Coffee, Wonderful Coffee!

Moka Pot

I love coffee; I'm a little picky about coffee styles, but in the absence of my favorite kinds of coffee, I'll drink just about any kind of coffee (with less enjoyment.)  The coffee I like best are dark roasts, brewed strongly.  Now and then I like espresso, but what I drink most often is the strong coffee made in the stove-top coffee makers known as Mokka pots (see the picture.)  For homemade coffee, I also like press coffee makers.  Of course, the standard drip-pot coffee makers do the trick as well.

In Mexico, I've used all three with Mexican coffee.  Mexican coffee suits my tastes really well.  Most that I've tried is dark roast and has a really rich flavor.  Flavors vary from region to region as well - Veracruz and Chiapas are two of my favorites.  On top of being delicious, it's priced really  inexpensive; one reason for this is that it's produced within Mexico, and not very commercialized.  The other reason is that many Mexicans (although definitely not all) have a prejudice against their own domestic produce - an assumption that what's foreign is better.

This is were I enjoyed my morning coffee in Cuernavaca

This attitude led to one of the biggest absurdities I've ever encountered.  When we lived in Cuernavaca, a smaller city just south of Mexico City, my wife's boss would make a cup of coffee for us every morning when we arrived at her work (a historic photo archive). She would brew a wonderful dark roast which she bought in a nearby tourist village called Tepoztlan (where we got married).  The coffee was amazing!   Then one day we arrived to the news that she had bought better coffee. When we tried it, we found it so bitter and harsh, we could hardly finish our cups.  Of course, being polite, we forced it all down. After my wife and I had thrown some concerned looks at each other, she asked her boss about her magical new discovery.  Delighted, excited and proud, she pulled out a large can of Folgers.

FOLGERS!  Can you believe it?  I almost died of shock.  For one thing, I couldn't believe that this was her improvement.  No offense if you drink Folgers, but it just doesn't match up in any way to the small-production Mexican coffees.  If you do make it, you simply cannot make it that strong, it's just too bitter.  Another thing was the horror that if I continued to accept her morning coffees, every morning my expectations of having some of the best coffee I had ever tried, would be disappointed by Folgers.  The morning coffee visits had become a pleasurable part of my daily routine, sitting down in a very relaxing natural setting with my wife, her boss and an expert on colonial churches for some good conversation.  (This was after finishing my morning shift of teaching English classes around 10:30). Later that day my wife, who had investigated this change for the worse in depth, explained that her boss was certain that it was much better coffee; it was from the States.  How couldn't it better?  I lost some faith in humanity at that moment ... (well, OK, not really, but I was disappointed!)  I did keep going for the visits, but I  started "cutting down on caffeine," taking only half a cup.

The Market in Cuernavaca where I used to buy my Coffee

While we lived in Cuernavaca, I bought my coffee in the central market; there was little shop where they received green coffee in big bags from Veracruz.  They roasted the coffee fresh every day, and the aroma near that part of the market was one of my favorite parts of  my weekly shopping trips!  The only other place where I remember the smell of freshly roasted coffee so strong and rich is one corner of Kensington Market in Toronto where there are several roasters.  The shop in Cuernavaca sold various grinds (fine, medium, course) and tones (light, medium, dark.)  I bought the medium grind, dark roast for my moka pot, or fine dark roast for "cafe de olla," a traditional Mexican style of brewing coffee.  It cost about $7/kilo, which converts to about $3/pound.  Virtually the same coffee in Kensington Market, Toronto (also imported green from Veracruz and roasted on site) cost $10/pound.  I don't believe that even a giant can of Folgers in Walmart would cost much less then $7/kilo, and even if it did, it's a price I'd be very willing to pay.

These days I buy little packets of ground coffee from a vendor who has a little stand set up on the back of his pickup near the city's main hospital (a common way of running business in Mexico).  It's good coffee, but I miss the experience of the aroma of roasting coffee.  If anyone ever opens a coffee roasting shop in Playa del Carmen, that person will eternally be my hero.

I could write much more about coffee, or just coffee in Mexico, but I'll have to save those for another day.  In the future you can look forward to a post about "cafe de olla" as well as the home-grown, home-roasted coffee on my wife's grandpa's farm.

What's the best coffee you've ever had?  Just don't say Folgers! (Sorry for picking on Folgers, but that experience in Cuernavaca has left it branded eternally as the coffee I hate.)

Where's your adventurous spirit?

While yesterday's idea was a bit of a flop (trying to get a bunch of people to answer a question)  a lot of people did take a look at that post and others, and the one answer I did get (from Todd) was really good.  Thanks Todd.

In that reply, Todd talked about the adventurous spirit that drew people like us to Mexico.  So, today I'm going to talk about the adventurous spirit and living in Mexico.  I'll start by talking about some things Todd mentioned, and connect them to my own experience, starting each point with a quotation from him.

"I have a touch of adventurous spirit in me. That´s what started it all."

• This definitely started it all for me as well. I was all ready to start a degree program for graduate studies, and I decided to head down to Mexico City for a 3 week vacation, as one last adventure before getting more serious about life. That 3 week vacation has turned into 4 years, and many new adventures have stemmed from this one.

"Every day it seems like there is some new challenge to face."

