don't read this essay

Content Warning!

If you get impatient at foreigners* who move to Mexico and whinge about the tiniest annoyance, you had best stop reading right now. Because today's essay will have all the subtlety of a woman from Montreal screaming at the Oxxo ATM because its instructions are only in Spanish.

We are going to talk about swimming pool maintenance. See? I have lost most of you already.

Most of you will already know that my house was built around the Barragánesque notion that a home should look inward with an emphasis on a water view -- usually a pool or fountain. For my house, it is a swimming pool with a cascade that is the very heart of the house.

For years, that heart was as clear as the arteries of a twenty-two year old vegan. I suspect that was because Antonio, The World's Most Reliable Pool Guy, has done such a good job of balancing the chemicals for the water. 

Up until last year, all was well. I had never had to flush the water out of the pool. By that, I do not mean that the water was unchanged over the seven years I have owned the house. The way the pool system is set up, fresh water is constantly replacing any that has evaporated. And, in our heat, there is a lot of evaporation. That means the creation of the equivalent of a bathtub ring in my pool.

Our water here is hard. Very hard. The iron content is so high that it almost smells like blood, at times. Over the years, with the evaporation, the iron and other metals in the water began to stain both the waterline and the pool tiles. So, while I was off to Oregon in January, Antonio drained the pool and gave it an acid massage. When I returned it looked almost new.

That lasted just a few months. You may have noticed that some of my photographs of the pool this summer have had a distinct green cast. In one week, the water feeding the pool brought in an algae bloom from my well. It soon died off because of the chemicals, but not before it stained the side tiles of the pool. No scrubbing would remove it.

Antonio had a plan. While I was in Oregon last week, he drained the pool and used the time of my absence productively. With over a thousand pesos-worth of various acids, he scoured away at the stains. The photograph at the top of this essay is what welcomed me on my return from Prineville. It looked like the pool that captured my attention when I first looked at the house.

Those of you who have come this far with me are about to discover that I was not completely candid about the theme of this essay. It is about the pool and its maintenance, but it is something more.

Antonio and his son Enrique stopped by the house yesterday afternoon to add some clarifier to the water. It was a good opportunity for me to settle with him financially.

Because he cleans the pool three times a week, I never thought to ask him how much the cleaning job would cost. I suppose I should have done that because when I asked him how much I owed him for the extra job, he merely handed me the receipts for the acid he had purchased from the hardware store.

I gave him the pesos for the money he spent, and asked him how much for his services. He then did what happens so often when I ask people, who have helped me, what their time is worth. He shrugged and said whatever I thought was right.

The response always puts me off a bit. Workmen know their value better than I do. The best I can do is calculate what it is was worth to have Antonio spend a week stripping off the algae rather than doing it myself. So, I offered him a figure and he accepted it -- meeting the criteria of a free-market system. Services that a willing seller will accept and that a willing buyer will pay while staying far above the minimum wage requirement.

Did I pay too much? Maybe. My criterion in this case to set a price was certainly idiosyncratic: "what it is was worth to have Antonio spend a week stripping off the algae rather than doing it myself." Frankly, by that standard, I would probably have paid five times as much. But what I did pay seemed to be fair. And that is about the best we can do in life. 

So, there we have it. No whinge about the pool. Merely the ongoing question of the proper wages to pay the people who bring us the services that make our lives just a little bit better.

And that is good enough for me today. 

* -- The true Spanish meaning of "Gringo." But frequent readers, and people who have done their own research instead of relying on the interesting tales of tour guides, will already know that. 

top or bottom -- your choice

The controversy has pitted mother against daughter, Republicans against Democrats, families against relatives.

But, after the dispute raging for decades, someone has finally come up with an elegant solution.

You might ask what is this social-rending controversy? And I might tell you. In fact, I will.

And here it is: Whether the toilet paper roll should dispense from the top or the bottom.

This is another one of those social divisions that has perplexed me. The only thing I care about involving toilet paper is that there is some when I need it. The question of being a top or a bottom is neither here nor there.

