Silliness and food

Tonight we're having stuffed poblanos, a kind of chile relleno but without the batter and deep frying. Roast the poblanos:


We chop up these beautiful cameron, cook them, mix them with cheese, mushroom, onion, a little cilantro and stuff the peppers. Bake or BBQ at 350 until heated through. Serve with a fresh tomato sauce. YUM!


Similar to one I blogged about a while ago, it was just that good that I had to do it again. We do keep trying with the fish here, our butcher turned us onto another pescaderia (fish shop). But what can you do when you go in with some translations of fish you know, and the shop has a list like this:
Cazon- shark or dogfish maybe?
Cochito
Corbina
Callo Escarlopa- scallops of some kind?
Caracol- Snail, this I do know.
Hanta-
Curbina-
Collito de Arbol- hmm... something tree.

I have a couple of feelers out, I'll let you know if I find out what any of this is.

A friend went to Phoenix and brought us back Canadian food!!


Another friend gave me these flash cards, which I'll be dipping into this afternoon.


Class is fun, although pretty concentrated. Twenty minutes with the book Cheryl gave us, Spanish for Gringos. What's good is she tells me when one phrase is more common than the other, or another phrase that is used more here in town. Then 20 minutes of going through the photo album of our trip, and I tell her about all the places. Which is making me do some research, because I don't necessarily remember it all! Then 20 minutes of Clan of the Cave Bear. No verb conjugation, just those three things for now.I study about three-four hours a week.

Shadow thinks he's in the shade because he's under the hammock. It's 35 degrees and he's happy in the direct sun.



I found out last weekend that at the border (remember I said there are different people at the Mexican border now?) almost everyone is getting searched, but they still seem to be letting food through, they're just searching for guns or drugs. Then, on the long weekend, they had a stop where everyone had to sanitize their hands. So the tourists wouldn't bring the swine flu in! I loved that story, there was a 40 minute wait to have your hands sanitized so you could come in.

Our FM3 visas are ready, but the poor guy who signs them was in an accident, so we won't get them until he gets out of the hospital.



Independence Day is Wednesday! And shrimp season starts in only a few days. Carl met a guy who knows all about what's in season when. He works at Capone's, so we're going to corner him one day with a calendar.

We have some more of those small calamari in the freezer- you have to gird your loins to clean them, but they are SO good.

Last weekend we went down to the Malecon, and we met Tanya's mom! First we spied on her from Mary's where I had two shrimp tacos and Carl had two scallop tacos (sorry, Cheryl). Then we went over and talked with Tanya's mom while she finished her shift.





Stand selling flags for Independence Day


Clown at Mary's


Parasail and Sailboat


This is the electrical guy! I wrote about this in an earlier blog. Why do I feel like I posted this already? I don't see it in earlier blogs, but I have a mighty deja vu. Anyway, you hold the little pipes and he turns the dial till you say stop. Then you give him 20 pesos. Nice face, Carl!!

Jetski

The Malecon from Tanya's new bar

The boat that pulls the banana boat


Banana Boat

A few pictures

Not much new this week, but here are a few pictures. I can't seem to capture how cute Sadie is, you'll have to come and meet her yourselves.





Here are the flags outside City Hall. Of course we have ours on our car already.




I love the way they trim the trees here!



Tammy, the new bartender at the Sandbar, who happens to be another Canadian.


Here are two seafood restaurants we're going to want to try soon. El Mariscon:





and Maricso el Capitan.



We're going out to Cholla Bay soon, our friend Laurie's having a few people over. We should catch a great sunset.

Happy Anniversary!

It was our one year anniversary here yesterday, and he had a beach day, then watched the Stamps game at Latitude 31. However, I was on these muscle relaxants and well... too stoned to watch the game. They make drugs strong here! I have a bone chip floating around by my tailbone which I apparently fractured at some point in my life. So it's anti-nflammatories (I'm not taking any more of that muscle relaxant!), heating pads which are fun in this heat and a donut to sit on.

We're having more birds than ever show up here, including cormorants, swallows, what looked like a loon to me, and of course our ever popular pelicans. Pelicans fly up about ten feet, then pause, fold their wings and crash into the ocean. But only their heads go under, the rest of them stays above water. Looks painful.




The birds we were watching the other day that I thought looked like loons dive straight down and go under, then a few seconds later they pop up like corks.

