Michelada Recipe

When it comes to beer cocktails, Micheladas top the list.  I prefer to consume mine while walking the streets of a quaint Mexican town, but they are also a delicious accompaniment to an afternoon snack of chips and guacamole.  The recipe is simple and can be easily adapted, so feel free to mix it to your own personal tastes.

Michelada Recipe
Adapted from Serious Eats

Makes 1 serving

1 ice-cold beer
1 dash of salt
1 tablespoon of chili powder
1-2 tablespoons of fresh lime juice (I think this is the best part so I add more)
2 dashes of Tabasco or your favorite hot sauce
1 dash of soy sauce
1 dash of Worcestershire sauce (Maggi is the preferred brand around these parts)
1 pinch of black pepper
ice (optional)
lime wedges for garnish (optional)

On a small plate, mix together the salt and chili powder.  Then, rim a beer glass with a little lime juice and dip it in the salt and chili powder mixture to cover the top of the glass.

In the bottom of the glass, add lime juice, hot sauce, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, and black pepper.  Slowly pour in the beer.  If you want, you can give the glass a big stir, but I think it is best to let the beer do the mixing when you pour it over the top of the ingredients.  Add more beer as you drink and enjoy! Some people like to add ice, but I think if the beer is cold enough or if you serve it in a frosty mug it is unnecessary.

=6= or, the discovery of symbols

Man, I’ve only posted 5ish (Vish) lousy times since September??!  What a bum I am.

You know, it seems a pretty reasonable goal to post enough such that an apology is not necessary to begin each blog post.  So reasonable, in fact, that I think I’ll go ahead and enact it right now (call it a resolution, if you like-- what with the season and all):

I will post at least once every two (✌) weeks for all y’all friends, family and supporters of lo de sally ‘n anders.  I’ll do my best to keep m’self honest, but if I lag, feel free to let me hear about it for the rest of my life.  Or in the comments section.

SO, an update on life of late:

X-mas day on the ol' cactus reserve!

- We celebrated Christmas in San Miguel de Allende with old friends and new (old: Mathias Svalina & Jules Cohen [pictured above]; new: Jules’ ‘rents and bro, Adam), enjoying the more intimate comforts of old friends (intimate ≠ sex in this instance) but in an exciting new(er) setting.  We drank micheladas on the streets (recipe time, Sal?), cooked and ate yummy homemade meals, visited a cactus reserve X-mas day and drank tequila shots before bed.  We were even able to give our gracious hosts a short tour of Qro after they dropped us off in time to receive our second round of guests the following day(!) when…

Check their passports-- these two could be illegals!

- … STACEY AND BERNADETTE CAME TO MEXICO!!!  In fact, they’re still here (as of the initial time of writing, this was true, but as of 00:45 last night, Stacey moved on to Puerto Vallarta to spend her last few days in Mexico in/on the sun/beach instead of the rain/streets ☹)!  My employer/pal Adam was kind enough to drive us to Mexico City— and to get lost on the way back.  We got home around 2a and proceeded to spend the next two weeks showing off what we’ve come to know of Qro, Mx, and some of the surrounding area.

X-mas time spectacle miracle at a big ol' church.

Fortunately, with Stacey’s self-employed schedule, she was able to visit during a time when we were both largely free of work duties and therefore able to do some tripping nearby.  Tequisquiapan was a first for all of us— a sweet little town where we did a little shopping, touring and had a delicious Italian meal on the last afternoon of 2009.  Another highlight was the following weekend when we revisited our standing favorite of Mexican towns, Guanajuato, though this time we were bold enough to bring along our four-legged white fluff of personality, also known as Bernadette.