Some of these social controversies are based on fun. Like whether or not to put pineapple on pizza. But I have been told by more than one friend that they could never date (let alone marry) a person of the opposite toilet paper persuasion. A Southern Baptist might have no qualms about marrying a Rastafarian. But if she was an advocate of the top dogma and he was a believer in the bottom philosophy, the marriage would be over in a flush.

I worked with a young woman who believed that the world was divided into two categories of people -- introverts and extroverts. Extroverts were tops. Introverts were bottoms. (We are still speaking of toilet paper rolls.) Because she is quite clever, she added "most" to both groups -- simply to save her argument from the Aristotelian categorical error crowd.)

Well, I have good news for all of us. Someone has come up with a solution to what seemed to be a zero-sum game. 

While I was sitting in the REI bathroom in the Old Mill Shopping Center today, reading The Oregonian, I glanced to my right. And there it was. Like an epiphany. A toilet paper dispenser with two rolls at the ready. One for over-the-top supporters. The other for the under-the-bottom crowd.

And the solution does not need to be limited to public bathrooms. Any home bathroom should have space for two rolls on the wall.

Or people could adopt my approach that was designed to side-step this toiletry controversy. There are no rolls on the walls of my bathrooms. The toilet paper rests at the ready on the tank and each person can pretend it is top or bottom depending on their own proclivities. It is my personal contribution to mediation -- and performance art.

Now, I am going to put some pineapple on someone else's pizza.

smoke gets in your eyes -- and your lungs

I am starting to turn into That Conspiracy Guy who always seems to sit next to you on an airplane.

You know the type. Everything that has gone wrong in his life has been caused not by his own folly, but some mysterious cabal meeting in a Bavarian castle. The Illuminati. International Bankers. Capitalists. The people who wear black belts with brown shoes.

Almost two months ago, I modified my eating and exercise regime to something that had worked for me for three years. I had lost a good deal of weight on it and my blood-sugar levels and blood pressure did their impression of a system that belong to a twenty-seven year old rather than my far more senior years.

For a month all went well. I had lost 20 pounds and my blood-sugar level and blood pressure settled into what President Harding would call normalcy. My regime was working.

Of course, because I was feeling content, The People Who Malignly Control Our Lives had to stick in their oar.

First, it was the mega-blister than kept me from walking for two weeks while I rested in bed waiting for my big toe to come back to the party. While I was resting, Those Who Cannot Be Named caused a huge spike in my blood pressure.

I am not a fan of hyperbole. If anything I usually understate problems -- especially those dealing with my health.

But this was a true spike. I have one of those apps on my telephone that sometimes-helpfully analyzes my health data. For a week now, it has been hectoring me more than a well-meaning wife with warnings that I am deep in the maelstrom of Stage 2 Hypertension. If it had a voice, it would sound just like the robot on "Lost in Space." "Danger! Danger! Will Robinson."

The spike began immediately after I was sent to bed with my blister. Now, I know that chronological proximity is not the same thing as medical causation, but my experience is that my blood pressure goes down when I exercise and it climbs when I do not. So, I was relieved when my doctor released me to return to moderate walking. And I did just that on Friday and Saturday.

It is now Sunday morning and I am in Prineville, Oregon. When I got up this morning, I was in the process of putting on my walking shoes when I looked out my brother's living room window. Usually, I would have been greeted by a view of Mount Jefferson and The Three Sisters (which sounds vaguely like a hard rock group of the 1970s). But, as you can see from the above photograph, there were no mountains. In fact, there was no there there. There was only a was.

The normally clear air and mountain views are why people choose to live in places like Prineville and not in hell-holes like Los Angeles, Chicago, or Toronto. That was brought home to me as I flew into Los Angeles yesterday afternoon. People who move here are trying to escape sights like this.

Some of you may recall the "Act of God" episode of The Crown that featured the Great London Smog of 1952. The various leading characters would throw open their curtains each day to see if the fog had lifted, while the Prime Minister muttered that it was "just weather." This morning felt a bit like that.

I was not completely surprised. Darrel had told me it was smokey due to several forest fires. And I have experienced plenty of smoke from forest fires in my 6 decades living in Oregon. But it is always a bit alarming to see it when it happens.

