels, with water from the pot.  Repeat, putting all the accumulated pulp again into the blender, until the kernels are used up, and then do it a few times more to extract as much of the corn cream as possible.  (You can save the pulp to make a corn pastry dessert with.)

Boil the soup gently, stirring constantly:  it will thicken a little. 

Add the milk and reheat. 

Before serving, you can add just a little sherry, perhaps 3 tbsp for a large pot of soup, just to round off the taste – optional.

Garnish with corn kernels and serve hot.

I have learned that the left-over corn soup thickens considerably, which is terrific too.

And as always on our Tuesdays, we have a veritable salon going here for dinner.  This past Tuesday Victor and Roberta Bremsons were here, as well as our friend Milt Fisher, who like the Bremsons went home at the end of March.  With them were Mike Hatch, our current house guest (he left a few days ago) and our Mexican friends Gerardo and Magda.  With 8 people, our table was full.  I love Tuesdays:  a party every week!

The chamber music series is winding down for the season.  Last weekend we heard a marvelous pianist, Stephen Prutsman, doing an innovative program he had presented last fall at Carnegie Hall — for I'm sure 10 times as much money.  He interspersed Bach preludes and fugues from Book 2 of the Well Tempered Clavier with other short pieces, modern and not so modern.  I looked up the New York Times review afterward and saw that they had loved it too.  Tomorrow night there's a classical guitarist, the last concert until the new series in October.  I love these concerts, and for only100 pesos -- about $9.

Afterward, several of us went to dinner at San Miguel's chinese restaurant (!), which was actually very good.  I met a woman there who used a memorable phrase to describe San Miguel.  She called it "a fantasyland for people with a brain."  Exactly right!

The following day we had a party at our house.  If you are you saying, "So what's new?"  you'd be right!  The sister of Yurina, my cooking teacher, was visiting from Cuernavaca, and I invited the whole family over for lunch.  Twelve of them came!  Conversation was split between Spanish and English, and this family feels more and more like my own.  I met Yurina through her brother, Gerardo, and I've met other family members through them both.  Later in the week Yurina invited us over to her house for dinner, too -- she made pozole, which was delicious and which I will learn how to make and share with you.  I feel very privileged to have these wonderful Mexican friends.

I have had my intermediate Spanish conversation class every day at noon at the Instituto Allende, and my Spanish is gradually, slowly, getting a little better.  I can now occasionally — although not often! — use a verb in the past tense or the imperfect.  The conditional is still beyond me.  It's a challenge and I'm enjoying it.  I'm also working hard on the adult education course I'm proposing to the Biblioteca.  The Board meeting at which it will be considered and presumably voted on is two weeks from yesterday, April 15.  I'm working on it with a friend here, Luba, and she and I have been amassing data.  There is no competition, judging from a local website listing classes and course.  The potential demand seems strong, judging from a survey Luba and I have done with about 80 people,  and the budget indicates the Biblioteca would make some nice money from it while still keeping the course fee low.  If all goes well, the first classes would start in October.  I'll keep you posted!

March 19

For the spring-challenged among you, here is a picture of the largest bougainvillea in our garden, about 10 feet across, taken from the second-floor balcony:

Earlier this week there was a dramatic event.  We had gone to one of the two art movies in town (there are not one, but two!) to see a 1960 Japanese film, and came out to a completely cloudy sky.  And not just clouds, but rain clouds!  And thunder!  We have seen a few cumulus clouds since we arrived in mid-January but that's it, so this was a very big deal.  We breathed in the wonderful pre-rain ozone smell, and it started to rain just as we arrived home.  About 30 seconds' worth of tentative rain.  Then the clouds blew away and it was sunny again.  It reminded me of the scene in Jean de Florette/Manon des Sources where the main character desperately needs rain for his drought-stricken carnation crop.  He is overjoyed at the lightning and thunder, but then there is no rain.  Those of you in the Pacific Northwest have more rain than you want, but here we sure could use some.

On Tuesday was of course my cooking lesson.  This week it was to learn how to make three things:  tamales, nopales or cactus salad, and a chocolate drink.  All are, as always, traditional Mexican dishes.  The first part of the lesson is going to the mercado for what we will need.  Here is the produce stall where we bought our nopales and the tomatillos (small green tomatoes that have a papery skin) that are used to make green salsa.  On the lower right you see huge piles of limes, which reminds me that our lime tree now has ripe limes!

Tamales, Champurrado, y Ensalata de Nopales

Tamales, Chocolate Drink, and Cactus Salad

Maestra de Cocina Yurina Peralta, March 15, 2011

San Miguel de Allende

Recipe for 8 people

Tamales

A flat-bottomed steamer pot is necessary for this.

Dried corn husks, 2 thick bunches

2 lbs corn flour for tamales — finer than cornmeal

½ lb tomatillos (green tomatoes)

½ lb red tomatoes

4 guajillo chiles — red and dried, not very spicy

1 serrano chile — green and spicy

½ roast chicken (faster than making chicken from scratch)

1 can refried beans

1 or more cups pork lard (or could use Crisco or oil, but different taste)

1-2 tsp baking powder

Place tomatillos, tomatoes, Serrano chiles, and guajillo chiles in water.  Boil gently for 20 or 30 minutes.

