June 5: photos of Sleeping Beauty's castle

This post will consist mostly of real estate stuff and kitten stuff, in all likelihood far more than most of you want to know.  No cooking lesson last week, so no recipes.  If you are bored by one or both subjects, fair warning!  And this is a long post:  many pictures.

Three days ago we paid 10% down on the house we are buying: US$16,000.  I have to tell you how we got the money together.

We had been told that we would need a cashier's check in dollars because the seller is an American in Texas, and Intercam, an investment firm, is one of two places in San Miguel that can do that.  First, we closed two checking accounts and a savings account at Scotia Bank because we were not happy with its policies (imagine having to come back the next day to transfer money if you come after 1:30 PM!  etc.)  Closing the accounts took over an hour.  We took 66,000 pesos -- about $5,700 -- in a cashier's check made out to me to Intercam to open an account there with it.  The agent, a lovely person, regretfully pointed out that the cashier's check had to be made out to them, not to me.  So back we went to Scotia Bank, prepared for another charge of $12 for another cashier's check.  No such luck.  Because we no longer had an account at Scotia Bank (typical) they would not issue me another cashier's check for love or money.  So we cashed the one we had into an unbelievable pile of paper money, about 8 inches high.  Of course the teller had to count it at least twice, and we counted it, which took the better part of an hour.  We carried cash worth over $5,700 across town back to Intercam.  The agent was really regretful this time:  there is a 3% tax on cash over I forget how much, but we were over it.  This is a national regulation that is supposed to discourage narcos from depositing their ill-gotten gains.  We had no choice but to pay it, so that cashier's check cost us nearly $200, and the whole process took over 3 hours.  The rest of the money was wired from our bank on Camano Island with no drama, so Friday we paid our deposit.

This weekend we were at the house measuring and noting zillions of things to be fixed, and I finally took pictures for you.  Remember that I call it Sleeping Beauty's castle -- at the end of her 20-year sleep -- for a good reason.  It is the same reason we managed to get this place, consisting of three buildings and a good-sized lot, 60' X 90', for as little as $160,000.  Here goes!

First, the view as you come in the door from the street, specifically the place for the car.  The overgrown area is between the two houses.  Mine, the casa, is to the left; Rick's, the casita, is to the right.

From the other side you can see the rusted metal garage door, which has a cutout for very short people to enter.  It will all be replaced.  In the left rear are laundry sinks complete with concrete washboard; they will come out and we'll put the washer and dryer there under a shed roof.

Then, my casa.  The living room, with lovely windows but a floor that will have to be redone.  The thing on the wall to the left is a gas heater:  no central heating in Mexican houses!

And for a reason I can't fathom, a sink on the other side of the living room, which will obviously come out.  Notice the elegance of the brick supports, too.

The room behind it will become the kitchen.  Isn't the floor lovely?

Behind the kitchen but entirely separate from the entire first floor with only an outside entrance (!) is what will become my study.  We'll have to make a doorway between the kitchen and the study, which will be to the left in the back.  That's a gas heater on the back wall.  I am delighted with the pillars, shelves, and archway!

Then you go upstairs, and the only way to do that is on exterior stairs which are now open to the sky (and rain when it comes) but will be roofed in and lighted.  First is the room which will be a dressing room / sewing room. 

The derelict armoire will be tossed.  You're looking at a couple of walls in the back of the room which are only clutter and will be removed.  Then my bedroom with huge glass windows in two walls and a door, to the right in the picture below, to the upper patio in a third wall.

Out the door from the bedroom, to the left of the picture above but not shown, is a long narrow porch, with no railings on part of it.  It will all be screened and fenced in.  The end you see here will become my summer sleeping area; behind the end where I stood to take the picture will have an outdoor shower.

And the bathroom, which has lovely light,

but is breathtaking in its current stupid layout:  see below.  That will all be changed.  The tub will be changed to a shower, too.

Now to Rick's casita.   It consists of three rooms, shotgun style.  It is in better shape than the casa, having been lived in more recently, but would you want your kitchen in your living room?  The room behind it, through the doorway at right, will become the kitchen.  We'll also knock down part of the rear wall between the living room and the kitchen to make more light in the kitchen, since most of the light is from the front of the living room.

Here's the front of the living room, with its wall of glass windows and a door.

There isn't much to see in what will become the kitchen other than the gas heater, which by now you can recognize.

And through the doorway at the back of the kitchen, you can see what will become his bedroom.  The two high windows open onto the street.  They will be enlarged a little, not too much considering security.  To the right of the wall below, but not shown, is the bathroom.  Small and dirty white:  to be retiled.

All along the casita next to the living room and kitchen is a 30' covered walkway about 8' wide.  We'll screen in one end of it to make a sleeping porch.  Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of it.