Because I often do suffer from a rather cavalier attitude toward this sort of thing, I continued my preparation to head off on my walk. I was also aware, from past experience, that walking here is a lot different from my walks in Barra de Navidad. My brother lives above 3000 feet above sea level. That creates more demand for oxygen.  His house is also in a neighborhood with some rather intense elevation gains. Translated into something resembling English, that means there are some steep hills to conquer. The need for oxygen is far greater here than at home.

Just as I was walking out the door, my telephone emitted one of those alarms that is best not to ignore. I am glad I didn't.

It was an Air Quality Alert. The National Weather Service and the Oregon DEQ had expanded a smoke advisory to several counties -- including Crook, where I am now.

The smoke was dense enough that the particles could cause burning eyes and  a runny nose. But I suffer those symptoms whenever I visit the high desert. I have a a juniper allergy. I enjoy the berries and detest the pollen.

Then the advisory hit home. The smoke could also aggravate heart and lung disease. I do not suffer from enough hubris to presume I have much medical knowledge. I am certainly not a doctor. But I suspect spiking blood pressure falls within the advisory.

Adults were warned to limit outdoor activities and to keep children indoors at all times -- even though any parent will tell you that children forced to stay indoors will eventually make a parent find some excuse to discover outdoor activities.

So, here I sit writing to you instead of climbing las colinas del diablo in Darrel's neighborhood.

This may be the work of the Illuminati, but, who knows, like my mother, they could be right just this one time. 

a nice place to live

It is morning in Mexico.

And I have done something I have not done in months. I have moved Mexpatriate's editorial room to the patio. The day is just too nice to write in my bedroom.

77 degrees and a clear sky. The type of Mexican day that people up north dream about when the hints of winter set in.

While northerners are pondering whether or not to come to Mexico this year, I am packing for another trip north. This afternoon, I will board my regular Alaska flight, and I will be at Redmond before today transforms itself into tomorrow.

Some northerners are holding back on their flight plans because of The Virus -- specifically, its delta variant, and, now, potentially the mu variant. Delta finally brought The Virus to the Costalegre, but it appears to have receded. And whatever variants develop will arrive both here and wherever people live. The Virus is like that. It does not recognize borders.

Some people are concerned with flying. I have flown to and from Oregon almost monthly since August of last year. I cannot speak of other airlines because I have no experience with them, but Alaska appears to have done about as much as an airline can to protect sue-happy passengers.

As far as The Virus goes, it matters little where one is on the globe. For the foreseeable future, it will be right there with you -- whether in Mexico or at home. And flying certainly seems to be as safe as staying home.

But there is another consideration, and I cannot be as sanguine about its reality. Whenever we are blessed with heavy rains, the runoff overwhelms the sewers. The result is that what should make its path from toilets to whatever treatment it receives is shared with the entire community. The sewers in Barra de Navidad are still bubbling and disgorging black water into the streets.

In Melaque not only is the sewer now topside, it has mingled with the mud that every flood brings. Within days, the mud will have dried into solid cakes that slough off layers of dust.

I am not a doctor (though I have more than once played one in a courtroom), so I have no authority to say whether the mud-sewage dust clouds contain anything that is medically harmful. But I would be surprised if a study showed that the dust is as pristine as a new-born piglet.

What I do know is that the particles in the dust present respiratory problems. It is why small particulate pollutants are considered amongst the worst for public health.

What is going to be done about the circumstances that lead to the flooding and the cough clouds? Probably nothing. And there are a lot of reasons why that is true.

All I can say is that I live here and I have learned to live with what is not going to change. And those of you who have been coming here for years have already faced this factor. If you are here in the winters only, you do not get to see the sausage being made. But you do get to taste it. It is just part of the background. And, perhaps, a tradeoff. 

As I sit here looking across the patio, sipping (or, slurping, in my case) my green tea, and enjoying what is a perfectly presentable day, it is easy to forget about The Virus, the failing infrastructure, and a myriad of other problems that vex the people who visit and live here. 