Put pork lard into big bowl and mush it up with your hand until it’s pretty liquid.

Add half of the corn flour, mix by hand, and add the rest of the corn flour.  Add the baking powder.  Add salt.

Knead dough for a long time.  It should be pretty stiff.  If too stiff, add a couple of spoons of warm water from the vegetables that are boiling.  Dough is ready when a small piece of it rises when dropped into cold water.

Cut chicken into small pieces (no skin).

Remove seeds and veins from guajillo chiles.  Peel red tomatoes.  Remove seeds and veins from Serrano chile.

Put tomatoes and red guajillo chiles and salt in blender for red sauce.  Liquify and pour into small bowl.

Rinse blender, put in tomatillos and Serrano pepper and salt for green sauce.  Liquify and pour into small bowl.

Put water in bottom of steamer pot.

Take one or two large corn husks.  Flatten a large spoonful of dough in the bottom half (the stem end).  Add filling:

            Red tamales:  some chicken and red sauce

            Green tamales:  some chicken and green sauce

            Beans:  a spoon or two of refried beans from the can

      Fold sides of corn husk over snugly, then fold silk end down.

Take one or two more corn husks, place folded end of tamale at bottom, fold sides snugly, and fold the other end over so that the sauce stays inside.

Last, tear a thin strip from a long corn husk and tie it around the tamale over the most recent folded end.

As each tamale is done, place it vertically in steamer pot.

After making the first red tamale and a green tamale and a bean tamale, place a layer of tin foil between them so that nothing runs together.

When all tamales are done and are standing in the pot, wet a clean washcloth thoroughly and wring it out.  Place it over the tamales and tuck the edges into the inside of the steamer pot.  Cover the pot and place a weight on it if it’s very full.

Steam over low fire for an hour and a half.  Keep an eye on the pot to make sure steam is still rising; if not, add water.

The tamales are done when they separate easily from the corn husk wrappings.

Champurrado — the Drink of Montezuma

(pre-Hispanic traditional Mexican drink)

1 piloncillo (conical cake of brown sugar, about a cup)

½ lb corn tortilla dough (masa)

1 tsp powdered cinnamon

1 cake of chocolate (about ½ cup or more dark chocolate that has granulated sugar inside, not baker’s chocolate)

Put piloncillo in about 3 quarts of water in pot over medium fire.

Place the dough in about a cup and a half of water and mash up until liquid.  Takes a long time.  For a thicker drink, use more dough.

Add cinnamon to pot.

Add chocolate to pot.

When chocolate is fully melted, add dough water very slowly.  Skim out the small pieces of dough.

Cook over low heat half an hour or until the raw corn dough taste is gone.

Nopales Salad

6 cactus ears

½ onion

1 tsp dried oregano

a little powdered garlic

diced parsley

2 or 3 red tomatoes

Fresh farmer cheese (queso ranchero)

Dice nopales into small pieces.

Put olive oil in frypan, add nopales and salt.  Cactus, like okra, has a lot of gooey liquid.  Simmer, stirring often, until cactus has changed color and liquid has boiled off.  This will take maybe half an hour.  Add the oregano at some point.

Slice onion thinly in partial circles.  Dice tomatoes.  Cut parsley.  Put all in bowl.

When cactus is done, pour over onion and tomato, stir, refrigerate.

Before serving, crumble farmer cheese over the top.

Here is my friend, Roberta Bremson, here for the month of March from Seattle, stirring the nopales.  

I have to tell you, from beginning to end this lesson took four and a half hours!  I think I will never in my life make tamales etc.  It is too much work!  I certainly have a new respect for people who make tamales, especially for a living.  But hard work is good for the soul.  Here I am in the kitchen with my teacher, Yurina Peralta.

This week I signed up for a Spanish conversation class, intermediate level.  Once a day at noon, under a spreading fig tree on a flagstoned patio at the Instituto Allende, we sit and talk in Spanish.  There is Elvira, the teacher.  She is Mexican, about 50, who wears her shiny black hair in two long braids that she loops back up to her head.  If you make a mistake she says the correct thing slowly and clearly.  I understand every syllable she says.  Including me, there are six students.  Only my friend Luba and I are residents; the other four are visitors.  There is an older couple from New York:  she corrects everyone and he is unwilling or unable to incorporate corrections from the teacher, as if she had never spoken.  There is an older single woman who seems spectacularly ungifted for languages:  she is almost helpless and tongue-tied.  And there is a younger woman who may be the most fluent of all of us.  Quite a mixed bag.  Luba and I are at about the same level, less fluent than the younger woman but much more so than the other three.  The teacher asks us questions and we also pose questions to each other.  An hour seems just right, and I am proud of myself that I am finally doing this.  There is no question but that it is helpful.  I find myself much more willing now to try and say things in Spanish.  Luba says she is astonished at how well I speak after such a short time studying Spanish -- three or four months of lessons last spring -- but I am much more conscious of all the things I want to say and can't.