Now back to my house.  Here is the patio in front of my living room, to the rear of the property and facing north.  The tiles will all have to be refinished.

And looking over the edge of the patio (from the upstairs sleeping porch) is the hole in the ground which will become the pool, pretty much delineated by the line you see in bricks.  Why the line is there I have no idea.  The plan is for the pool to be cheaper because essentially it can be an above-ground pool, and its lip will be level with the patio.  (Under the patio is even a storage room.)

In the space between the two houses is a lot of very overgrown and messy greenery, with vines growing like mad in the trees.  This is a picture of one of the two huge jacaranda trees, which make gorgeous purple flowers in March and April.

Last, here's where you'll stay when you visit.  It is now pretty disgusting.  Outside the window and behind the wall you see out there is what has been described as a "servant's bathroom" -- a filthy toilet and a filthy sink.  At least there's plumbing.  It will be expanded, with a doorway to the guest room broken through the wall to the right of the window.

And on the other side of the room now is -- you guessed it -- what was once decrepit sink.  I don't know what the fixation was with sinks in this place.  And please note the beautiful floor:  peeling, pitted concrete.

When you come I hope you'll remember how awful it is now so that you can better appreciate how beautiful it will be.

Most of the rooms are good in terms of size.  Here are the measurements I took.

Casa

Living room            21’ 11” x 12’ 9”

Kitchen                   12’ 0” x 11’ 10”

Pantry                      7’ 3” x 7’ 10”  (now a full bath behind the kitchen; not needed as such)

Study                      17’ 0” x 8’ 8”

Powder room           6’ 8” x 3’ 4”   (now a full bath off the study; will remove shower)  

Dressing/sewing room         19’ 1” x 8’ 5”

Bedroom                 13’ 4” x 16’ 0”

Sleeping porch         21’ 9” x 6’ 9”

Casita

Living room         17’ 8” x 11’ 2”

Kitchen                13’ 0” x 11’ 2”

Bedroom              13’ 0” x 11’ 5”

Bathroom             8’ 9” x 5’ 8”

Hallway               3’ 1” x 6’ 6”

Guest room

15’ 5” x 12’ 3”

Closing is June 27.  I have been working hard on lists of work to be done, and it goes on for pages and pages.  The plan is to have several contractors in this week or next and get firm bids and timelines from them.  We'll choose one and start work as soon as we can after June 27.  Contractors who visited before we bought it suggested it would take from 3 to 6 months to finish the work, so we hope to be moved in before the new year.  We'll leave the garden mess for later.

Now, kittens!  

You may recall that our housekeeper showed up with three kittens some weeks ago:  she knew I wanted kittens and her friend's cat had recently had a litter.  I certainly wasn't aiming for three, however, and I guess I should be grateful the mother cat didn't have six kittens.  Nor did I want three so young:  they were maybe 4 or 5 weeks old.  But there they were.

We've had them now for what, 4 or 5 weeks?  More?  They are now completely used to our dog Mela and she to them, and they are finally getting comfortable enough with us (we feed them, dammit!) to snuggle on our laps.  Which is, to my mind, the biggest reason to have a cat.  Reading a book without a cat on your lap is an inadequate experience.  Their names are all Spanish verbs:  Ser, to be/permanent; Estar, to be/temporary; and Hacer, to make or to do.  As is Mela, all three are chicas (girls), so there's a lot of estrogen in this house.

Here is Ser, the bravest of the three.

And Ser's two sisters, Hacer to the left and Estar to the right.

Because they were too young when they were brought to us, it is pathetic to see that Ser and Estar sometimes nurse at their sister, Hacer, who is moreover the littlest of the three.  I don't suppose they get much milk.

The only other thing I wanted to tell you tonight is that we have finally had a week of respite from temperatures in the 90s pretty much throughout April and May, but still with no rain.  To a Seattle girl the heat has been excruciating.  Air conditioners are extremely rare, so the only relief we had was to go to a public pool a few times.  At night we slept with multiple fans, and got up several times to take cool showers.  People insisted it was unusually hot, but that was no help.  It was so bad that frankly if we had come to San Miguel only in April and May of this year, I would not have wanted to move here.  But we are here now and we are moving to a house with superb breezes, probably because it's on a hill -- the view from the patio looking toward the center of San Miguel is below -- and the garden between the two houses is shady and actually makes a kind of wind tunnel.  Moreover, the orientation of the house is north, which will help a lot.

So with the weather advantages of the new house and with the pool, we should be in fine shape for all future horrendous heat.

Our adventure progresses!

Big News! May 28

We are buying a house!  Yes, it's the one I described in my last post.  It is in Colonia (= neighborhood) San Antonio, the neighborhood just to the south of the center of San Miguel.  The property measures about 60' wide by 90' deep, a good size for San Miguel, and like other homes is walled on all four sides.  As I wrote before, it is pretty derelict and much work will have to be done before it is livable.

