It is morning in Mexico.
The daily 8 o'clock symphony is in full swing. The call and response of fighting cocks. The rumble of buses and whine of motorcycles taking people to their jobs. The owl-like voice of the turtledove.
This Sunday, all of that will change. The cocks, the buses, the motorcycles, the birds -- they will all carry on as usual. But the curtain call will be at 7 AM.
It is time for us to fall back to standard time. Nature will not give a turtledove hoot. It keeps its own counsel on time. While we humans, with our penchant for quantification, try to eke out more daylight from our day, nature just keeps chugging along.
And because no one has worked out an international standard on how to apply the rules of daylight saving time, there are inevitable glitches during the clock shift. Canada and The States switch three weeks earlier in the spring and one week later in the fall than does Mexico. That leaves a four-week gap when air flights are forced to alter their apparent departure and arrival times.
Of course, there are portions of all three countries that do not play the daylight saving game. So, if you are flying from Saskatoon to Cancun or from Tucson to Hermosillo, you do not have to worry about any of this because they do not play this chronological three-card monte game.
To avoid all this switching back and forth, some politicians have proposed switching to daylight saving time for the entire year. (If that sounds as if it indulges in a bit of Carrollian logic when the obvious answer would be to stay on "standard" time, I am with you.) Eleven countries -- among them such international standard-setters as Namibia, Belarus, and Uzbekistan -- have opted for eternal daylight saving time. Russia, the United Kingdom, and Ireland tried it, but didn't like it.
I am rather agnostic on the topic. As a writer, I like all the hub-bub. What would I write about this time of year if the switching went away?
Living in Mexico may warp my view. We have plenty of daylight all year, and I can choose when I want to use it on my own without the assistance of a clock. If I had to make a choice, I would most likely opt for leaving standard time in place for the full year. I am the type of guy who has worn the same style of shoes for thirty years.
In the end, it will not make much difference to me. If those fighting cocks can live by their own time and ignore the clock, so can I.
My friend Al lives just outside of San Miguel de Allende.
I originally met him through his blog, Life at Rancho Santa Clara. A retired newspaperman, he wields a word-thrifty pen in his writings of ranch life in the highlands of Mexico. Whenever I am in San Miguel, I arrange at least one dinner with him and Stew.
Most expatriates here periodically ponder whether Mexico is their final destination. Part of that is due to the fact that they are not immigrants. As expatriates, they still retain emotional ties to the Old Country,* often referring to it as "home."
Last Monday, Al published one of his best essays I have read on that topic (When is it time to leave San Miguel?). Al and Stew have had their shares of adventures on their ranch -- including a land dispute that has been every bit as dramatic as There will be Blood. Even though, No Country for Old Men may be more appropriate.
Al has been telegraphing his concerns for about a year. I knew the details of the land dispute, and its monumental frustrations, but it seemed as if the concerns went deeper. They do.
In Monday's post, he pulled no punches. One of Al's personal virtues is his jeweler's eye for the truth.
He listed the factors that are driving him to consider leaving Mexico. Availability of health care. Crowds and traffic. Stress. Personal safety. Cartel activity. Murders.
Nothing on that list would surprise anyone who lives in Mexico. They are the same concerns that people here (visitors and residents) on the coast discuss -- or ignore. We have an additional problem: inadequate infrastructure to support the current population, let alone the building boom that is now underway in our villages.
Now and then, I hear a visitor refer to this stretch of the Pacific as "paradise." It isn't.
Our villages are faced with exactly the same problems Al puts on his list. It does not make the place a bad place to live. The fact that I have chosen Barra de Navidad as my final home is evidence that I do not think of the place as being sucked down the drain. But, to call the place "paradise" minimizes the daily struggles that my neighbors face.
Some of you know Hank through his comments here. He is an American who has lived in the Barra area for three decades. He married a Mexican woman and raised his children here. He has now moved away. One reason for that move was that he does not like how Barra has changed. In particular, he does not like how foreigners have completely changed the tone of an area he once loved.
I do not know if Hank ever described Barra as "paradise." I know he would not describe it that way now. For better or worse, Barra is certainly not what it was thirty years ago. I doubt any place on earth is.
Al has decided to stay in San Miguel. His reasoning is simple. He and Stew have built a nice home for themselves on their ranch. They lead a good life there. Because he is a realist, he has weighed out what Mexico has added to his life against the vague miasma of doom. For him, hope has prevailed.