Last night we went to a benefit for the Waldorf School here in San Miguel.  It was only 100 pesos, about $9, so within our self-imposed limit of 150 pesos a ticket for entertainment.  It was held at a home, or rather a castle, which was astonishing.  Built in the steep hills above San Miguel, the house had four tall levels plus another level at the bottom for garden only.  From the street at the top to the street at the bottom, it must have been about 150 vertical feet of hillside.  The various levels were linked together by stairs, passageways, tunnels, and bridges, so the little boys there were hysterical with joy chasing each other around, under, and through.  

We explored most of the place -- okay, we didn't explore the owner's bedroom upstairs -- and found four or five small but gorgeous apartments in the lower levels (to rent out?) in addition to spectacular rooms on the main level, many balconies, gardens, outside sitting areas, and even an outside extra kitchen with gas burners, small refrigerator, and sink.  Everywhere were tasteful objets d'art and expensive fixtures and furnishings. This is the view out over the town.

There was also, of course, a party.  You could buy food and things to drink (that's what made the entrance ticket so cheap), and there must have been a couple hundred people drinking and eating.

Eventually, people were also dancing (not in the picture below -- no room -- but there was lots of other space to dance).  The musicians played a lot of the Beatles' music, and presumably tried to look like them, because the Beatles were the theme of this party/benefit.

There certainly are a fair number of gringos here with a lot of money.   This was a multi-million dollar house, and I honestly am not used to all this wealth.  Unlike my life back in the US, the expat community here is small enough, and there is so much volunteer work going on, that here I get to see how these folks live.  It's quite an education.

March 13

Hi, folks!

So this past Tuesday the cooking teacher, Yurina Peralta, taught me and my friend Roberta Bremson, who's here with her husband, Victor, for the month of March.  We learned how to make Sopa Azteca (Aztec soup) and Albondigas Rellenos de Huevos (meatballs stuffed with eggs).  Sopa Azteca in particular is phenomenal.  Here you go!

Sopa Azteca y Albondigas Rellenos de Huevo

Aztec Soup and Meatballs Stuffed with Egg

Maestra de Cocina Yurina Peralta, March 8, 2011

San Miguel de Allende

Recipe for 6 people

Sopa Azteca

1 chicken breast

2 large tomatoes

7 tortillas

2 large cloves garlic

epazote (Mexican herb, no English equivalent)

2 or 3 avocados

¾ to 1 lb ranchero cheese (farmer cheese), very fresh

chopped cilantro

½ onion, chopped

2 chiles Serrano, diced very small (including seeds) – spicy

½ cup crema (sour cream)

5 or 6 small limes, halved

Wash chicken breasts, put them in about 2 quarts of water over low fire

Add about a tsp salt

Dice garlic finely, add to soup.

Cute epazote leaves finely, add to soup.

Cut tomatoes in chunks, liquefy in blender, add to soup.

Cut the tortillas in small pieces with kitchen scissors.

In large frypan, heat olive oil.  Add tortilla pieces and fry until crispy, if necessary in two batches.  Remove and drain on paper towel.  

By now soup has cooked ½ to 1 hour.  Cut as much of the chicken as you want into small pieces and put into soup.

Put in small bowls and cover with plastic wrap, to serve when ready to eat:

            Ranchero cheese (squush in its bag to crumble)

            Tortilla chips

Cilantro

Onion

Serrano chiles

Crema

Limes

Avocados – cut just before serving or will turn brown

Albondigas

1 lb chopped beef

½ cup bread crumbs or ground corn flakes

½ cup milk

3 eggs

3 large red tomatoes

½ lb green tomatillos

1 or 2 chipotle chiles, fresh or canned

salt to taste

In large pot, add a little olive oil and heat. 

Peel skin off tomatillos and cut into small chunks.  Discard any brown pieces.  Blend until liquefied.  Add to pot.

Chunk the red tomatoes and blend.  Add chipotle chiles, blend.  Add this to pot.  Add salt to taste.  Simmer about ½ hour.  If water has boiled off, add a little:  texture should be thick but liquid.

Hard-boil 2 eggs.  When done, fix in cold water, peel, and cut into chunks (1/4 to 1/8 egg).

In bowl, mix together meat, 1 raw egg, milk, and bread crumbs.  Add salt to taste.

Take a few tablespoons of meat mixture, flatten in hand.  Place egg chunk in middle and wrap meat around it.  Roll in hands until round.  Drop in tomato mixture.

Simmer meatballs about half an hour.

I am loving these Tuesdays.  First is the lesson, which starts with making a list of all the ingredients, then the mercado to buy the produce and cheeses, then back to the house to make the dishes.  At about 6 PM Rick comes home, with Louis, from their Writers' Group at the Biblioteca.  This week Victor and Roberta were also here for dinner.  They will be next Tuesday as well -- and Yurina will teach us how to make tamales!