When it is done, this is what you will find.

• As you enter there is the guest room and bathroom on the left and a roofed laundry area on the right.  
• A little farther on the left is my casa (house), which has a living/dining room, kitchen, pantry, study, and half bath downstairs; upstairs is a bedroom, dressing and sewing room (!), full bath, screened sleeping porch, and possibly an outside shower (depending on cost).  Under the stairs is a storage area.  Downstairs toward the back of the property and outside the living room is a tiled patio.  
• To the right of the entrance is Rick's casita (little house):  a living/dining room, a kitchen, a bedroom, a full bath, and a screened sleeping porch.  
• In between and behind the houses is garden, now a mess but it will eventually be nice, with two huge old jacaranda trees that create a beautiful peaceful shady look.  We'll put a few chairs there.
• All along the back of the property is a sunken area (why it is sunken we don't know) but we will put a small pool, maybe 10' X 12" or so, between the casa patio and the rear property line.  Because it's sunny here something like 330 days a year, a solar heater will replace expensive electric heating.  Because the ground is sunken, we won't have to dig to build the pool!  Its lip will line up level with the patio.  Next to the pool and under the casa patio is a large storage room.  We will be ready for next summer's heat!

The work will take somewhere between 3 and 6 months.

We are buying the place for $160,000, negotiated down from $196,000, and expect to put perhaps $80,000 to $100,000 into it.  We have gotten a few sloppy estimates so far from contractors and will soon be ready for bids.  The process of buying here is that the contract must be translated into Spanish and notarized by a Mexican "notario," with 10% of the cost as the deposit.  We are told that the buyer's cost amounts to approximately 1.5 to 2% of the selling price for title search and all that stuff.  We have set the closing date for late next month.  To buy it we will use a HELOC, a home equity line of credit, that we have but do not use on our house on Camano Island, and then will repay it by selling the house as soon as we can in the spring when the renters' lease is up.  We will be back on Camano Island in late February to take care of that.

So we are thrilled to have our own place!  The current reminder of what it's like to live under an unpleasant landlord has been motivating, as has of course our decision to live "separados pero juntos" -- separately but together.  There's a Spanish expression, "juntos pero no revueltos" -- together but not scrambled, which is pretty neat and pretty close to what we mean.

As soon as I can I'll take photos and post them here.  Happy day!

May 22

Mea Maxima Culpa.  Well, maybe Minima might be more accurate in the greater scheme of things.  I have neglected you:  Lo siento!  (= I'm sorry.)

First, the cooks among you are probably waiting for the newest recipes.  Despite the three-week interval since the last one there are only two new ones, since Yurina and I took a week off.

Chiles en Nogada

Maestra de Cocina Yurina Peralta, el 3 mayo, 2011

San Miguel de Allende

Recipe for 5 people

This is the most traditional Mexican dish.  In September, the month of Mexican independence, it is served with pomegranate seeds sprinkled on top:  red (pomegranate), white (sauce), and green (pepper), the colors of the Mexican flag.

5 sweet chiles poblanos (or green Bell peppers)

Olive oil

1 lb ground meat, half beef and half pork

2 eggs

1 to 1-1/2 cups mixed nuts and dried fruits, diced if necessary (don’t dice

 blueberries or raisins!)

4 cloves garlic, diced

2 cups light sour cream (crema)

½ cup pecans

6 prunes

Milk

Pomegranate seeds (if in season)

o     Sear the chiles on the burner flame (or blanch briefly in boiling water). Place in plastic bag to steam for a while (make meat mixture in the meantime), then peel off skin.  Be sure to keep stem on.  Slit one side and remove seeds.   Set aside.

o     Heat the olive oil in pot.  Add meat and brown evenly.  Set aside to cool.

o     When cool, mix 2 eggs and fold into meat mixture. Add garlic, nuts and fruit.  Fill chiles with this mixture, pushing it down full.  Close the open side with a toothpick.  Place in pyrex pan.

o     Bake chiles in moderate oven for 30 minutes.

o     For the sauce, put the crema, pecans, and prunes into a blender.  (Reserve a few pecans for garnish.)    Add a little milk to thin if too thick.  Microwave a minute or two to warm slightly.

o     Place one chili on each dinner plate and spoon sauce over.  Add pecans or other garnish.  If in season, sprinkle pomegranate seeds on top.

Pollo a la Jardinera

Maestra de Cocina Yurina Peralta, el 10 mayo, 2011

San Miguel de Allende

Recipe for 4 people

4 thigh quarters or breasts

Any vegetables you want for taste and color.  We used:

1 large carrot

1/3 lb string beans

2 potatoes

1 chayote squash

1 zucchini squash

3 tomatoes

6 to 8 garlic cloves

kernels of one corn on the cob

1 serrano chili

1 medium onion

salt and pepper

capers to taste

Dice all vegetables in small pieces.

