Just Tell Us What You're Eating

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Ruins, volcanoes, old buildings, blah, blah, blah. I know what you really want is to see what we are eating. So because I really don't feel like writing now and every one is interested in food, here you go...

Chiles en Nogada. One of my favorite dishes in Mexico, originally from Puebla. A big chile poblano, stuffed with ground pork, spices, dried fruit and other tasty things. Fried and covered with a white walnut sauce along with pomegranate seeds and parsley, the colors of the Mexican flag. 

Pork,with mole verde...

Salad of cheese, avocado and zucchini flowers...

Grilled goat udder. Yes, you read that right. 

Mole de Caderas, a wonderful red mole with goat spine and hips. Maybe the most wonderful thing of the whole trip. 

The result of eating this...

Escamole...ant eggs. 

Canejo in huitlacoche...corn fungus. 

Mole Poblano

Chile poblano stuffed with meat and ancho chiles...

The same thing with tomato sauce...

Enchiladas with cochinita pibil, a pork dish from the Yucatan. 

Eating quesadillas in the market...

Rica Pancita...a spicy red soup with nasty pork parts. 

Lesson of this trip: anywhere there is a large cauldron of boiling liquid, you know it will be awesome. 

On the Route of the Convents around Popocapetl... And, Atlixco

Gonna post pix...

A Wandering Soul in Tepoztlan

Wow today is already Sunday and we've been in Tepoz four nights! And no blog. 

Some highlights:  

Our wonderful hotel, Ma Petite Maison and Luis, our host.  

Food.  Our favorite restaurants: antojitos Mayre, in the market, with the huaraches of mushrooms, the Aztec/vegetarian food stall with amazing huitlacoche quesadillas, the only thing we liked at the upscale La Ciruela was the tower of nopal and cuitlacoche, and of course Los Colorines with excellent mole poblano, excellent chiles en Nogada and a good broccoli version of a chile rellleno.  Ice cream from tepoznieves and pay de queso, cheesecake 

Music all the time. It's not yet seven am and I hear the tuba of an oompapa comparza band.... We saw kids doing the rhythm to capoeira.... And we've had a full day of Mexican dance and music for dia de todos santos.  Also the opener band, Sitting in the churchyard hearing Javier Rivera y su Orquesta warm up their horns, for some danzon, while watching local kids in their dance costumes getting ready for their performances.   Since this town tends towards supporting New Age themes you can also hear meditation music and even Indian ragas at times. 

Side trips to cool towns - San Juan Tlacotenco. Amatlan.  Today we might go to Ocotitlan. 

Day of the dead with children out getting candy while walking past hot bonfires... Beautiful lit calaveritas.... 

Woke last night at 2 or 3 am long after the fireworks singing and laughing crowd noises had died down, to long peals of church bells! Sounded like from every chapel in town. My goodness this is a serious holiday here! Today now is day of the dead for real, (November 1 was dia de Todos Santos, all saints, now is all souls, dia de Muertos) - all the adult souls have arrived here gotten here by the scent of the food and flowers, and tonight candles placed or processed to the graveyards will help them find their way back to the land of the dead. And I imagine church bells will ring again tonight. And then, we fly home tomorrow! Such a great experience here.  And the six am bells have begun the roosters are crowing a few dogs are barking and I hear a far off music bass line. Dawn is coming...

Now I'm writing this after breakfast.  sitting just off the beautiful trail up to the Tepozteco, the beautiful pyramid way above town, sitting against the trunk of a massive tree listening to soft bird trills and chirps. Craig is hiking up again.  We went to the market for our breakfast, had chocolate champurrado, a drink made of either rice or corn, and then we had quesadillas on freshly made blue corn tortillas, with a filling of  huitlacoche and zeta mushrooms - sort of like oyster mushrooms- and white cheese, with an assortment of savory chile sauces to put on, with some cafe de Lola, cowboy coffee.  Then back to our tiny hotel for some fruit and real coffee.  In the impromptu market, all the day of the dead supplies are gone, instead it looked like a French market, pristine market tall stacks of perfect vegetables and a butchers stall with  big loops of longaniza sausage and stacks of the local specialty a type of cured meat called ????