Yesterday there was a full afternoon of bluegrass, blues, and jugband music at a place out in the campo (countryside).  We were all sorry we didn't bring our bathing suits, because it had thermal pools.  Rows of chairs were set up under two big tents (tops only, not sides:  tents are essential here for shade).  250 pesos (about $22) bought you a ticket where you sat on folding chairs under the rear half of the tent; for an extra 250 pesos you could get a molded plastic chair in the front half of the tent.  We did better than all that.  Rick had the fine idea of bringing four canvas folding chairs, for us and Roberta and Victor.  We set them up at the back and heard everything just fine in much more comfort.  You may remember that Rick and I have a limit of 150 pesos for tickets to entertainment events.  Occasionally we choose to go over our limit, and the pleasure is that we rarely have to.

There was another big tent with plastic tables and chairs set up under it.  Every single table and chair had large Corona beer logos, as did the small tents over the food stalls and the molded plastic 500-peso chairs.  Corona buys extensive advertisements at every big outdoor event here.  The gate opened at 11:30 and various vendors of food were all set up.  There was chili, pulled pork, fried chicken, hamburgers, ice cream, and many other things.  Bottled water and beer cost 20 pesos (= $1.75), wine 40 pesos.  Food was from 40 to 100 pesos.  So people (mostly North Americans, for this music) strolled around, went swimming, noshed, talked with old and new friends, danced, and listened to very fine music.  It was lovely, lovely, lovely.

I've been spending a lot of time this week working on a new project.  I have proposed an adult education  program to the Biblioteca.  So far I've spoken about it to the Biblioteca's director of programs and its editor of Atención, the local paper, both of whom are very enthusiastic about it.  The Board meets on March 25, so before an official approval I'm just working on it unofficially.  My friend Luba, an American who's lived here for 6 or 8 years, is working on it with me.  It is great fun to work out the guidelines and to set it up!  This program would be such a good idea for San Miguel.  The town is full of accomplished people who could teach interesting courses on a wide variety of topics, and up to now, except for language and art courses, one's ability to learn something new here is pretty much limited to individual lectures.  Luba and I are calling it La Universidad de la Biblioteca!  I'll keep you informed about progress.

March 7

Here is what the largest bougainvillea in the garden looks like from the upstairs terrace.

We've been here almost two months and every morning we wake up to sunshine and blue skies.  In fact, it has not rained a drop in all this time, and the housekeeper complains with good reason about "el polvo" -- the dust.  Now that it's March the daytime temperature is in the 80s, but since it's a dry climate it's completely comfortable in the shade.  Our house, like the others, is made of stone and cement and is therefore quite cool and comfortable now.  Nighttime temperatures in the 50s are perfect for sleeping.  In the morning I wake up to sunshine in the low 60s.  I go out onto the terrace from which I took this photo, listen to the birds sing, and marvel at the brilliant colors of the bougainvillea, the geraniums, and other flowers.

The other day I noticed mosquitoes.  Electricity is expensive here, so we don't often run the motor for the fountain.  Result:  mosquitoes.  I asked on the San Miguel Civil List what people do to control mosquitoes and have been told that running the fountain only 15 or 30 minutes per day is enough to prevent larvae forming in standing water.  Who knew I'd need to learn about the life cycle of mosquito larvae?

I've been ill this past week with a cough and sneezing and really low energy level, so I don't have all that much to report.  In fact, I didn't go to Mexico City with Rick as a result.  I've been reading and embroidering pillowcases and otherwise taking it easy.  One day this week we went to the SPA.  You may recall that on our first day of the trip down here in January my cat, Lila Tov, wriggled out of her halter at a rest stop and ran away.  Many, many tears.  Reading in a comfortable chair in the evening without a cat in my lap is definitely an inferior experience.  At the SPA I learned much to my amazement that kittens have an annual season just as lambs do (learning all the time here!).  The kittens available now were four and five months old, too old.  So we will go back in a month or two or three when younger kittens are available.

And on Saturday we went to a chamber music concert that's part of a series called Pro Musica, over two dozen classic music concerts offered from October through April in a church in San Miguel.  This one was the Cuarteto Latinoamericano playing string quartets by Haydn, Dvorak, and Debussy, and it was lovely.  I especially like the fact that we can hear great concerts for 100 pesos, about $9, a ticket.  Even Rick, who normally gets restive at classical music concerts, loved it.  During the intermission we had a glass of wine ($3.50!) in the garden.  Can you imagine, an amaryllis planted in the ground and not as a hot-house flower?!

In the intermission we spoke to a woman from Pittsburgh, who has just retired after 30 years of directing an abortion clinic.  One of the most wonderful things about this town is the amazing backgrounds of the people we meet.

Quick post

Hello, fans!

I'm not going to get into the fix I got into last time, where there was so much to write -- and so much for you to read -- that I run the risk of exhausting my audience!