Because, in the balance, it is the place I have chosen as my permanent home. And, like a spouse you love and adore, a few corn chips in bed will never change that fact. There are fiestas to be enjoyed (hands up -- anyone who can calm a storm?) and lives to live.

Come on down. Your table is waiting for you. 

hands up -- anyone who can calm a storm?

I thought they were gunshots. Or, perhaps, a stuttering thunderstorm.

Sound carries in odd patterns across the flood-plain on which we live and the water surrounding it. A sound a mile away can sound as if it came from my neighbors.

But it was not gunshots. And, even though their pop-pop-pop came during a thunderstorm, it was not the sound of thunder that caught my attention.

I should have known better. During the thirteen years I have lived in this area of Mexico, I must have heard close to a thousand of these explosions.

Someone was firing off cohetes -- those intrinsically Mexican sky rockets that accompany every religious procession here. Their sound is unique. The hiss as the rocket is propelled skyward terminating in an M-80 explosion that echoes across the bay. The sound of cohetes means a religious procession is nearby.

And I was correct. There was a procession wending its way through the barrio near my house. Despite doctor orders, I got out of bed, slipped on my shoes, and chased after the incessant pop-pop-pop.

Usually, the religious processions here have several traditional elements. Formations of dancers dressed in a Mardi Gras-version of tribal costumes rhythmically dancing to the sound of drums. The depiction of a saint carried on a litter. A pickup with a religious tableaux that would not feel out of place at the Christmas pageant at the First Baptist Church in Dubuque. And a group of congregants following along in the wake of whichever fiesta was being celebrated.

This procession was different. Because the times are different. Delta has managed to turn the faithful foot soldiers into car drivers and passengers.

The tableaux was still there -- attended by the parish priest. But the entire procession was on wheels.

What I did not know, from looking at the float itself, was what fiesta was being celebrated. Had I paid closer attention, I would have immediately recognized the guest of honor. We will meet him a bit later in his house.

I knew something was up because red and yellow banners had been strung across Nueva España in front of the little department store. That always means something religious is afoot. The shop owner, Adriana Ibarra Torres, and her husband are active in each of the local church processions. It had to be a procession -- or the grand opening of another Oxxo.

I had seen those red and yellow colors before. But that memory packet kept playing hide-and-seek with me until I caught it.

The last time I saw the colors was when the much-whittled cross that once stood in the 1500s ship-building yard in Barra was returned seven years ago (kafka comes to barra). They were the church colors. They also are the colors of Spain. So, it had something to do with the church in Barra Centro, which sported the same banners this week.

I had stopped my car earlier in the street to ask her what was happening. She was in the middle of decorating the float and told me something that I did not quite catch, but I learned the fiesta date was 5 September. A quick review of my saint days list revealed nothing.

Today I stopped to talk with husband about what was going to happen on 5 September. It turns out that it is a very big day for Barra de Navidad, and its celebration has its own sense of irony considering the fact that we are still cleaning up from the mess that Hurricane Nora left over the weekend when she headed north.

The year was 1971. The night of 31 August-1 September to be exact. Exactly fifty years ago.

A hurricane by the name of Lily was headed straight for Barra de Navidad. It was obvious the storm would demolish a good portion of the town if it maintained its path.

And Lily did maintain her path. She came ashore near Barra de Navidad with winds of up to 85 miles an hour.

So, the residents of Barra did what came natural to people of faith, and people who have suddenly discovered a faith they did not know they possessed. As the winds battered the walls, they prayed for deliverance from the storm. The sailors on Jonah's ship could not have prayed more fervently.

And then it happened. A miracle. A standard crucifix of Jesus on the cross stood above the altar. For no apparent reason, each of his arms fell to his sides. And the storm abated.

It was like something out of the gospels. Mark 4:39 to be exact. "He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, 'Quiet! Be still!' Then the wind died down and it was completely calm."

Ever since then, the congregants celebrate Jesus of the Cyclone (el Cristo del Ciclón) this time of year -- as a day of deliverance and remembrance.