Brown chicken.  We used the wide paella pan over two burners.

Add vegetables over small-to-medium fire.

Add water.

Cover with tin foil.  Simmer about 1 hour.  Check partway through:  if water hasn’t mostly boiled off, remove tin foil.

About 10 minutes before serving, add capers.

I guess the big news is that Rick and I have decided to alter our relationship a bit. We've come to the conclusion that we will be happier if there's a little more distance between us.  We mean this literally.  We have started to search for a place to buy here that has a casa and a casita (a house and a little house) on the same property.  The house will be big enough to have a guest room in it, so you all will have a place to stay when you come visit, and we'll share the property ownership, car, laundry facilities, and other things to be decided.  But we'll each have a separate home.  Since we made this decision we are much happier with each other than before, and hope that actually getting into this space, wherever we find it, will make us happier yet.  We understand that it's an unorthodox way for married people to live but what the hell, unorthodoxy never stopped either of us before.  Where is it written that married people MUST live together?

So we've started looking at properties.  We saw one that we are sort of nuts about.  It has three buildings on it:  a casa with a bedroom and dressing room (!) upstairs and a little room downstairs that could be used as my study plus living/dining/kitchen, a casita with three rooms that we're thinking of making into two rooms by knocking out a wall, and a good-sized room with a nearby half-bath that could become a guest room and full bath.  The property has a lovely view over San Miguel, is not terribly far from Centro, has a good amount of land, has an OK price that we would reduce, and is in a decent neighborhood.  The trouble is that it looks like how Sleeping Beauty's castle and garden must have looked after her 20-year sleep.  Derelict doesn't begin to describe it.  But the buildings seem solid and there are two huge jacaranda trees for shade.  We are making appointments with architects, contractors and garden designers to find out how much money and time would be required to make this into homes we'd want to live in, at an affordable total price.  We should be able to make a decision about it this coming week or so.

I have bought two homes in my life, both in Seattle, and for both of them the market was so hot that it was a matter of Decide on the Spot or lose it.  I am reveling in the luxury of taking the time to make up my mind about this place!  Rick's mind too, of course.

The weather continues to be horrendous, at least for a girl from the Pacific Northwest.  Temperatures are in the low to mid-90s every day, strong sun every day, until the rains start probably next month.  Old-timers here say this is the hottest summer they can remember, but maybe this will become normal.  I carry an umbrella for shade, use the hand fan David and Shree gave me when they were here, and always have a bottle of cold water with me.  I have bought something sold locally here, a cloth tube filled with water-absorbent granules of some sort.  You soak it in the morning and it holds the water for most of the day.  You wear it around your neck and the coolness is wonderful.  

And I never thought I'd ever in my life consider this, but we are thinking of installing a small pool in the place we buy, as a relief from the heat.  As we all know, only rich people have pools, so this is a conceptual and financial stretch.  We'll see if it's possible to do it here for a price we could afford.  It bears looking into because labor is much cheaper here.  There's a good place in the Sleeping Beauty property for a pool, and in addition it would be easy to create a sleeping porch there for each of us.  The nights are deliciously cool, down to the upper 50s, but the houses retain the day's heat:  sleeping porches would be ideal in the hot months.

The adult education program I proposed to the Biblioteca is not dead, although it sometimes seems so.  After trying to work with the Biblioteca Board of Directors and a Board member who volunteered to work with us on it, I came to the conclusion that they are absolutely so awful to work with -- slow, bureaucratic, micro-managing, intrusive, counter-productive -- that I'd rather not do the program than do it with them.  My friend Luba, with whom I'm working on this, suggested an alternative place to hold it.  We have made a presentation to the Director and think that the signs look good, but there's no conclusive answer yet.  We hope to have one soon, maybe this week.

I have a Mexican medical story to tell you.  I got my annual mammogram at the San Miguel public hospital, the Hospital General.  It is entirely free, apparently subsidized by the government, but it took five trips.  1) Go to the hospital and learn that I have to come back between 10:30 and 12:30 to make an appointment.  2) Go back between 10:30 and 12:30 and make the appointment.  3) Go back for the first appointment:  give them my name, address, age, etc.  This takes about 3 minutes.  4) Go back the next day for the mammogram but the doctor has left even though I haven't yet had my appointment.  5) Go back again and this time get the mammogram:  sophisticated new digital equipment, apparently knowledgeable technicians.  But when I changed into a hospital gown I saw this was is a shared resource; it looked clean but the idea is yukky.  I will have to go back for a 6th time to get the results, in a month.  In a nutshell you have the advantages and disadvantages of Mexican medicine:  excellent and priced right (can't be more right in this instance) but so inefficient.