First, I must give you this week's recipe from my cooking lesson with Yurina:  chiles rellenos -- stuffed peppers.

--------------------------

Chiles Rellenos de Queso, con Spaghetti

Stuffed Peppers with Cheese

Maestra de Cocina Yurina Peralta, February 22, 2011

San Miguel de Allende

Recipe for 8 people

This recipe is not difficult but it is slow and labor-intensive.

8 chiles poblanos (sweet green bell peppers) – choose large smooth ones, not indented

5 eggs

1 cup white flour

1 lb tomatoes

1 to 1.5 lbs hard cheese (gouda, gruyere, anything), 2 kinds if you like

1 lg clove garlic

½ onion

salt

olive oil

toothpicks

On a gas fire, char the chiles directly on the burners, turning slowly until evenly charred all over.  (If stove is electric, blanch them briefly in boiling water.)  As soon as each chile is done, place it in a plastic bag big enough for them all and close tightly to keep in the heat and humidity.  This is a slow process.

For the tomato sauce

Peel the tomatoes and cut in chunks.

Cut up the garlic and onion.

Blend tomato, onion and garlic in blender until liquefied.

Add 2 tsp salt or to taste, blend again.

Put a little olive oil in saucepan, heat, and add tomato mixture.  Simmer on low heat about 15 minutes.

To prepare chiles

While tomatoes are simmering, peel chiles, very gently, by scraping off the skin with a small knife, being sure to leave the stem on.  When peeled, make a cut on one side only from top to bottom.  Cut out seeds on the inside, leaving stem intact as a handle to maneuver it with.  Gently slice out veins from the inside.  Rinse in water then place in bowl.

Separate eggs, with whites in mixing bowl and yolks in small bowl.  Beat egg whites until very frothy:  takes a while.  Then slowly add yolks and beat some more.

In large frypan place about half a cup of olive oil.

On a plate put about a cup of flour.

Cut cheese in eight roughly rectangular chunks, about 2 oz or so each.  Place a chunk (or two pieces of different cheeses) gently in each chile; close with a toothpick.

Very gently roll chile in flour, then dip in egg to cover.  Because it will drip, carry the chile over the egg bowl to the frypan and gently place it in the hot oil. 

Cook two chiles at a time over low-to-medium heat, turning gently to brown all over.  If there’s a side that’s too narrow to stand on its own, splash some of the hot oil onto the thin side with a flat-edged spatula so that the chile is brown all over.  When completely brown, remove to platter.  Add more oil to the frypan before cooking the next two chiles.  This too is a slow process.

When done, reheat if necessary in slow oven or microwave, and serve with heated tomato sauce dribbled on top.

Spaghetti

Break in half and cook until al dente.  Strain.  In same pot, place spaghetti, butter, salt, and pepper.  Reheat.

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This was totally delicious.  The lesson is on Tuesdays because our friend Louis comes to dinner, and this time we also invited Marcela, the woman from my chorus who gave me the chocolate cake for Valentine's Day -- a big deal here in Mexico, like Halloween is in some parts of the US -- and her 7-year-old daughter, Diana.  Between the entertainment provided by Mela the Dog and Diana the Kid, we had a lot to laugh at, even in Spanish.  

The pervasive Catholicism is starting to get to me a little.  Tuesday morning before Yurina arrived, Emma, our housekeeper -- ama de casa in Spanish, lover of the house -- sat and talked with me, which I normally love but for some reason she felt the need to tell me all about the joys of God, and about how God has blessed her, and on and on.  And then sure enough, Marcela Tuesday evening brought me a pair of delicate little earrings:  tiny paintings of La Virgen.  I will give them to Emma tomorrow, and think that maybe the two of them can skip the middlewoman next time.  I am also thinking that perhaps it is time to start telling friends, particular Mexican friends, that we are Jewish -- not that we have hidden it but it hasn't seemed relevant before.  It's starting to, in self-defense.

Tonight was a wonderful evening!  A couple of weeks ago we met an elderly man, Milt, in the Jardin and invited him to our housewarming party.  You may remember that I described him in the last post.  He invited us tonight to meet his visiting family, his daughter, son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter, first by showing them our house over drinks and snacks, and then out to a restaurant.  We went to Bugumbilla, the restaurant that specializes in traditional Mexican cooking with the superb chiles en nogada that we went to in September in honor of the Mexican Bicentennial.  Most of Milt's family ordered that and loved it, and loved the beautiful courtyard.  Then, a special treat for me!  Milt had met David Leonardo (the friend of a friend, the way one does in San Miguel), the artist who did the stunning mural in the Sala Quetzal at the Biblioteca that I raved about when I first got here last summer.  You can see two photos of his mural, which covers four sides of the room, in the August 5 blog:  http://josandersmexico.blogspot.com/2010/08/august-5.html.  David invited Milt to an opening of his art tonight, and Milt brought us.

David was born in Mexico City, lives here in San Miguel, is young, early 40s, and as bubbly as his art.  I apologize for the photo; believe it or not, this is the best of the half-dozen I took.  So if any of you know of a young woman who would like to start a family with this terrific and talented guy -- he told me so himself! -- here's your chance.