Here are a few pictures of pretty Sadie, who Shadow plays with most mornings. AJ who hangs out at the sandbar owns her, and she's a great little dog.





Every single morning except Wednesday which is his day off, we gate a cheerful, "Good morning! Shower time!" from the Mexican guy who runs the 4-wheeler rental down by the beach. Shower time!!

When we get back, Shadow walks around to the hammock which is his new scratching post. You can hear him growling and sneezing and generally sounding like he's having a great time, but if you peek around the corner, he stops and looks at you like, "What? I'm not doing anything!"

We are still disappointed in the fish here, I guess there's not much you can do when you're eating fish from warm water. But we did a shrimp-and-mushroom stuffed flounder the other night that was quite good. What was even better was that I had stuffing left over, and bought a bunch of poblano peppers, roasted and peeled them, stuffed them with the mixture and served it with a fresh tomato-garlic sauce. YUM!!

Our friend Rose had to go back to Canada, and she took her dog as a carry-on. In her words: 10 min into take off she chewed her way out of her bag and spent a very satsifying nap time on the seat beside me. Airline people everywhere (yikes, customs!) were disgruntled, but what could they do? Take me back?

Independence Day is coming up soon, and there are flags everywhere. Time to put ours back on the car. We'll have to try to get down for the festivities this year, speeches and such. As I recall, it was very early morning.

The pool I've been going to every morning is great, but lately it's been very very waspy. I get in and clean out maybe 20 wasps before I can swim, and on Friday there were at least 30 live ones swimming around. That's about 25 too many for old Mel. There's another pool at the Playa Inn- Cheryl, you know where that is, right? I checked it out today, and it's wasp-free! So that's the pool for me.

My Spanish lessons were canceled last week, and I have to study up in the hopes that we start up again this week. My teacher texted me about the last cancellation, and I don't think she understood me when I said it was a landline, not a cellphone. I'll have to call her tomorrow.

upcoming anniversary

Well, we did it! August 28, next Friday, is one year! Summer's almost over, soon October will bring lower humidity and lower temperatures, in the low thirties. We've weathered the summer well, although I should speak softly, since September can be the hottest month.

Shadow's new friend Sadie meets us most mornings now, and she's taught him to swim out in the deep water. They both swim and swim and swim, and then they come over and get held by their guys, to give them a rest. Then they swim and swim some more. And when we all get out, they run and run. Good to be a dog. I'll try to get a picture of Sadie on here one day.

We hear interesting stories down here. Here's one recently told to us- a friend had a nasty divorce when he was young, and came to Mexico to recover. He met a young woman and fell in love, even though neither one spoke the other's language! He wanted to marry her down here and then get the paperwork done in the US for her to become a citizen, but found out that could take months if not years. In fact the easiest and fastest way was for her to sneak into the US, marry him, then they go and pay a hefty fine, get the paperwork and they're done. So that's what they did. He speaks Spanish now, and they've been together for 15 years.

Many people are brought up in the states, then for one reason or another are deported down here, and when they get here, they don't speak the language! It's a completely foreign place to them and they have to get up to speed fast! Imagine what that must be like.

Rained here yesterday, here's something you don't see often:


Here we are at Cheryl and Dan's place, stealing their Tecate:





Lessons are going well, I'm studying every day and trying to learn verb forms. Soon I hope to be able to read these:



My tutor is good, she's a real teacher, with a degree and everything! I'm studying every day, and even my overwhelmed brain is learning a few things. The most fun is when she tells me a story, telling me about Clan of the Cave Bear, complete with sound effects. It's quite entrancing, and then the next week I get to tell her what she told me the week before. FUN!

Oswaldo and Marysol are moving into their new house at the end of the month. This is one that Oswaldo built from scratch by himself. He's been working his ass off getting it ready. He had loaned us his fride all this time, because he didn't need it. So yesterday we bought a used fridge and cleaned his out. Here's our new fridge.

We thought about getting a new one, and even a stainless steel one, but in the end it seemed more frugal to just get a used one. This one cost 1800 pesos, and it's a. big b. clean c. works. Really all you need in a fridge. Other fridges we looked at were in the 6000 peso range.

Our car A/C is broken again, sigh. We thought we got it fixed on Friday but no luck. We REALLY like it when the car A/C is working.