Rick went to San Antonio, TX, last week.  A friend of ours, Louis Cargill, was going to take a bus there and fly from San Antonio to Boston for his semi-annual VA Hospital medical care, but Rick proposed driving.  It took about 12 hours, not too bad.  Rick took with him a long shopping list of stuff, and he got his hearing aids adjusted at the Costco audiology department.  We have two Costco stores near here but they don't have audiology departments.  He also got a vision exam and brought the prescription back here to order the glasses locally:  less time but not cheaper.  As often happens, at the border coming back he got a green light, which means go right on through, so everything in the car was effectively brought in duty-free.

People in the US keep asking if I feel safe here.  I must tell you that I feel 100% as safe as I did in the US.  Actually, considering comparable-sized cities, I feel safer here.  It is true that I wouldn't be comfortable living in a border city, god forbid, or in some port cities where there's been drug violence, but this place feels like a small town in Iowa.  And it's just fine to fly into Mexico City (or Leon, a closer but more expensive airport) and take a luxury bus to San Miguel.  So from someone with direct experience, the stories of how dangerous Mexico is are starting to sound like the stories about New York, where you're mugged every day, and about Seattle, where it rains 100% of the time.

April 30: wedding

Today we were invited to a wedding!  Above is a bad picture (sorry, I was able to get only one) of the mother of the bride, Emma, our ama de casa -- our housekeeper.  She has five daughters and three sons, and this was the last daughter to get married.  Emma is very unusual for a middle-aged Mexican woman in being so thin, and all her daughters resemble her in this.  The wedding was held in La Iglesia de San Francisco, to my mind a more beautiful church than the Parroquia at the Jardin, and the church held enough flowers to stock five flower shops.  Tonight Emma will be wearing my red dress that I bought in Tunisia a few years ago, embroidered with gold thread.

We were able to understand relatively little Spanish because of the reverberation of the loud amplified sound caused such distortion -- the priest wore a big microphone around his neck.  The service took over an hour.  It began with something that astonished me:  two women leading prayers (photo below)!  The bride and groom are seated at the center.  Emma and her husband Francisco, resplendent in his white mariachi uniform, are seated at the left with the maid of honor in front of them.  At the right are the groom's parents and the best man.

It's a good thing the matrimonial couple had big white soft cushions to kneel on, because they were kneeling for a long time.

The picture below was after the exchange of rings, but the service was far from over.

After the priest and the altar boy gave communion up front to the newlyweds and their families, people in the church who also wanted to take communion lined up.

After the service was the time for photos.  The newlyweds and the bride's parents:

And finally, both extended families:

What an honor!

April 28

So here's the big news of the moment:

Tres gatitos!  Three kittens.  Our housekeeper knew I wanted kittens, and before I could get them from the SPA here she brought three from a litter that a friend's cat had.  Three is more than I bargained for -- I wanted one or two -- but here they are.  And at 5 weeks they're younger than we're used to, but they are eating canned food and using the litter box:  obviously very precocious kittens.  I have been cat-less since our cat, Lila Tov (= good night in Hebrew) ran off at the first rest stop on our trip down here in January.  As you can imagine, I have spent hours watching them, to the point where I could decide which kitten warranted which name.  Hacer (to do) is the most active one.  Estar (to be, temporary) is the tentative, skittish one.  And Ser (to be, permanent) is the even-tempered one.  Great names, yes?

Last week it was Semana Santa (Holy Week) here in San Miguel, and I think the town could exist financially on the tourist income from this week alone.  There were huge crowds and the streets were filled with folks looking to make a buck while they could.

For a camera this is irresistible stuff.

And this week in the cooking lesson we made paella marinara!  Only seafood, because one person at dinner didn't eat meat or chicken.  It was absolutely superb.  Here's the recipe.

Paella Marinara

Maestra de Cocina Yurina Peralta, el 26 abril, 2011

San Miguel de Allende

Recipe for 6 people

3 small crabs, halved

1 lb shrimp

1 lb mussels

½ lb precooked calamari, cut in bite-size pieces

2 filets white fish, cut in bite-size pieces

1 lb green beans, cut in small pieces

½ lb fresh peas

1 red pepper, cut in small pieces

1 onion, diced

5 cloves garlic, sliced

3 cups paella rice (precooked so it won’t stick together)

Powdered saffron to taste

Salt to taste

Paella pan:  about 18” in diameter, about 6” high, with a cover

Brown onion and garlic.

Add a LOT of water.  Heat to just under boiling.

Boil peas separately to soften

Add string beans and calamari

Remove gooey green stuff from crab.

Add crab, shrimp, and mussels.  All ingredients spread evenly over pan.

