Lazy Sunday

WE DECIDED to veg out on Sunday. We often do that.

After driving downtown for a restaurant meal at Mexican lunch time, 2 o’clock, we returned about 3:30, put on our jammies, and started a movie on Netflix.

After an hour, however, we got antsy, so we paused the movie (City of Tiny Lights, quite good), got dressed again and headed out the gate for a neighborhood stroll.

I carried the camera.

Generally preferring black & white photography, I made an exception for the top shot because it’s all about color.

It’s a relatively new house near us that was constructed about two years ago. It’s the only casa in the barrio that gives us competition in the color category. But let’s continue on.

This is a mural right off the plaza. It’s pretty new too. The fellow looking over the mountains is Lázaro Cárdenas, president of Mexico in the late 1930s, and the guy responsible for nationalizing the oil industry, a mistake.

We sat on a steel bench on the plaza and watched people. There weren’t many people out and about, but these two boys were enjoying non-electronic toys.

These ladies were sitting outside a small store.

This wall facing the plaza is directly next to the 16th Century church. That’s church property behind the wall. Some young folks painted this stuff a few months ago. It includes Pancho Villa and the obligatory Ché Guevara.

I’ve thought about coming down here one night and blotting Ché out, but I likely will never get around to it.

Pancho Villa was no prize either.

Before we headed back to the Hacienda, I entered an open building, turned around, and took this photo. I like open-door photos. The entryway gave access to an interior courtyard where local ladies cook and sell grub on Sundays.

Over open fires.

I took about 25 shots total, but I didn’t want to test your patience as most people would do. These are my favorites.

18 quiches, to go

MY CHILD BRIDE is a baker, a very good baker.

She hawks her wares downtown on the main plaza most Saturday afternoons. She does it for fun and profit, the profit going into a separate bank account that sports only her name, not mine. It’s her mad money.

On very rare occasion, she does special orders. That’s one in the photo, 18 individual quiches that were delivered to a private party Tuesday. They were ordered by a woman doctor who runs a chain of medical labs in town.

Finding quiche in this neck of the Mexican woods — well, probably in most parts of Mexico — is not easy to do. It was my suggestion in the first place, way back when.

Quiche, that is.

Many people who pass her basket downtown pause, point at the quiches, and ask: What is that? Pizza?

If the locals don’t spot a tortilla around it, they’re perplexed.

She cooks a variety of quiches. These have spinach, bacon and some other tasty stuff. And she sells them for just 25 pesos each, which is about $1.50 U.S.

When we met in 2001, she was a civil engineer for the federal highway department. Now she’s a love slave and part-time street vendor. Life changes, often for the better.

Bagels and sausage

My child bride is at my side, but she didn’t have her feet up just then.

THE RAINY season changes everything hereabouts. The mood, the grass, the feel, the temperature.

The daily rain was reluctant to start this year, but I think it’s finally worked up some enthusiasm. It rained gently most of last night and, as I write this in late morning, it’s still falling quietly and steadily, the rain. Nice.

Speaking of mood, usually, after our morning bagels or croissants, we step from the dining room into the living room and sit on the sofa, which is nice and soft. I put my feet up.

Sometimes incense and/or music.

We finish our coffee and talk. Okay, truth be told, she talks. And I listen. She is female, after all. And I’m not.

God created them to talk. Us to listen.

That lasts 15-30 minutes till we get up and start chores. There are always chores. We have no maid.

Life’s been pretty slow since we got back from our anniversary trip to Mineral de Pozos about a week ago.

Last weekend we hopped into the Honda and headed around the lake to an eatery I simply call The German Restaurant even though the real name is Campestre Alemán.

The German Restaurant offers grub you won’t find anywhere else in these parts, this world of endless tacos and cheese.

There is Bavarian sausage, for instance, and goulash too. I always order the Bavarian sausage, which comes with sauerkraut, something else you rarely encounter locally.

I took this photo of my Bavarian sausage and sauerkraut. Just beyond is the bunny my wife ate. I consider eating bunny appalling, but she does it anyway.

It’s still raining as I wind this up, which means there will be no morning exercise walk around the neighborhood plaza. I guess I’ll  just shave, take a shower and put my jeans on.

It’s almost time for Breakfast #2. Cereal.

Street food

Yum, yum, yum!

A FREQUENT warning to people visiting Mexico is not to eat food from street vendors, advice that I’ve ignored for 17 years, and I haven’t died yet.

This afternoon, sitting at a sidewalk table on the main plaza with a café Americano negro, I hankered for something solid. I narrowed the options down to two.

One was a shrimp cocktail from a street vendor on the small plaza a couple of blocks away. Two was whole-wheat fig bread from another vendor quite near the shrimp stand.

I chose Option Two, the fig bread. That’s it in the photo. I brought it back to my coffee shop sidewalk table and cut into it with my pocketknife, the one you see there.

The fig bread is a great example of an amazing phenomenon you often encounter down here. Persistent food heat. I purchased the fig bread out of a basket. The bread had a cloth covering both it and its compañeros, all awaiting diners.

The vendor likely had left home, or wherever the bread was baked, a couple of hours previously, but the bread was still quite warm as she tucked it into a plastic bag.

I walked the two blocks back to the coffee shop, sat, opened the bag, and the bread was warm still. I cut it in half for the photo. Then I ate a good deal. Still warm.

How do they do that?

After slipping what remained of the bread back into its bag, I was surprised by the sudden appearance of the inimitable Jennifer Rose who sat with me a spell.

I offered her some fig bread, but she declined.