But, let's hear that from Al.
Yet, even though I speak Spanish, and we both have invested a lot money and energy in Mexico, Mexico remains a beautiful but foreign land to us. We don't cry "Viva Mexico!" at sunrise every day, or profess to know the intricacies of this country's culture or, far less, its politics. Mexico remains a flawed beauty where we are lucky to live.
"Mexico remains a flawed beauty where we are lucky to live." I like that.
I like it because it sums up my own thoughts on why I have decided to put down my permanent roots here and to call it home.
And that is a far better appellation than "paradise."
* -- The term is Jennifer Rose's, and I have unabashedly stolen it for my own selfish purposes. It is a gem. Why bother stealing dross?
No. I have not re-christened these pages as Mexcookriate.
The editorial policy here is to avoid writing two consecutive essays on the same general topic. But not today. Yesterday I told you what had become of Gary's kumquats (stirring my kumquats). Today I will tell you a tale of Omar's tortilla.
I do not recall when I first tasted tortilla española, one of Spain's classic dishes. I suspect it was at a bay-side restaurant in Sausalito in 1973. What I do remember is that the egg-onion-potato dish quickly became one of my favorites.
The classic version is good. But its strength is in its versatility. I have seen and tasted some interesting combinations at restaurants around the world. Tortilla española is Spain's hash.
Alex at Hawaii purchased several Costco hams for Canadian Thanksgiving. Papa Gallo's had purchased some for its celebratory dinner. I was impressed enough with the taste, I bought one for myself.
I did not have tortilla española in mind when I purchased the ham. But when Omar saw it, he immediately saw the possibility of a good slice of potato-egg pie. All I needed was the potatoes and a bit of imagination. There were certainly enough ingredients in the refrigerator and the pantry to come up with something creative.
Potatoes, like all root vegetables, are a bit problematic for cooks in these parts. They are all subject to root weevils or other boring creatures. Potatoes have the additional weakness of trying to grow in soil that is replete with the same blight that sent the bearer of Irish surnames to The States.
Because of that, I usually buy at least a third more potatoes than I think I will need. Cutting around brown spots inevitably results in a good deal of waste.
This dish is best with wide, thin-sliced potatoes. They form the foundation for the other ingredients --similar to the crust in a quiche. At least, that is the way I like them.
The potatoes in the market here are starch-intensive. To cut the surface starch, I soak the slices in salted water, and then dry them thoroughly. Damp foods never brown properly.
The classic recipe cooks potato and onion together, and the egg mixture is added later. My process is a bit different.
I cook the potatoes in butter and olive oil until they are seconds away from browning. I then set them aside to cook what will be the "pie" filling.
Yesterday, I rummaged around until I found what seemed like a complementary combination of vegetables for the filling. Onion, of course. Ginger. Tomato. Serrano chili. Garlic. And a couple of oyster mushrooms I had purchased to make soup. Plus the ham.
I sautéed the combination until it was just starting to get tender, and set it aside while I arranged the potatoes in the bottom of a large pan to form a crust. I then poured the vegetable mixture over that.
About nine years ago, I was in Barcelona waiting to board a ship for a cruise to France, Italy, Malta, Tunisia, Greece, and Croatia. It seemed as if half of the tourists in the world were on the Ramblas that day. There was more squeezing through crowds than rambling.
In all of that mayhem, I ran into an acquaintance from university. Andy and I had not seen one another for almost forty years. Even though time had had its way with both of us, we recognized one another -- after that momentary I-should-know-him-but-from-where pause.
We both had some time, so we decided to stop at a tapas bar and catch up on our lives. Andy took a look at the tortilla menu and said: "Arugula. That sounds interesting for a tortilla." We both ordered a slice by its menu number.
What arrived at our table did not contain a hint of green. There were potatoes and onion and egg, as expected, but no visible vegetables. The taste was stunningly good. Whatever was in the tortilla, it had a taste reminiscent of a combination of salmon and squid.
The waiter spoke perfect English, as do most waiters in Barcelona. We asked him what was in the tortilla. "Baby eel," he said, "just as you ordered. Angula"
My misadventure with Andy popped up from my memory bank while I was looking through the refrigerator. By coincidence (or maybe it was the memory trigger), I had purchased a bag of arugula when I was at Hawaii the day before. I decided to add a thick layer over the top of the vegetable mixture.