Sprinkle in powdered saffron until water is colored

Add salt to taste

Sprinkle in rice.  If wanted, add saffron if color isn’t deep enough

Add peas (when tender) and red pepper.

After a while, add white fish.

Simmer, partially covered for a good while.  The rice is very hard and needs time to absorb water.  Cook until rice is tender.

At first I thought the paella pan, which Yurina had and loaned to me to make this, was nice but unnecessary.  Having cooked the paella, however, I see it is necessary for the ingredients to be spread out flat rather than piled up vertically.  The pan was so large we lit four burners under it.  So if you make this yourself, use the widest pan you can.  And by the way, use whatever seafood you like -- this is what I could get (frozen) here.  And/or, pork, chicken, sausage.

Another thing I've meant to talk to you about is medical care here.  Since we arrived in January I've had two contacts with the medical establishment.  A few weeks ago I got food poisoning from eating something I should have known not to eat -- not local food at all but smoked fish that David and Shree brought with them when they arrived.  It had been unrefrigerated too long, and I gambled and lost.  When my fever climbed to over 102 degrees we went to the emergency room of the local for-profit hospital, the only one we knew the location of.  They gave me medicine for the fever and an anti-biotic, and this cost 2100 pesos, roughly $200, and medicine to take home cost another $65.  Next time we'll go to the cheaper hospital here in town, and we now know where it is.  Imagine, $200 for a hospital emergency room is too much!

I've also seen another doctor who specializes in gynecology and endocrinology for my insomnia, because it had recently occurred to me that the insomnia dated from about the time of menopause and thus might have something to do with hormones. I checked it out on the web and sure enough, a connection has been established for some women.  This man, who came highly recommended, charged way too much because he recently moved here from Mexico City and I think hasn't adjusted his fees yet.  He charged 1,000 pesos (about $90), while I'm told that ordinary doctors' fees are 300 or 400 pesos ($27 or $35) and specialists like him charge 500 pesos ($45); I imagine that Dr. Roberto will have to reduce his fees soon.  For 1000 pesos I had an extraordinary appointment, from 4:00 to 5:45.  First, a detailed health history that took probably an hour.  Then a physical exam that included a gynecological exam while we were in the neighborhood, including an ultrasound of my ovaries and uterus, a first for me.  Last, prescriptions for estrogen and progesterone, which I took to the pharmacy and filled for about $50.  Dr. Roberto spoke excellent English and I liked him very much -- that appointment simply blew me away -- but I told him that he cannot be my regular doctor because I cannot afford him.  But imagine what the practice of medicine would be in the US if it weren't for managed care.  This was very, very luxurious.  And the estrogen seems to be helping!  I'll know more in a few more weeks or maybe a couple of months, but there has been improvement that I hope is not just temporary.  Now why didn't all those doctors I saw in the US never ask me about the onset or consider the possibility that estrogen might be implicated?

April 22

First, I know you've been waiting for recipes.  Two weeks' worth.

Molotes en Salsa Pasilla

Maestra de Cocina Yurina Peralta, el 5 abril, 2011

San Miguel de Allende

Recipe for 7 people

Molotes:  pieces of lean beef (I think it was rump steak) flattened by the butcher, and wrapped around filling like a burrito.

Pasilla is a dry chile that is not very spicy.

7 pieces of rump steak (tell butcher para una milanesa)

6 small carrots

4 small/medium potatoes

2 chayote squashes (small)

a little white flour

¼ kg pasilla chiles (dry)

1 lg clove garlic

1 medium onion

1 tbsp + salt

Dice carrots and squash finely; put in bowl.

Dice potatoes; put in another bowl.

Put the pasilla chiles in boiling water for about 20 minutes until soft.

To make each molote:

            Sprinkle salt and pepper

            Place handful of carrots and chayote in the middle

            Gently fold over, like a burrito

            Fasten with toothpicks

Dredge molotes in white flour

Fry in olive oil until both sides are brown, not too much time.  Remove from heat.

Salsa

Remove stems, veins, and seeds from chiles and put in blender.

Add to blender:  sliced onion, garlic clove, and salt, and fill halfway with fresh water (the water in which the chiles boiled is too spicy).  Blend and slowly add more fresh water to top of blender.

Put some olive oil in frypan and diced potatoes and some salt.  If any carrot/chayote mixture is left, add it here. 

When potatoes are al dente, add salsa.  Stir, then pour over molotes.  Cook covered, over low heat about 20 minutes:  if high heat or cooked long time, the chiles become bitter.

And for the vegetarians among you ...

Calabaza de Queso, Ensalada Jardinera,

Guacamole, Ensalada de Nopales

Maestra de Cocina Yurina Peralta, el 12 abril, 2011

San Miguel de Allende

Recipe for 7 people

Calabaza de Queso — Stuffed Zucchini Squash

7 squashes

½ kg red tomatoes

½ onion

Salt and pepper

½ kg hard cheese:  gouda or manchego

Cut cheese into long strips.

