Zoolander and Obispo

The last couple weeks have been pretty mellow, including a wonderful visit last weekend to North Carolina to visit my newly born nephew, Simon. It's amazing how I can travel back and forth to the U.S. in such a short time and I really traverse various worlds. The back and forth travel sometimes attracts attention, like for example from customs and immigration guards in the U.S. who type me as a drug-runner since I travel with such little luggage. But recently I have experienced very different worlds in Mexico as well. Last week my landlord, who is a film director and very involved with the Hollywood world, had a friend here who came to "dress" Ben Stiller for the debut of Night at the Museum 2 in Mexico. We got free passes to the premiere at an unbelievable mall that had movie theatres with cushy lazy-boy style seats, table service, and a full restaurant that serves crepes. We also were pretty close to Ben Stiller, who looks really creepy in person. The rich and famous were there, including soap stars and musicians. It was pretty hilarious. Awkward picture to the right of me and Kat (my landlord, Trisha's, assistant) in the nice theater seats.

This past week I had an adventure day in the State of Mexico, where I am doing fieldwork. A friend was going to pick up and uncle and have some meetings and I took advantage and got a ride to Toluca, the capital, to do an interview. Afterwards we desended into a neighboring valley to Tenancingo (south-eastern part of western Mexico State), a little town amongst corn fields and forested hillsides. My friend's uncle, who happens to have just gotten his PhD in Education and is a new professor at UT Austin, has a family house in the town that we stopped to see. It had an amazing colonial feel and cool, old furniture. The highlight was going to the local market to get Tacos de Obispo, which apparently are only found in this particular town and are a real delicacy. The whole region is known for Barbacoa, which is a bbq sheep dish which is supposed to be amazing. We almost stopped to try some, but they knew the amazingness of Obispo, so we held out. In the market we got a couple kilos of Carnitas (pork boiled in lard--so good) and Obispo (ground lamb with all sorts of spices and peppers, in a sort of sausage type mold--so good). Also we got a couple dozen homemade blue corn tortillas, some criollo avocados (criollo is a more wild or heirloom variety, they use the term with any fruit/veggie), and spicy red salsa. Amazing. We took the scenic route on the way back and saw some pretty views of the region and its corn fields.

Last night I went out to hip Condesa, to the Pata Negra which is a cool bar-club with great music. The 80s and 90s are popular here as in the States, and all the childhood favorites are played at clubs and parties, but somehow the DJs are better than in the U.S.. Dance favorites I had forgotten about kept us going all night! Or at least until 2am, since there's a new law in Mexico City that bars and clubs have to close by 2am. Again with the laws here!

Getting Gritty in the City

I've been experiencing more of Mexico City which has been a blast. Last week the folks in the house where I live had a bbq (parrilla) where we cooked up some carne asada, chorizo (in the pan), nopal cactus, onions, and tortillas. A typical feast. I made a green salsa with avocado and tomatillos...I put more serrano peppers in than I normally do but they said it wasn't spicy at all, and laughed at my attempt. But they appreciated the salsa in its own right (if not expected to be spicy). Saturday I had a fun adventure wandering around downtown (El Centro). I've been around the area in general but not much since moving here in April. It's really a fun area- Carlos Slim has bought up most of it and is gentrifying/refurbishing Guliani-style and the positive is obvious: beautiful old buildings, streets repaved with stones, new restaurants, and the like. We passed through a less redone area to see the Mercado San Juan, the one of the largest and definitely the most famous in the city. This is a place I have to go back to. The fish picture is just the tip of the iceberg of what's sold there, and I'll spare photos of skinned baby goats, deer, rabbits, just about anything you can think of is sold there whole. It's actually amazing to see how fresh everything is here, from chickens to grasshoppers. A lazy cat briefly crossed our path and I prayed for his safety (I actually don't think they eat cat, but then again you never know! I've heard a lot of rumors about street tacos but they're unfounded).