As Ben Franklin once said in recounting a story about a fly reviving in a fifty-year old cask of Madeira, "Now, I do not know how scientific that tale is ... ." But it is an article of faith in these parts.

The story goes that the parishioners wanted to repair Jesus' miraculous shrug, but the priest informed them that God had caused the arms to drop and only God could restore them. The crucifix still stands in the church in its hands-down splendor. And that was the guest of honor on the procession float.

Just as a side note, after sparing Barra de Navidad, Hurricane Lily rumbled north like Attila the Hun to lay waste to Puerto Vallarta in the worst hurricane it had suffered in 20 years. Favors apparently have a limited jurisdiction.

So, that is why the delta-modified procession has been out in the streets for the past few days. Adriana invited me to attend the festivities on this Sunday -- the 5th of September. Unfortunately, I fly north tomorrow for a week.

For those of you who are in town, I have been promised that this year's celebration will be something special.

Disfruta la fiesta. 

is that a banana in your soup?

The rains have returned.

Our ten rounds with Hurricane Nora has left us a little punchdrunk. The appearance of more rain makes everyone a little bit skittish. And even though this afternoon's thunderstorm did bring a downpour, it was brief. Brief, but sufficient to fil the streets with water.

I was in the process of thinking about what to prepare for dinner when the rains started. The rain answered that question for me. Whenever it rains, I reach for my soup pot.

I knew that I wanted to make soup, but I had no idea what the soup would be. I had no meats on hand. The nice thing about soup is that each one is a completely new creation. So, create I did.

The woman across the street shared an abundance of bananas with me earlier in the week. Both dessert bananas and what are known as machos. Up north, we would call them plantains. And, as bananas do, these were on their last peel.

Where I first tasted plantain soup is now lost in my memory. Probably in a Dominican restaurant on the American East Coast. It is a staple there.

As far as I know, I never asked what went into those soups. Probably something different in each. They did not taste similar. So, I had free reign to experiment.

Pulling a Lynne Rossetto Kasper, I looked around for what I had on hand. And came up with this odd combination.

• Red and yellow bell peppers for color and texture
• Cilantro for funkiness
• An habanero for fruitiness
• A serrano for its taste of green
• A carton of home-made chicken broth (to have at least one representative of the Animal Kingdom)
• A thumb of ginger
• Garlic
• White onion
• And, of course, the stars of the soup -- two very ripe plantains

I rustically chopped the vegetables and plantains, and sautéed them in olive oil until they softened. The cilantro and chicken stock went into the soup pot with the vegetable mixture where everything simmered for about fifteen minutes. The way the layers developed in the broth was a good omen.

When I have had the soup in restaurants, it is always smooth. Every cooking experiment has one glitch. I tried using my immersion blender to smooth the soup. It was too much for the small motor. So, I pulled out the food processor and puréed it in three batches.

Traditionally, plantain soup is served with fried plantain chips. I had never experienced plantain chips until I visited a paladar in Havana (before Fidel in one of his Stalinist piques turned the owners into Kulaks and shut down their businesses). Plantain chips were served in the sitting room while we waited for our table. To me, the chips were novel. And I liked them for as long as we waited and were seated in the family kitchen. They are now on my "tried one, not again" list. To quote Gary Denness, I find them to be "mehh."

But, as he so often does, Alex came to the rescue. I was at Hawaii buying cilantro and sundry other items when I noticed a new package on his botanas display. My English Friend Hilary Bagnall can tell you I have an almost-compulsive attraction to prawn-flavored crisps.

Well, these were not English crisps, but the label promised shrimp-flavored chips. But even that word was not accurate. Like their English cousins, these chips were one of those snacks that are mostly air and look like packing material -- though they taste good. Best of all, they were from Korea. My fusion soup would have a fusion side dish.

And then came the moment of truth. I am not fond of fruit soups. They usually are far too sweet and taste too much like the fruit juice they essentially are. Especially, when served cold. So, my first spoonful of this soup was a pleasant surprise. Just a hint of sweetness balanced perfectly with piquant tang of the chilies.