There were extra potatoes. So, I created a partial crust on top of the arugula.
What holds the whole concoction together is the egg mixture. Yesterday, it was a dozen eggs whisked together with a generous measure of tarragon. Herbs and eggs are a natural combination. However, for me, other than marjoram, there is no better herb to add to eggs than tarragon. I poured the egg mixture over the contents of my skillet.
A classic tortilla is cooked in a skillet until done on the bottom. It is then flipped to cook the top. That method would not work with what I had constructed. It was too large and the ingredients too loose to withstand flipping.
Instead, I covered the pan with a lid to let the heat baste the top layer. The trick with this cooking method is to watch how the egg on top cooks to avoid burning or overcooking the potato crust.
Every tortilla I cook is different from any of the others I have cooked. Variety is what attracts me to the dish.
And the outcome? Omar thought it was one of my best tortilla efforts. (Not all of them have been successful for his tongue.) He said he really liked the spinach in it. He had never heard of "arugula."
At least, it was not angula.
Priscilla was kind to us (priscilla of the ocean).
The tropical storm that was spawned offshore of Manzanillo gave us a respite. At least, here on the Costalegre.
The National Hurricane Center had predicted Priscilla would make land east of Manzanillo. And it did that. But it was not as wide as had been predicted.
As a result, we were spared its wind and rain. That is just as well. The last couple of days of soft rain have saturated our soil. And the storm did bring rain to people living east of us. The Marabasco River at Cihuatlán, just ten miles to our east, was once again at flood stage.
For us, that was good news. But there were undoubtedly plenty of people in the state of Colima who were not as dry as we were yesterday.
And that brings me to the topic I wanted to write about yesterday. Cooking with kumquats.
Last week, my friend Gary gave me a bag of kumquats (kumquat may). I anticipate this time of year for Gary's harvest. I have not found kumquats in any store in this area.
They are a versatile fruit. As a tangy fresh snack or as the foundation for any dish that reacts well to the addition of citrus.
In the past, Gary's kumquats have primarily graced traditional chicken stir-fry. But I wanted to do something different. Something I have never cooked before.
I started with a trip to my butcher. I needed about a kilo of meat. We discussed what I was trying to do. I had a notion that I wanted to combine the tartness of the kumquats with Moroccan spices. Lamb would have been a perfect choice. But it is simply not available in the village.
Pork is. And I love Mexican pork. It tastes like pork once did north of the border. Lomo (loin strip) would be an obvious choice. I could roast it. But he only had a short piece. I bought it and a large piece of leg. Because the pieces have different consistencies, roasting was not a good option. I had another idea.
I had brought home a bag full of fresh vegetables to use in another dish. I decided to use them instead with the pork.
The vegetables and the two pieces of meat dictated my choice of cooking medium. The pork would cook at the same rate if sliced thin enough and then cooked at high heat. My wok was about to be pressed into service.
Stir-frying would also give me an opportunity to be creative with the marinade. Most Moroccan meat is cooked with fruit. The kumquats would serve that purpose. Omar is not fond of sweet fruit in his food. So, the classic apricots, dates, and prunes would not be included.
Food from the Maghreb rely on a balance of spices to create a distinctive northwest Africa taste. Coriander, cumin, turmeric, ginger. I combined them with some fresh bone broth, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and just a dash of sake, to feed my fusion tendencies.
When I tasted it, it was good, but the umami needed to be rounded out. Because turmeric is such a strong flavor, I decided to use that as my target. Even though I had several chilies in my vegetable combination, the marinade needed a bit more zing. The obvious choice was wasabi combined with honey. That was exactly what the marinade needed.
I let the pork marinade while I prepared the vegetables. In the past, I have seeded my kumquats. I did not do that this time. Instead, I cut them into rounds. The larger seeds fell out naturally. The smaller seeds would go unnoticed (and they did).
Once the preparation was done, the cooking process was relatively quick. That is the nature of stir-fry. I cooked the pork first until it was just browned and removed it from the wok. The vegetables were then added based on their density. Carrots then onions then chilies, until the vegetables were done.
The last step is always the trickiest with pork. The line between tender and tough is a matter of seconds. It is even trickier to avoid overheating the pork when adding the marinade (now thickened with xanthan gum) to create the sauce for the dish. As I learned from Linda Chan decades ago (stirring the pot), excellent stir-fry is an art form.