Saturday night my friend Paola had a sushi party where she went to the local Japanese food store and bought sushi-grade fish, seaweed, pickled ginger, everything. There are plenty of sushi places around the city but Paola says they're shit so she makes it herself. They love to throw cream cheese in sushi rolls here, more than in the US, and it's not really my style. I actually until that night have refused to eat Japanese food here since I prefer street tacos and quesadillas anyway, and also I'll wait to get back to the States for a sushi fix. But Paola's was pretty awesome! After sushi we went salsa dancing at Mama Rumba... good times all around.

Sunday another friend had a performance with the national university's choir. A word about the university: it's full name is Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) and it's a world of it's own. It's actually located in the south of the city, near where I live, in what's called Cuidad Universitaria or University City. And a city it is. It was declared a UNESCO heritage site in 2007 and has some amazing buildings. Despite having something like 290,000 students, it remains one of the best universities in the country and probably in Latin America and is practically free, or at least really cheap. They have all sorts of museums, theatre, radio programs, you name it. So my friend Laura sings in the choir which accompanies the university philharmonic orchestra. The show was in an amazing theature called the Sala Nezahualcoyotl (I can't pronounce it, and most people just call it 'Sala Neza') and was a performance of Dvorak's Stabat Mater. Beautiful. You can see a somewhat blurry picture of the inside of the theatre from up top where we sat. Later in the afternoon we saw a documentary at Cineteca Nacional, which is a government owned arty movie theatre with the awesome Mexican independent films and documentaries (and it's down the street from my house). We saw an amazing documentary called "Los Herederos" or "The Inheritors" that was about village kids working in various parts of Mexico, harvesting in the fields, making tortillas, artesania. Dissertation? What dissertation?

Special Protein Package

In much of the global south you can find interesting protein sources not common in the U.S. or Europe. My of travels in Latin America have brought me closer to guinea pig (cuy) in the Andes, beetle larvae in the Amazon, and fried ants in Chiapas, Mexico. Mexicans are known for insect fare, most commonly chapulines (grasshoppers, they eat them fried) that I have yet to try. But I did sink my teeth into another delicacy. Escamoles are a seasonal and expensive caviar but instead of being from fish, they are from... ants. Ant larvae. Sometimes fried, often sauteed in butter and served as a taco filling, escamoles delighted my friday afternoon lunch with friend Paola. The larvae are harvested from the roots of the agave plant and are rare and expensive when you find them. We had them at a gourmet Veracruz-style restaurant El Tajin, which is a member of Slow Food International. They were served with guacamole and homemade torillas embedded with epazote, a pungent herb commonly used in beans and stews. The picture shows them in a corn husk behind the guacamole. They look a little rice kernels but have a nutty taste and soft inside. One thing I've learned eating insect larvae: the texture is the biggest hurdle. But being some of the most abundant organisms on earth, insects should probably be eaten more often.

Saturday I accompanied Teo and Juan who work in the house where I live on a morning adventure. We were charged by my landlord, Trisha, with creating a green roof outfitted with pots and plants (I volunteered to coordinate, of course). The best and cheapest place around to get the plants is in Xochilmilco, to the south of the city. We piled in the car with Teo's niece and picked out mostly edible stuff, along with compost mixed with leaves as a form of potting soil. Pictures show the journey. We had to stop for quesadillas, of course. I asked Juan to take a picture of us at the quesadilla stand and he stared at me blankly. "I don't know how to take pictures," he said. I forced the camera on him and told him to just look through the window and press the button. I think he did a pretty good job. We got back and lugged everything up to the roof where I promptly planted the pots and already want more. I can smell the jasmine wafting into my room in the evening, it's lovely.

Someone recently asked me while back in the U.S. for new vocabulary I've learned since being here. I couldn't think of any at the time, but I just finally got clear on various local words that I thought were all one thing: Chamaco/a (kid or youngster), chamarra (jacket), and chaparro/a (short or the nickname shorty). Try saying all three fast in a row.