Gently hollow out a long hole in the squash from the stem end, and push the cheese into it. (Mexican squashes are short and straight, so this is possible.)  Fill the end with some of the hollowed-out pieces.  Place on plate.

Cut and blend tomatoes, onion, salt and pepper.  If there are any squash pieces left, blend those too.

Cook tomato mixture in large frypan about 15 minutes.

Place squashes in frypan, cover with tomato mixture, and simmer over low fire about ¾ hour.  Not too much or they will fall apart.

Ensalada Jardinera — Cooked Garden Salad

2 potatoes

2 chayote squashes

¼ kg. string beans

5 carrots

1 onion

fresh garbanzo beans or other beans for protein

Any other vegetables you want

Seasoning

Peel potatoes and carrots

Dice all ingredients

Steam vegetables

Remove to bowl and add olive oil, salt, pepper, seasoning to taste

Otro Ensalada de Nopales (prickly pear cactus)

 Rinse nopales pieces well and soak in colander to start taking the ooze out

Boil until color changes.  Change water and boil again – 2 or 3 more times.  Strain.

Put olive oil in frypan and add half an onion, sliced thin.  When a little brown, add nopales.

Add salt and pepper to taste.

Put in bowl, add cherry tomatoes cut in pieces for color.

Traditional Mexican Guacamole

Dice avocadoes and press with spoon.  Add diced cilantro leaves, lime juice salt, half an onion cut in very small pieces.  Mix and serve.

There was no cooking lesson this past week:  enough food!  Monday, the day before Cooking Lesson Tuesday, was Passover and we had a Seder here, our first Mexican Seder.  We even found a place to get matzoh:  a store-owner here is Israeli and places orders with a source in Mexico City.  All the comforts of home.  We were seven at our Seder, and because it was potluck it was easy to prepare and so companiable.  Really wonderful.

Never visit here in April or May.  My poor brother and sister-in-law, who were here earlier this month, were the beneficiaries of our ignorance about San Miguel weather at this time.  It is hot as hell, often in the 90s.  I now walk with an umbrella for shade.  It's a dry heat so if you sit in the shade it's comfortable, but any kind of exertion or being in the sun is pretty hard, especially for people like us who love the cool Pacific Northwest weather.  Our bedroom is on the second floor and the warmer temperature upstairs is noticeable.  We sleep at night with a ceiling fan and two floor fans, and it's just bearable.  Rick, thank goodness, covered the large central skylight on the roof, about 12' by 5', which has an opening in the second floor down to the first:  the extra heat through the glass was terrible.  And because of the heat we leave the doors open.  The windows have screens but the doors don't so the mosquitoes get in.  We keep getting emails from friends bemoaning the cold, wet weather but we are envious.  Bitch, bitch, bitch ...

A week ago there was the most spectacular, marvelous, superb event!  IT RAINED!  Since we arrived here in mid-January, the most it has done has gotten some clouds and even once a real rain sky.  But no rain.  After this heat you can imagine how much everyone wants rain, but the rainy season is the summer.  David and Shree left early Saturday morning and missed the drama that day.  First the clouds, then actual rain, and then even hail!  True, not very big hailstones, but if you look closely you can see them.

It drizzled all night and the next day was glorious:  fresh, clear, cool air, sunshine of course, and temperatures in the low 80s. You don't know relief until you have experienced this.  Since then, the weather has been gradually working its way back up the thermometer, but I am so grateful.

You have probably already seen the blog with Shree's pictures. Here are a few of mine to augment hers.  This is one I took of Shree dancing at the place with the marvelous guitarists.  She's in the center facing the camera.

I took a few photos of the colors of Mexico, colors that we don't usually see in North America.  These are flowers that were going to be used for decorations for a wedding.

And on another day there were dancers performing at the Jardin -- you have heard me mention entertainment in the Jardin many times.  These dancers were getting ready to go on stage, helping with each other's makeup.

In the United States we have Good Friday and Easter Sunday, but here in Mexico there is la Semana Santa -- Holy Week.  Actually, more than a week.  Last Friday, nine days before Easter Sunday, there was El Viernes de la Columna.  Seems there was a priest 250 years ago who to my mind was seriously neurotic, deep into self-mortification.  He led a procession from Atotonilco, a nearby town with the bloodiest statue of Jesus I have ever seen, to San Miguel, about 15 kilometers, carrying the bloody statue, flagellating himself while wearing a crown of thorns all the while.  Now it's a tradition.  I'm told they skip the worst of the self-flagellation but make the procession every year, starting in the middle of the night.