When I started writing about food on Mexpatriate, a Facebook reader asked if I ever had culinary disasters and, if I had, could I write about them. I have and I did. But this soup will not go on that list. Even though I will never make it again (rule 2 from yesterday), it is one of my better soups.

So, a day of rain resulted in a pleasant dinner.

And if you had been here, I would have gladly shared some with you.  

 

eating smut

I have two food rules.

1) I never eat foods that begin with the letter "c."

2) If I have eaten a dish once, I will never eat or cook that same dish again.

Like most philosophical principles, in practice those two rules are less factual than they are true. But, I generally follow them -- with a lot of lawyerly finagling.

That second rule actually brings me a lot of joy. If I am to avoid preparing meals I have eaten in the past, I need to frequently dip into the creativity bag. 

I do not use recipes. Well, that is not exactly true. I like reading recipes to get new ideas about combinations I may not have applied in the past. I will then take that concept and apply it to a different dish.

The Middle East is famous for combining dried fruits with various dishes. Khoshaf from Iran and tzimmes from Israel are two examples. The fruit is usually combined with other spices to add a powerfully-layered complement to the meat.

I was preparing a burrito last week that had all of the traditional ingredients (for what Americans call "burritos"  -- ground pork, refritos, lettuce, onions, tomatoes, home-made sour cream. A rule two violation in the making.

A scan through the refrigerators for something new uncovered a carton of blueberries I had just purchased. I could see a fusion Mexican-Middle East burrito in my future.

While I was browning the ground pork with coriander and cumin seeds, I started sautéing a shallot and two habaneros that I had cut into strips. I then added the blueberries until they had started to emulsify into the onion-chili mix, and finished it off with a healthy dose of balsamic vinegar before adding it to the browning pork.

The result was a homerun. The fruitiness of the habaneros and the blueberries complemented each other while the habaneros and the balsamic almost eliminated any sweetness. The exact result I wanted. After all, who wants a burrito that tastes like a jelly and pork butter sandwich?

If you are comparing those ingredients to today's photograph, you will not find them because that is a completely different burrito that I constructed yesterday. I had a small bowl of Moroccan tagine (another of those meat and dried fruit stews from the Middle East) that needed an experimental home. It found one on a burrito tortilla.

To keep the Middle Eastern theme, I added a salad of lettuce, cucumber, olives, tomatoes, and onion (what looked like a deconstructed Greek salad), and topped it with the last of my home-made sour cream laced with lime and garlic.

I cannot claim much creativity for the result. It was a half-step away from being a gyros, shawarma, or arayes. But it did prove why similar combinations are so popular around the world.

Yesterday my friend Jennifer Rose published a photograph of a taco she had constructed. Jennifer lives in Morelia and has a very good eye for creating original dishes. This one, however, was in a traditional Michoacán style. The star ingredient was huitlacoche.

If you have never eaten huitlacoche, you have missed one of the world's culinary delights. In its natural form, it turns off some people. It is a form of corn smut. For that reason, the fresh variety is seasonal. (You can purchase it canned, but it is very close to the difference between fresh morels and canned button mushrooms.)

To me, the taste of huitlacoche is similar to truffles. Just a bit more subtle. In the kitchen, it can be used wherever a cook would use truffles. Omelets. Quesadillas. Stews. The possibilities are almost limitless. When I visit Pátzcuaro, I always visit one of the restaurants on the plaza grande for chicken stuffed with huitlacoche.

I wish I could get the fungus fresh here. But it is not in any of the markets. Alex at Hawaii says he thinks he can get it by special order. It is simply not an ingredient in the local tapatio cuisine of Jalisco. At least, I have yet to discover anyone who serves it. I will never use the canned variety again -- except maybe in a soup as a minor ingredient.

All of that will need to wait, though, until I return from my next trip to Oregon on Saturday. I would postpone this trip if I could. After seeing what the Delta variety did here, I will be walking into the Delta lion's den in Oregon. It is running rampant through the state. But the visit is just for six days.

Perhaps, a successful trip will convince some tourists that coming to the Costalegre this winter will be no more dangerous than staying home.

We can only hope. And I will eat to that.