Tomorrow Rick and I go to Mexico City, where neither of us has been before. We will meet Seattle friends for the weekend and bring them back to the house they have rented for a month in San Miguel.  A city of 27 million is incomprehensible in the best of circumstances, but compared to a town of about 100,000 it's more so.  Our friend Gerardo told us about a restaurant specializing in pre-colonial Indian cuisine that serves gusanos -- worms, the kind in tequila bottles! -- and you can bet I am eager to try them!  Our friends aren't nearly as adventurous, so I hope we get to go.

Buenas noches, mis amigos -- more next week.

Jo

Oh, my, it's been too long!

I just looked at the little notebook where I jot down reminders of things to tell you about, and so much has happened -- too much for one post!  I truly apologize.  To make it less painful (more painful?), contemplate this image of San Miguel in mid-February:

In the daytime now it's in the low 80s, still not a drop of rain and so it's dusty.  At night it's in the 50s.  Every morning we wake up to sunshine:  astonishing.

One day we got in the car and explored a neighborhood (una colonia in Spanish) that was new to us:  marvelous architecture, and some of it very quirky.  We loved this house decorated with mosaics and even dinner plates:

Exploring further, we bumped down a single-lane dirt path to the Presa, a big lake/reservoir near San Miguel.  Someone told me it's an artificial lake, and I do believe it because the water is a colloidal suspension of dust particles such that it always reflects brown in the sun, not blue.  Our dog, Mela, however, saw no problem with that.

She had a fine time chasing the birds -- little swoopy ones were her favorites, but my favorites were white pelicans and white egrets.  I am going to have to start carrying my camera instead of my iPhone to take pictures in order to have a zoom:  I had to get too close to the birds to take a picture without a zoom, and they flew off.  Mela was also intrigued by the flocks of goats and sheep grazing by the side of the Presa.

Although, as you can see, it's hardly a beach there, it was spacious and calm and breezy in the sunshine.  Watching Mela romp through the water was delightful -- her happiness was contagious.  Next time we'll bring folding chairs and spend a couple of hours.

House-Warming Party

Last weekend we had a house-warming party!  We had originally planned for about 20 people, but in fact there were about 40.  We had arranged with our friends Yurina and Augustin to provide Mexican food cooked by Yurina (did I write about her before?  She's one of the singers we have heard each Friday night) -- huge bowls of chicken molé, chiles en nogada, enchiladas, rice, and more.  It was all delicious, and of course too much food.  Naturally, we put out more, more, and more food.

Yurina and Yoremi (pictured below), the two women we hear sing every week, entertained, along with still another musician.  I had been concerned that the music would stop people from talking, but in fact it was perfect.  This house allows groups of people to congregate at different places, and Yoremi is singing at the lower patio.

Some people, like my friends Béa Aaronson and Stephan Eaker below, listened intently (they are the artists we met on our first day in San Miguel in July; we just bought a couple of Stephan's drawings of the town, so when you're here to visit you'll see them):

Others schmoozed:

Yes, that's me in front.  The three men facing you are a good cross-section of how one makes friends here.  On the left is Milt, a man we met by accident in the Jardin last week.  He's in his mid-80s.  His wife died last year after 64 years of marriage and he's in town to see if he can re-invent his life.  I don't know a better place for that.  He has invited us for dinner later this week to meet a couple of his children, who I'd imagine are our age, who will be visiting.  In the center is Louis, one of the members of Rick's writers' group, who has become a good, good friend here.  Louis was an English teacher in Massachusetts and in Ghana, and has been in San Miguel since 1985.  You may recall that we had a friend who lives here on $595 US per month:  that's Louis, a complete joy as a friend.  On the right is Mike, a man I got to know when he and I talked about the possibility of his renting the house on the steep hillside we had planned to rent.  (It didn't work out.)  He grew up American in Mexico City and so is completely bilingual, and he has just moved to San Miguel.

Also at the party were our very first out-of-town guests, my oldest friend Ottie -- at whose suggestion we came to San Miguel last year, and her partner Eve.  Some of the pictures in this blog were taken by Ottie.  You'll see them in a picture or two below.  I have learned that having guests here is a different experience from what it was in the U.S.  Even though Ottie and Eve already knew San Miguel, I found that I spent so much time with them going places and doing things that I had no time for ordinary life -- paying bills, writing the blog, keeping up with emails, reading a book, and such.  That's exhausting.  It's very seductive, this place, and I learned it's necessary to resist the lure of doing all the interesting things it has to offer, necessary to resist the pleasure of watching people I love take pleasure in San Miguel.  So, fair warning -- when you come to visit, we will spend some time with you and then we will send you off with a map, a cell phone, and a house key to do some discovering on your own!

Cooking Lesson

This past week I had my first cooking lesson!  Yurina, one of the singers, is an accomplished cook.  She learned from her mother, who learned from professional chefs.  Here we are in my kitchen.

