The New Year

Happy new year 5770. To celebrate Rosh Hashana my landlord and I had a new years dinner in her house, equipped with chopped liver (made by a friend of hers), brisket, matzah ball soup, Manischevitz wine, challah, apples and honey, and noodle kugel. Just like my childhood. I made the brisket and balls and some asparagus, and she made the kugel and also a salad with some arugula I harvested from the pots on our roof. She had her son Julio, his friend, and a few other non-Jew-but-appreciative-Mexicans come over and talk Judaism and Mexican politics (no gathering is without political talk). My brisket turned out really well despite us not even knowing if it was the right cut of meat. We had some leftover and of course my most logical use is... tacos! Yum. I think I ate leftover kugel for a week too and can see the results in my thighs. Picture is of some of the veggies, the table, and Trisha (my landlord) and I serving kugel.

Last week I spent 2 days in the area where part of our maize project is working, to the north of Toluca in the State of Mexico. Beautiful wildflowers and green landscapes permeate in rainy season which makes it a wonderful time to go. Unfortunately here we've had too much rain too late, and there was a drought at the beginning of the season, so a lot of the corn is ruined. In one of the little towns outside of Ixtlahuaca I spoke with a woman making homemade tortillas. Had to get some too, they were amazing. I'm getting to be a real tortilla connoisseur! The zone is traditionally rural and becoming urban really fast, hence some of the interest for my own work and the larger project. Pictures show wildflowers, tortillas, and flooded maize.

Urban Jungle

I've been getting back to my roots lately. This past week I visited a really cool urban gardening organization called Sembradores Urbanos who has a demonstration garden in the Roma neighborhood. There are 3 ladies in charge, and I met 2 of them, and they look like they are urban gardeners. One of them, Caro, looks an awful lot like various people I know, and it ends up that her mom is from the US and she was "raised as an American but in Mexico City." You can tell. They have great raised beds and all sorts of potted edibles and herbs, and shelves for their store built out of cob. They hold workshops and meetings there and hopefully I'll start as a volunteer soon. Here are some pics of their really cool work.

Back at home in my apartment, various fun plants are taking off. There's arugula on the roof, along with chives, strawberries, jasmine, and hibiscus flowers. I also have lemon verbena and basil plants. And, most excitingly, I got a wormbin and worms today! Through the greenpages (like yellowpages) I found a guy that builds wormbins and sells worms. I was going to make the bin myself, but I figured I'd support the cause and make life easy for myself. It ends up that the bin is not much more advanced than I could have had made it, but the man was so sweet and excited for my worm interested that I feel okay about the high price. Check them out!

I went out to the region I'll be doing my household surveys (Toluca region) and near the university that I work with (Colegio Mexiquense/Urban Observatory) we saw a sign on a house for homemade tortillas. We went in and found some ladies with a huge comal cooking up lovely large tortillas. We asked and they told us the corn came from right around where we were standing. I couldn't help but buy a kilo of steaming tortillas (for 75 cents) which I have been eating consistently ever since. There ain't nothin' like a real, homemade, corn tortilla. Hopefully I will be a regular customer. The picture of the stack does not do it justice.

Another year on Earth

For my birthday the last weekend of August I gathered some friends here in my apartment for snacks and drinks, which came equipped with a cake made by my friend Maggie. A really good cake too! The rest of the weekend I was mellow at home and the actual day I spent lunching at a friend's house. A really fun gift was that the following week my parents came to visit! I had a great time taking them around my neighborhood (Coyoacan) and to the nicest parts of the Beast of Mexico City, including San Angel (where Diego Rivera's studio is), Condesa (hip neighborhood like Soho), downtown (government buildings, beautiful old buildings, Aztec pyramids, museums) and Polanco (upper east side of NYC, very posh). They were impressed at the beautiful buildings and parks eveyrwhere, which is normally shocking when you get to Mexico City. I had the expectation of seeing a dry dusty dirty hellhole. It's much nicer than that, especially if you move in the nice parts. I wanted to take them on a subway ride but I sensed some nervousness at the prospect. The biggest adventure was getting to the airport after heavy rains that caused flooding on the way- traffic was stopped so we got out and walked along the highway, which was totally flooded, even to pedestrians. Government trucks hauled us across in the back, which was the first time my parents rode in the back of a truck! I announced to all in the truckbed that my parents were visiting, and they felt bad for the terrible circumstance. But my mom and dad laughed the whole way! They got to the gate with 20 minutes to spare and my mom's pants all muddy from the river crossing. A good time. Anyone else want to visit? You never know what can happen here!

Pictures show me blowing out candles and serving cake, and also my parents in front of the Coyoacan coyote statue in the main plaza, and the three of us in the Popular Art Museum downtown (a really beautiful museum of modern craft and popular art).