Fear not, Mom, she got none. ;)

Bernadette has been something of a celebrity in her short time in Mexico; her breed does not seems to exist here, as people are always curious as to her raza (breed) and hopeful that they might get to touch her coat.  It’s been a great vocab-learning experience for gushing dog-related cutisms; unfortunately Bird has yet to pick up on/appreciate (seemingly) any of the many enchanting nuances of her second language to-be… 

Back to Gto, though!  Yes, we were able to get Bird on four (✌ x ✌) taxi rides, a couple of 1st class buses (poor thing got to ride along with luggage in her kennel down below) and into the hostel we’d stayed at in Gto the first time.  She has now visited— in Mexico— one federal district, three states and three capital cities, plus a couple other little guys.  Though it was a real pain to convince the taxi drivers of her hypoallergenic/no-shed qualifications, she was a real labradoodlian trooper and seemed to enjoy the adventure of walking and sniffing the numerous unwalked/-sniffed locales of ol’ Mexico.

On the way to visit el Pípila (hope that isn't too much butt-hole for you).

We ate, ate, ate in Gto, and though it rained, rained, rained on Saturday, we still had a lovely time.  We had delicious coffee at an American-owned spot called Café Tal (and took a kilo of the dark roast to go), ate beautiful lunch at La Capellina, took Stacey for her first elote (there ended up being another given to both her and Sally after we stopped into a dude-infested cantina— more on that in a moment) and dinner at a burger stand our friends Chris and Veronica had taken us to (Chris, if you’re reading this, the burgers were delicious again ☺), where we considered taking an extra burger to go so that we could dissect it to determine just what made it so damn scrumptious (though now we’re pretty sure it’s the carrot spread/stuff with cinnamon in it on top).  We topped the rain-soaked evening off by stopping into the aforementioned cantina— the ladies’ idea, FYI— where upon sitting down in the last available corner spot, Sally and Stacey quickly took note of the rather conspicuous pisser/trough in the corner of the entirely open room, and the fact that a number of fellas just came in off the street, used it, and then bounced right out of there. In its figurative corner, though, the place did have some cold-ass beers.  It wasn’t long before some friendly, mostly older gentlemen took an interest in “us” (I was largely the mouthpiece so they had to go through me, I who claimed to be their bodyguard) and started chatting us up.  One younger fellow— rather drunk, this one— told me of how beautiful he found them both, hovered for a bit, and then disappeared.  Not ten minutes later, he was back with two foil-wrapped Mexican corn(s?) on the cob, (elotes— RECIPE, Sally!) which of course made us all laugh and the two of them even more full.  We left shortly thereafter and were laughing at least as hard as I have so far during our time Mexico. 

It was a really great and easy time having Stacey here, and we’re so, so grateful to her and already miss having her here. :’(

Ah, would love to be back there, sipping café...

- On the biznass front, Sally started work!  She’s holding things down about a 15-minute walk from our place at a well-reputed language school called United English.  Her schedule is the traditional split English teacher schedule: mornings from 7-9a, then a good long break until 4 or 5p when she goes back in until 8 or 9p; and she seems to getting the hang of the work experience at UE and is glad to have some non-house-related responsibilities to fill her day.  We view it as money, another opportunity to meet and make friends and a new brand of teaching experience for a skilled and experienced English teacher whose students are undoubtedly lucky to have her.  ¡Vaya Sally!

With that, I’d consider you all more or less caught up with lo de Sally and me.  Again, I’ma do me best to make this a once every couple of weeks-type project (at least), as reading my depressing off-season Royals blogs and kicking major ass at Bejeweled are all well and good, but keeping up with our friends and love ones who we miss (and missed!) this time of year is infinitely more valuable and rewarding— unless of course the Royals win the AL Cental and/or I win some kind of cash award for breaking the 500k mark in Bejeweled.  I’m off to make coffee and to take Bird to go pee under the arches— making Queretaro’s most famous landmark that much more famous-er!

¿Fudge = Diablos en español?

Love to you all, hope you had a Merry Christmas and are experiencing a quality start to the new year!  Go snow! ☃

Best x 3,
Anders

Home(?) Again?