The result was superb. I can say that because when Omar tried it he declared it to be perhaps the best dish I had cooked during his two years here. Having a young Mexican extol the virtues of a Moroccan-Japanese-Mexican fusion stir-fry is testimony enough for me.
I now need to talk Gary out of some more kumquats. I have this idea for a Ukrainian-Indian-Colombian chicken dish. That is, after I make the tortilla I have been promising Omar. The potatoes, ham, onion, and eggs are just waiting to meet some new companions.
Maybe kumquats.
I had a cooking tale to relate this morning. But Tlaloc had different plans.
A weather formation has been sitting off of our coast for the past week. It appeared it was going to be as unorganized as a Sunday School picnic. Days of rain, but nothing more.
Last night it changed. It jumped from a disturbance to a tropical storm. Priscilla by name.
Because the storm is so close, we will see its results today. Probably early this afternoon. The winds are foretasted in the 40 MPH range, and there will undoubtedly be rain.
These late season storms are not uncommon here. Four years ago, hurricane Patricia rumbled over us during the last week of October.
For now, I am off to church. When I come home, I will sit inside and watch the storm while eating the dish I was going to tell you about.
There is always the possibility we will be without power for a brief period. If so, we will talk next when we can.
Note -- It appears the storm is giving us a miss. It has decreased to a depression and is passing to the east of us.
Some children see shapes in clouds.
Some like hiding in laundry hampers and pretending it is a robot named Nevets.
Some are both. Like me.
One of the downsides of an overactive imagination is once it it starts rolling, there is no stopping it. Take take rock pictured above.
It is part of a series of rocks that create a boating hazard at the mouth of our bay. That is how a sailor sees them. Landlubbers tend to seem more fantastical shapes.
A couple of years ago, my friend Joyce and I were sitting at Papa Gallo's looking out at the ocean. I mentioned that The Rhinoceros always fascinated me with its head and horn. She looked at me as if the horn I had just admired was growing out of my forehead.
"Rhinoceros? It is a giant," she corrected.
And that is the power of suggestion. Until then, I had never seen a giant on the verge of the bay. The rock has always been The Rhinoceros. Maybe I was in a Salvador Dali stage when I first saw it.
But it no longer matters. All I can see is a giant -- as clear as day. We have all had that same experience when looking at the classic optical illusion that can be either a beautiful young woman or my much-older cousin Sam in drag. Once you concentrate on one, the other disappears.
But a giant it is. A sleeping giant. Maybe the one that Admiral Yamamoto apocryphally worried about.
There it is. His head. His hair. His chest. His legs. His knees. His feet. And I will let you take it from there.
As for me, I am momentarily stuffing my imagination into that long-ago-abandoned laundry hamper. Nevets needs to run some calculations.
Most things here in the tropics come in bonanza sizes.
The cute philodendron on your grandmother's hall table in Dubuque has cousins here in Mexico whose leaves could serve as Lane Bryant caftans. And, of course, there are the jumbo-sized insects auditioning for the next re-make of THEM!
But not everything is big. When guests from out east would visit me in Oregon, I would inevitably take them for a hike in one of our mountain forests. All would be well until we would encounter our first banana slug -- aptly named both for size and color. A high portion of my visitors would retreat to the cozy arms of Starbucks for fear they might encounter some other ghastly wild creature.
Banana slugs were only one variety of slug that punctuated my life in the Pacific Northwest -- or Northwet as a wag friend of mine insists on calling the area. None of them are what I would call petite.
I was not aware that slugs existed in Mexico until I moved into the house with no name. Now and then, I would see something that looked as if I might have been processed through the alimentary canal of a small mammal. Perhaps, an opossum.
But I was wrong. Closer examination revealed it was a rather non-descript slug. It had all of the same operating parts of its brethern shell-less mollusks. But it was tiny compared to the slugs I have known. Maybe the slugs here are small due to our tropical heat -- and the natural tendency of slugs toward desiccation.
Until this week, I had seen only three or four in the house in the past five years. That changed this week with our rains. I counted eleven this morning. Nine were dead. Two were headed in that direction.
Maybe it was mating season. Even though slugs are hermaphroditic, they reproduce sexually. Mendel would be proud that they have chosen to share genes rather than merely cloning themselves.
Whatever the reason, they have come on like a plague, and I assume they will recede in the same way.
And the moral of this essay? I really do not have one.
Other than to share one of those nature moments that brightens my life in Mexico.