I'm investigating the various different tacos around town, for our website. :) Not just because I love to eat. My newest favorite is Arracherra, skirt steak. So tender, so delicious!

Bike rally is coming in November, come on down if you love a good harley. Hasta Luego.

Beach day

We've been working hard on the restaurant website this last few weeks, and haven't taken a full day off. This morning when we took Shadow down for his swim, Carl did his bobbing in the waves time, then I did mine. When I came back in, I said, "Let's drop Shadow off, come back and do that for two hours." Carl agreed, so we did just that. Rented a canopy, sat at a table and read, alternating with bobbing in the waves. The waves were great today. When you get out a ways, it feels like you're climbing a wall of water (probably only a 3 foot wave), then dropping into the trough, you actually get a little tummy rush. Then of course you can ride the waves in.


People say I'm getting quite brown, you decide. Not the best picture, I swear I just cleaned that mirror on Friday...



I saw these cool bushes the other day, I have no idea how they do this.




We've tried out the Chitzen Itza restaurant, and it's a hit! We went there for lunch yesterday. The pibil tacos were superb. Slow roasted pork with cinnamon and other spices, served with pickled peppers (yum, I ate mine and Carl's) and hot pickled onion.


Spanish lessons are going well, I guess, hard to tell after only two. Tomorrow's the next one, time to study!

3 dumb gringos wonder what the heck?

I wish I had a picture of this, and I'm attempting to get one. On a street we were driving on the other day, there were three men, obviously vendors of some kind. Each had a ...machine I guess you'd say, with a vessel on top that looked sort of like a wok, and coiled on the machine was what looked like an air hose. One beckoned us, but it was one of those busy days and we couldn't stop. I'm going searching for them again, though, and hope to report back.

Reminds me of when Carl, Cheryl and I were sitting outside at Señor Amigos, and a man approached us with a homemade plywood box of some kind. It had switches and dials on it, and two wires came out to a couple of short lengths of pipe.

Through miming and Cheryl's Spanish, we learned that a person was supposed to hang on to the pipes and get electrical current running through them. Needless to say, Carl was intrigued. So for I think 20 pesos, he experimented with more or less current, and the muscles in his arms got a workout.

Today I saw a guy transporting a fridge in the back of his pickup. He didn't have it tied down, he had a friend in the back standing up and holding onto it. Yeah, that's safe.

Our friend Tina has continued to be a great source on where to find things here. She told us about a couple of shops that sell fish that was flash-frozen off the boats, so when you thaw it it's nice and fresh. Went to one the other day and bought some flounder, it was very good.

Wednesday or Thursday I was working away when suddenly the power went out, but not in all the rooms. Carl was out, so I checked the breakers, nothing was tripped but I reset them anyway. Carl got back and was equally perplexed. But he noticed a couple of people wandering the neighborhood looking equally confused. He went and spoke to one lady, and apparently it was neighborhood wide. She called the power company.

Carl and I went out, leaving Shadow in the relative coolness of the house, and we did some shopping. When we came home we were very glad to see these guys:



And they had it fixed within the hour. The fans felt SO good when they came back on.

Weather here has been wonderful, mornings it's about 25, gets up to about 33 or 34. Perfect.

Tina also told us about a couple of her favorite vendors. One pumps a churro out of his machine, and you just say stop when it's as long as you want it. It drops into the hot oil, cooks, he takes it out and rolls it in powdered sugar, and it melts in your mouth.



The other vendor has bags of fritos. He opens them and pours butter and corn over them. Apparently really good as well.

We discovered a couple of new restaurants that just opened, and add them to the restaurant website. We're up to 84 restaurants now. One is a place that just does pork, and needless to say I rushed over to try a taco. Yum! lots of diced pork, onions and diced cabbage on two soft corn tortillas with red(HOT!) or green sauce.

The other we haven't tried yet, it's a new place serving Yucatan food like Pibil, a slow-roasted pork dish,
and Salpicon de res, - a shredded beef salad served at room temperature and frequently used as a topping for tostadas.




Looking forward to eating there. Putting together this website has opened our eyes to what a wealth of restaurants there are in our little city.

I'll leave you with these, for those of you thinking you might want to sample these restaurants for yourselves:








I don't know who these people are, but they're happy!