We meant to put up a blog about Thanksgiving in Queretaro.  How we woke up sad because we were so far away from home.  How it was just another day of school and work for us.  How we decided to eat our feast on Friday because of the promise of the weekend.  How we visited two grocery stores, one frutería, one pastelería, one mercado, and one little corner spice shop and still could not find all of the necessary ingredients for our meal.  How we planned a Mexican-American menu (turkey tortas, creamed spinach, mashed potatoes, and sweet potato buttermilk pie).  How two friends joined us at the last minute for the feast so we it was our own little version of bringing our harvest meal together between two groups and getting along with one another.  But instead, the news we received on Thanksgiving sidetracked us: Your apartment is ready for you to move in.

Not2B4gotten: Sally's pay feroz with homemade crust and seasoning 'peños 

After living in a hostel for over a month, this gave us much to be grateful for.  Little did we know the cleaning project that awaited us in our new home, however.  A brief picture of the filth: smashed dead bugs on the walls, some sort of gravy-like splatterings on nearly every surface of the house, dirt covered floors, a bathroom with a shower full of mildew and soap scum and ceilings covered with unknown substances, and more daddy-long legs needing to be killed than I thought I could handle (Anders did not approve of the large wads of Kleenex I used to kill them, but it was the only way I felt capable of the task).  After two full days of cleaning we had not yet left the kitchen, and I had contracted some sort of infection from the copious amount of dirt I had inhaled that left me sick for over two weeks and made it compulsory for me to wear a mask for the remaining three weeks of cleaning.  Yes, it took us three weeks to clean the place to our liking thanks to the place being abandoned for six months.  I will admit that we both happen to like a spick and span place to the point of slightly obsessive compulsive behavior, but the place really was vile.  When guests came over their jaws would often drop and the only nice thing that they could find to say was this place is really big for 4,000 pesos.

PHOTO BOMB!

You can probably notice the small variation in cleanliness here.
It isn't perfect-- and never will be-- but it's part of our family now,
and we do our best to treat family well. 

 

And here is she who provided that small variation in cleanliness (not! the opposite!) 

  Sally was just saying how the "clean" one didn't look clean 

(below), but then she saw the other one (above). 

Never mind the facial cleaner for old-people skin.

They said swine flu could be lurking behind each tile 
or even in the grout. We didn't want to take any chances.
 

Needless to say, we are not living in the lap of luxury, but this is one of those times in life when we are choosing to give up some of the comforts of home in return for a once in a lifetime experience.  And the place is ideal for its location, price, and large living areas (there are two spare bedrooms for any visitors who happen to come for a time, and we promise the place is now clean).  The first week as I scrubbed (literally) from the floor to the ceiling while coughing up my dirt-encrusted lungs I thought this place would never feel like home, but three weeks later and one party down we are starting to feel good about the place.  The night we finished cleaning we bought ourselves our first bottle of tequila to celebrate our victory over the filth and have happily been drinking Palomas (see recipe below) ever since.

Ha! These are titled "only cool shot" (above) & "nasty II" (below).
I'd say they do a pretty succinct job at summing up our place, 
so bienvenidos, dudes!

Paloma cocktail
makes 1 drink

Palomas are similar to a margarita, but the grapefruit soda makes it a bit easier to toss back and the carbonation adds a little something extra as well.  We prefer to use Squirt, but any grapefruit soda will work.  We tried substituting grapefruit juice combined with a simple syrup and soda water once, but ended up preferring Squirt, perhaps with a bit of experimentation it would be better than what we produced.

1 lime
salt
2 to 3 ounces of tequila
 (or stronger if you are Anders)
ice
Squirt or grapefruit soda

Fill a glass with ice. Squeeze in juice of half of a small lime. Sprinkle salt over top or salt the rim of the glass, then pour in the tequila and top with Squirt or grapefruit soda.