The lesson this week was how to make Pescada a la Veracruzana.  Yurina brought a list of ingredients, most of which I already had.  Part One of the lesson was to go to the market -- one of the major neighborhood markets, Mercado de San Juan de Dios, is right near the house -- for the few things we still needed.  Then as Yurina prepared the dish I chopped vegetables and took notes on what she was doing.  Here is a picture of the dish cooking; you can't see the fish filets, which are under the vegetables.   Except for the time it takes to dice the vegetables, it's a really easy recipe and utterly delicious.

And for the cooks among you, here's the recipe for the fish and the rice that went with it!

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Pescado a la Veracruzana con Arroz

Maestra de Cocina Yurina Peralta, February 15, 2011

San Miguel de Allende

Recipe for 6 people

6 fish filets (tilapia or other)

½ cup or less olive oil

8 – 12 green olives

about ¼ cup capers

1 onion

2 lg cloves garlic

1 kilo tomatoes, about 5 medium/large

about 10-12 stems of parsley (if no parsley, use cilantro instead)

about 1 tsp dry oregano

half a sweet red pepper

optional:  diced potatoes

Prepare vegetables

            Dice onion

            Peel tomatoes with a knife and dice (or blanch and peel, then dice)

            Cut parsley leaves into small pieces

            Dice garlic finely

            Cut red pepper into larger dice than other vegetables

In big frypan, put olive oil at high heat.

Add diced tomatoes and cook until they turn orange and juice comes out

Add onions and garlic; cook until onions are translucent

If using potatoes, add now

Add parsley

Reduce heat to low

Add salt to taste

Add red pepper slices

Slice olives and add

Add capers

Crush oregano between hands and add.

Stir everything

Put fish filets on plate and pepper them.

Push vegetable mixture to one side of frypan and one by one add fish filets.  Cover with mixture.

Cover pan and simmer on low heat 20 to 30 minutes or until fish is white.

Can cook completely and take off fire, then reheat just before eating on very low heat at most 20 minutes.  Make sure there’s enough liquid in the pan.

Arroz

Heat pot.

Add olive or other oil. 

When it is hot, add rice and stir.

If desired, can add peas for color (or any other vegetable)

Cook rice until slightly golden.

Add twice as much hot water as rice.

Add salt to taste

Cover and cook about 20 minutes over lowest flame until water is absorbed.  Taste for doneness near the end.  If needed, add a little bit of water.

To reheat just before eating, add a little water and cook over lowest possible flame a little while.

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It was a superb experience, to say nothing of spectacularly delicious.  We've set the cooking lessons for Tuesdays, because on Tuesdays our friend Louis comes home with Rick after their writers' group for a standing weekly dinner invitation.  This coming Tuesday I'm going to learn how to make chiles rellenos, and we're going to have two other guests as well, Marcella, a lovely Mexican woman who sings in my chorus, and her eight-year-old daughter, so this dinner will be in Spanish.  Marcella last week brought to the chorus rehearsal a chocolate cake she had baked for me for Valentine's Day!  The warmth and generosity of the Mexicans we are meeting is extraordinary.

Birthday

It remains for me in this post to tell you about my 68th birthday this week, my first in San Miguel.  It was a hell of a terrific birthday!

The first part of the day was arranged by Ottie and Eve, who connected with Lorna and John, friends who are building a compound of four houses in the campo (= countryside).  We got to ride out to the construction site in an open truck -- I loved that!  Ottie is on the left, then me, then Rick, then Eve.

All the houses are being made by hand -- not one power tool of any kind.  When it's all done it will be powered by solar collectors, entirely off the grid.  Here is one of the workers cutting a stone block to fit a corner space.

The site had a superb view out over the valley and the Presa.

And I must put this picture someplace.  I took it that day of Rick, and you can see how happy he is.

After visiting the construction site, we were given a tour of the ceramics studio owned by Lorna and John's son and daughter-in-law, who moved to San Miguel nine years ago and gradually lured out their family.  Nisha, the daughter-in-law, showed us around and explained the processes.  This is not ceramics as in dinner plates but ceramics as in works of art:  http://www.danishasculpture.com/.  Oh, to have the money and the space to buy just a tiny part of the beautiful things we see here!  Adjoining the ceramics studio was, believe it or not, an aerial acrobatics circus training facility for GravityWorks: think Cirque du Soleil.  It seems Nisha has had this group for years and has trained others, many of whom are older (one woman is 58!), and every year they have a show here in San Miguel.  It will be next month, and you can be sure we'll go.  You can see some great short videos of the troupe's performances at http://www.danishasculpture.com/gravityworks/videos.html.

Last, dinner.  Here is what I posted right after dinner on the San Miguel Civil List, when I was still bubbling from the experience.

So I have to tell you about my birthday dinner tonight.  This past summer we lived a few doors from where Ricardo Landsman was preparing his new Argentinian steak restaurant, Virundela (at Codo #4), and we'd stop in every few days to see the progress and talk with Ricardo.  We hoped to eat there before we left in September but as it happened he opened a few days after we left town.  I decided that was where I wanted to have my birthday dinner.