We have also had El Viernes de las Dolores, Friday of Sorrows.  How the Virgin could know a week ahead of time that her son was going to be killed escapes me, but no matter.  Windows are "decorated" with purple fabric or crepe paper, symbol of mourning.  All around San Miguel in churches, stores and homes, open-to-the-public altars are created to commemorate the Virgin's pain and sorrow over her son's death.  All the design elements you see below, including the oranges, are symbolic of something or other; next year I'll do this properly and let you know what it all means.  From a design perspective, it's marvelous. 

Yesterday was Good Friday, the day Christ was crucified, and there were special processions and masses everywhere.  Today there are two major processions in town.  In one there is a special statue of Jesus which has been rigged up to allow his head to turn, which I am told it does, once, as he gazes sorrowfully at a statue of his mother.  In another there are thousands of people dressed up like Roman soldiers, little girls in white with purple sashes at their waists, women in black carrying a statue of the Virgin, etc.  And tomorrow in the Jardin there are many paper-maché hanging effigies of Judas that are burst to the accompaniment of fireworks and other explosions.  Interestingly enough, I have seen nothing about the resurrection of Jesus.  Except for exploding Judases, the emphasis seems entirely on misery, a great contradiction with the Mexican talent for celebration and happiness.  Perhaps eventually I will understand it better.

But much like Christmas in the U.S., Holy Week is a big-deal holiday.  Businesses are closed Friday and some of them for more days than that.  San Miguel is filled with mostly Mexican tourists taking advantage of the holiday to have a vacation, although some, I assume, are here for religious purposes.

And I wanted to give you an update on the adult education program that I'm trying to start at the Biblioteca here in town.  A couple of weeks ago, with the friend (Luba) I'm working with I presented it to the Board of Directors at the Biblioteca.  They were very positive about the idea, but since the Biblioteca has so recently been in the red and only survived by cutting expenses and staff way back, they are leery of starting something that requires a financial outlay with no guarantee of success even if it promises a steady income stream.  So one Board member volunteered to work with us on a stripped-down pilot project.  We've written the proposal which will be presented at their next meeting later this week.  If all goes well we'll be able to offer three courses in November, and if that goes well we should be able to scale up starting in the summer semester next year.

Enjoy your spring!

Jo

Shree's photos, April 22

My brother and sister-in-law (mi hermano y mi cuñeda) visited for a week and a half.  Thank goodness for visitors:  you get to see many things you would not otherwise have seen, because visitors are much more conscientious with a camera than those of us who live here all the time.  You will enjoy this!

First, the photographer, Shree Mickelson.  (Well, okay, I took this picture.)

And my brother, David Mickelson.  These photos and the next ones were taken on the rooftop terrace of a hugely expensive new hotel/restaurant, the Rosewood, that opened here a couple of months ago.  Rooms start at $300 a night, and 4 drinks on the terrace cost $50.  But what a view!

 

They joined me at my conversational Spanish class every day, having learned some Spanish in a trip they took to Cuba a few years ago.

Pretty fine place for a class, isn't it?  And here is our teacher, Elvira.  She was born in San Miguel and has taught English for 50 years.  Hard to believe, but she's 70.  An amazing teacher:  I can understand every syllable she says.

Shree also joined me for my weekly cooking lesson.  (I'll put the recipes on the next blog.)  First, of course, is the mercado (market) where we buy what we need for the dinner.  In this picture, the green round things are prickly pear cactus -- nopales in Spanish -- which you cut up and drain of the gooey stuff, sort of like okra, and then you can cook it or eat it raw.  Yurina, my friend and cooking teacher, has taught me two ways to make nopales and I give up.  Yuk.

Here we are, Shree, Yurina and me, in the kitchen preparing the meal.

I am scribbling down what Yurina is teaching us how to do, which will become the recipe you read on this blog.

And here is the fruit of our effort!  From the left, Rick, me, our friends Natalie, Louis, and Luba, and David.

Shree took this photo of Rick and Mela outside our house.  The shrine to the Virgin protects the house from graffiti!

She took this excellent photo of Rick.

David and I are talking in the shade at the Jardin.

This could be a Utrillo painting, of one of the beautiful San Miguel streets.

And an evening on the town.  First, a fine dinner at Hacienda Guadalupe.

Walking through the Jardin, we found an amazing thing:  a Mexican Klezmer band that played superb Klezmer music -- "Bei Mir Bist Du Schön" and others -- and consisted of non-Jewish Mexicans!  We asked them where we could hear them again but the next day they were traveling to Mexico City to play there.

Every weekend there is a Sound and Light show at / on the Parroquia, the main church in town facing the Jardin, to commemorate the Bicentennial.  This is simply a spectacular photo.

And two excellent guitarists, Jack and Frances, to round off the evening:

To conclude this photographic tour of life in San Miguel, another visual treat.

 

 Thank you, Shree!