La Peña de Bernal

After one month of camping out in our hostel, we decided it was time to do some exploring outside of Queretaro.  So last weekend we strapped on our sneakers and boarded a bus to the city of Bernal where we climbed the world’s second-largest (and third-tallest) monolith, la Peña de Bernal.  Before arriving, we had no idea what a monolith was exactly, but a bit of research (after we returned home) informed us that it is simply a giant, solitary rock, which is exactly what we experienced.  We thought we were ready to defeat this rock with our new Mexican walking legs, but half way up we found ourselves huffing and puffing and wondering how much farther we had to go.  I was just about ready to give up and consider the mid-viewpoint adequate until I spied an elderly woman using a cane getting ready to pass me.  I couldn’t let the old lady win so off we went to the top.

That’s right, we’ve buffed up our legs and our capacities for spite!  Seriously though, that caned lady was on a mission from somebody… 

On our way up, we discovered that people climb a mountain a bit different around these parts.  Vendors carry up coolers of drinks and boxes of food to serve you at various points throughout your trek and people do not always dress the part to climb a steep rock.  We saw people wearing their Sunday best including men’s dress shoes and a pair of patent leather wedges, and others who simply went barefoot.  When we did reach the top expecting a gorgeous view and silence, we instead heard Beyonce’s Single Ladies roaring out from down below.  I thought Anders may have set this up and was going to get down on one knee to put a ring on it, but it didn’t happen.

HA!  I love you Sally, but Beyoncé isn’t part of my love-inducing repetoire; maybe Jay-Z though…

            
To celebrate our victorious summit, we took the advice of our friendly hostel worker/friend/new landlord, and ate at the Italian restaurant in town.  The place was the real deal with the Italian owners sitting behind us stuffing their mouths and talking loudly over the food.  A large pizza (ironically the spiciest food we have eaten thus far in Mexico to the tune of eyes watering and mouths on fire) and a carafe of wine later, we were full and ready to head home where we gracefully passed out on the couch for the rest of the evening to recover.

No joke, that pizza was so hot it was hilarious!  We were crying from laughing, pain and each other.  Perhaps one time where a nice, chilled white would’ve been a better choice than the house tinto, but a delightful— and rather fun/ny— time still.  Between the peña and the ‘za, one might say we felt the Bern-al. ;)  

             

Forgive a completely non-Mexico post and humor a (usually sad but altogether too involved and optimistic) baseball fan, would you?

Damas y Caballeros, your 2009 AL Cy Young Award Winner:

ZACKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK! 

(only 217 to go to match his total this year, to 51 walks)

I presaged this shit in my dream last night, though the vote was unanimous and the first time that had ever happened to boot.

Happy (Greinke) day, Royals fans (McDawg, Adam, my dad), and I take the bit back about the non-Mexico thing, 'cos homeboy loves Chipotle (which isn't hardly "Mexican" food, right?  OK, I take the taking back, back).

Anyone for drunken Skype celebrations this eve?!?  LET'S GET THE SEASON STARTED!

Chile & Lime

I keep a running list of foods I want to try while in Mexico, but as with many lists, by the time I cross one item off, I have added three more. This country is chock-full of street vendors selling tempting hunks of grilled meat, mounds of fresh fruits, and heaps of new items I have never seen before, but street vendors in Mexico can be a bit of a risk. One of the first rules you learn about these eateries is that it’s probably best to avoid them if you do not want to get sick, because the kind of sick you get here makes you want to cut out your intestines to ease the pain and then never eat again, but the unbeatable prices, savory aromas, and little old ladies who have been cooking this stuff for years make them hard to resist. Fortunately, you do not have to say no to everything. If there are any rules we observe in our already cautious approach of mostly eating at home, they would be to avoid vendors where the woman who stuffs the meat into your torta with her bare hands also uses those same hands to collect your money; or those where there is not a crowd of people gathered feasting on their food (if the Mexicans don't eat there, neither do we). Mostly, it is just a guessing game or following your instincts, and sometimes relying on word of mouth to send you to the right place, but even then the evening can end a bit rough.