It was utterly spectacular.  Because he's such a sweet man, his kindness and sweetness infused the atmosphere in the restaurant, even more so because there are only six tables.  All of them were full, even now at a time of diminished tourism.  He even told us that although something one of us wanted to order was on the menu it wasn't good enough, and he advised something else -- I loved that.  His wife is the cook, and EVERYTHING the four of us had was superb.  He has a black sausage appetizer that's extraordinary, and his steak is absolutely the best I've ever had in my 68 years on this earth.  What's even better is that the steak is 800 grams, so it's easily sharable and becomes a perfect serving for two people at 100 pesos per person.  The people at the next table had ribs, and they swooned over them.  One of us at our table, a vegetarian, was ecstatic at the empanadas and the grilled vegetables.  Ricardo's wife, Dede, is the cook, and she is totally amazing.  We brought her out for a round of applause.

Because it was a celebration Ricardo recommended a Uruguayan wine that was half wine and half bubbly, predictably Medio y Medio, that was delicious and more than the four of us could drink so we shared it with others.  By the end of the evening all the people at all the tables were talking and laughing together.  Now really, how could that happen in the US or Canada???

It was SUCH a joyful evening, and we were lucky to get in without a reservation!  Call for one at 552-4400.  If you have an occasion to celebrate, or even if you don't, go -- you will love it.

Now isn't this an amazing life???  With my love,

Jo

Back by popular demand

I have been adamant that the time for this blog has passed.  Our summer of exploration in San Miguel has ended and now we live here every day.  Do you tell everyone about your everyday life?  But so many people have asked me to continue the blog -- I am immensely flattered!  Okay, every now and then I'll write something.  If you go to Google Reader you can set up a notification when there's a new post.

We arrived here on Rick's birthday on January 13:  San Miguel is a hell of a great birthday present!  We found the house to be as beautiful as we hoped, but the moving-in process was an unpleasant surprise.  We discovered that we're not 35 any more!  The physical exhaustion of age sure does sneak up on you.

But now that we've been here for almost a month we are almost completely done with settling in.  It's a very comfortable house, with a kitchen, dining room, living room, guest room/TV room, and full bath downstairs, and upstairs a big light room we call the solarium that we're using as our study, our bedroom/sewing room, a full bath, and a half bath.  There's a balcony patio off the solarium and a patio downstairs, and there's a fountain in the garden.  Our house has a Madonna painted on the wall out front, and it's surely not a coincidence that our wall has no graffiti.  We're living in a Mexican neighborhood and haven't yet seen any Gringos living on this street.  The Mexican women and I smile shyly at each other, "Buenos dias, señora," as we pass.

We are gradually reintroducing ourselves to the life of this marvelous town.  Rick has rejoined his Tuesday writers' group and I have rejoined my chorus, with a concert coming up this Friday.  The other day we walked through the Jardin and had not one but two fascinating conversations with people.  One was a spontaneous conversation with an elderly man who turned out to be 85, whose wife of 64 years died last year.  He was here because he'd heard the town's reputation of being the place where people come to reinvent their lives.  My experience of San Miguel is that it's true.

We're having a house-warming party a week from today.  We had thought to invite maybe 20 people but it has just mushroomed.  Some people want to bring others, and we meet new people and invite them.  It will even be catered!  We have made some Mexican friends where the husband has a little cafe for which his wife cooks, and the wife is a musician, a singer.  So they will prepare tapas for the party and she will sing!  Also starting next weekend we will have our first out-of-town company:  my oldest friend Ottie, from junior high school, and her partner Eve.  Ottie is responsible for our life here since it was originally her suggestion that we check out San Miguel.  Because this will be their third trip, we still have in our future the heady experience of introducing the town to people who don't know it at all.  Honestly, I would not believe me when I rave about this place!  It must be experienced to be believed.

Every year there's a ten-day Candelaria festival, celebrating flowers and plants, held in a lovely park, Parque Juarez.  We went today.  Imagine hundreds of florists and nursery owners spreading out their wares along long walkways!

It is early February and there were pots of open tulips and hyacinths, as well as almost every other flower.  Here are mostly cyclamens.

And here is the flower that represents Mexico to me, thanks to Diego Rivera's paintings, the calla lily.

For someone like me from the Pacific Northwest, the weather is just ideal now:  daytimes in the 70s, nights in the 50s.  Short-sleeve weather for Rick and me, but many Mexicans think it's cold.  Well, no wonder oranges grow here.

In our garden we have a lime tree.  Lime is "limon" in Spanish, and our yellow lemons are nowhere to be seen.  Another odd food thing is that we went to Costco in Celaya, a town maybe an hour from here, and bought some sushi.  It turns out that Mexican sushi is not made with rice, but with mashed potatoes! Very weird to be dipping mashed potatoes into soy sauce and wasabi.

Welcome back!

Jo