Anders and I decided to take our chances last weekend and try some garbanzo beans served out of bucket, one of those big five gallon dry wall buckets that you buy at Home Depot. I have eaten plenty of garbanzo beans atop a green salad or pureed into hummus, but this was my first time consuming them directly from their casing. The beans themselves were pretty ordinary, but served with the dynamic duo of condiments—chile and lime—they were livened up to a pretty tasty treat. We are new converts to the Mexican idea that lime and chile make everything better — sopa azteca, tacos, fruit, and even (although we have yet to try and confirm it) movie theater popcorn.


Last weekend we tried this combo dumped over the top of potato chips. I had been eyeing this treat for quite some time and decided it was time to cross it off of my list. They lived up to all of my expectations of the perfect afternoon snack for strolling around town-salt and spice mixed with a bit of tang. They aren’t a clean snack— your hands are covered in hot sauce by the end of the bag— but the taste is so addictive you want to lick every last bit off of your fingers. They do get a tad soggy by the end of the bag, so if you have a problem with textures you may want to avoid the last few chips, but mostly I was just sad to see an empty bag.

Here is my best guess to how you can make these at home.

Potato chips a la Mexicana

I would suggest using Lightly Salted Kettle brand Chips, but Lays Classic Potato Chips would also work.

Serves 1

2-3 handfuls of potato chips
1 big glug of hot sauce (We used Valentina, but any non-salsa hot sauce will do)
the juice of ½ of a lime

Fill bowl with potato chips. Generously cover with hot sauce and lime juice to taste. If you want, season with salt and then eat immediately.

=5=

Dudes.

So we decided we might be more effective posters if we took on smaller aspects of our days, and look— it’s already working!

Thursday was a special day for me.  I say this because I spent over two hours riding public transportation (read: the shitty-ass bus).  There were some highlights, including a kid who probably should’ve been in school (is that ethnocentric of me?) juggling flaming clubs at a busy stoplight ‘round lunchtime.  Just before the light turned green, he characteristically stopped juggling to go around and collect for the impressive (albeit unsolicited) entertainment, only to find himself utterly stone-walled by the seemingly unimpressed motorists.  Next thing I know,  I'm watching myself sliding back the bus window hollering “JOVEN!” just as a nice fat ten peso piece flips off my thumbnail, arching over the cars of the ingrates before it’s deposited in his hand like the jukebox in “Smooth Criminal.”  He’s down below me, beaming at me, I— the winking white guy in the bus that missed all but the end of the show— who in actuality just sat there wondering if the people ignoring him from their cars were actually taking a stand against his presumably unexcused absence from school; sad to see him walk back to the median with nothing to show for his sacrifice/effort.

In any case, the real reason I doubled my typical daily number of bus rides was to enjoy the two-hour descanso lunch with my sweet, Spanish lessons-taking girlfriend (not to watch an old guy clip his fingernails on the bus, which I got to endure anyhow— clippings flying [I imagined one hitting me in the face or landing on my lip and the foul things I would say to him when it did :\]).  As an aspiring food blogger (you just wait; she’s bound to get started any day now), one of Sally’s faves is a certain New Yorker with a newborn babe who goes by the name of Deb.  Since Deb’s come into our lives, things have certainly gotten better.  Today for lunch this came in the form of eggs in tomato sauce with toasted french bread and sautéed spinach :).  Perhaps a wee bit dull-sounding to read, but to see and to eat: deliciosísmo!

As time on our lunch-hour(s) respite expired and I gathered my things to head back for the final couple of work hours, I kissed my sweet ‘n talented Sally goodbye and prepped my iPod (the screen is starting to go on the old dear) for another 30-40 minute journey (during these bus rides I get to listen to a fair bit of [new] music, which I love, but I think I may save that bit for another post); almost done with another day.