•  I met my first challenge when I met my wife (my main motivation for staying past the 3 weeks;) I didn't know Spanish and she didn't know English.  Since then, I think I have come across many new challenges, even when there's no adventure.  While it's definitely a challenge to be in a different country, there's something about Mexico that constantly presents life with new challenges.  My wife always says Mexico is the country where "everything happens and nothing happens."  Everything seems to be going wrong, and be far to complicated, and then suddenly you realize that life goes on, and it none of meant as much as you thought.  At that point you're ready for the next challenge.  This applies to everything from government bureaucracy to trying to help with social problems.  While this way of thinking can be frustrating when you want to see real change, I believe it's what keeps Mexicans sane.

"Moving to another country with such a different culture was a little scary (ok, a lot scary)"

• I'll have to be honest; I wasn't scared.  I don't think I'm a courageous person, I think I just got lost in the excitement and adventure.  I also had the fortune of being with really supportive people, who took me to some places where most people would never dare go, and to other places where most people could only dream of going; all along they told me what to do, what not to do, and made sure I knew how to stay safe.  Even when I was alone, their advice proved very valuable.

I believe that people with an adventurous spirit don't find adventure.  Adventure finds them.  One thing that was similar between my life in Canada and my life in Mexico was that I constantly found unexpected problems, places that were real "hidden gems", interesting people and excellent friends, without ever looking for any of them.  One friend in Canada pointed out that whenever we travelled together, unexpected adventures abounded - both good and bad, but almost always fun.  There is no rule about what kind of things an adventurous spirit will find; each adventurous spirit has a different star guiding it, and will a whole different kind of adventure.

There are Americans, Canadians and Europeans who come to Mexico to live in a gated community, full of other people from the same country, shop only at Walmart (they probably won't even go to Mega - a Mexican store which is very similar and has an even nicer image I would say, with comparable prices), and only go to see sights and participate in events where they are comfortably with others from their own country.  I know some of these people and have nothing against them; many are very pleasant people, and I can enjoy talking to them and spending time with them as much as with anyone.  But they don't have an adventurous spirit.

In fact, they don't really live in Mexico.  They live in a home that happens to be in Mexico, but has little more to do with this country or culture. Adventure is unlikely to find them, even in Mexico, because they don't want it.  That's fine, because they're happy that way; I'd never wish for anyone to have to tie a muffler to a car with a coat hanger on a near abandoned logging road in northern Quebec, or have to walk through the streets of Tepito in Mexico City, if that person couldn't somehow find pleasure in the adventure or telling people about it afterward; half the pleasure of an adventure is being to share the story with others (hence this blog.)

Others arrived in Mexico or other countries because of an adventurous spirit, and started off with adventures, but later lost this spirit (click here to read a blog about this.) Although I've settled down, bought a house and had a kid, adventures of a new sort have been finding me, the kind I don't have to go to the isolated countryside or city slums to find.  I'll write about these some time.

What sets Mexico apart for me is the fact of being in "another fishbowl," as Todd said, is the randomness that permeates this country - or at least what seems to me as randomness - and experiencing it in a very direct and raw way; this randomness creates both annoying bureaucracy and rich cultural variation and brings wonderful people into your life.

Do you have an adventurous spirit? Do adventures find you?  Tell me about them ...

Click here to see Todd's original comment.

Would you move to Mexico?

Today it's not really a blog post, but just a way to get some thoughts from any of you who are reading.  Just two questions, that I really hope you take a minute to answer.


If you are not Mexican, would you consider moving to Mexico?  Why or why not?
If you are Mexican, would you consider moving to another country?  Which one, and why?

To answer click here or write in the space just below this post where it says "Post a comment."

Share your thoughts;  I'll write some blogs about whatever answers you give.

Another video blog - My new closet - I made part of it!

This my second video blog about a totally different topic - a new closet we had someone build last week.  This weekend we put the woodwork in so it's now usable.  The doors are still missing, but we're very happy with our closet. Check it out in the video!

Raw Construction

  

Painting the Top



Here are some pictures of the process.  My wife did a lot of the painting on the closet itself - I only did the hard-to-reach parts, but she didn't want a picture, since she was a mess! (Look at me! Did I care?) She also moved all the stuff and re-arranged the house after!  Thanks Cecy!

By the way, I haven't been getting any comments; tell me what you think of my new closet.  It's great, isn't it?

 

Part way done





 





Done!















Thanks to my friends - a video blog

 This is a "video blog" - for a special request from one of my oldest friends, Kevin.  I missed out on the Canadian Thanksgiving, but I decided to take this opportunity to say thanks to all of my friends.

When I moved to Mexico, some friends from Canada came to my wedding exactly a year later. Thanks to all of you did.  I had lost touch with other friends; thanks to those of you who have got back in touch again.  Now, after moving even farther to the Yucatan Peninsula, friends from the Mexico City area have come to visit.  Thanks to you guys! I've met new friends, who I'm really grateful for.  In any case, I'm really fortunate to have the friends that I do; thanks for being great friends!

Grandpa's Farm in the Hills – Part 3 – The Homes

This is the third part of a series describing some of the great experiences I had visiting my wife's grandpa's farm. Part 1 was about the trip out to the hills (click here to read), Part 2 was about the food (click here to read.)



Grandpa's Adobe house

 In the valley where my wife's grandpa's farm is located, and the nearby village, virtually all homes are made of adobe. If you don't know what that is, it's a type of brick made of mud, stones some other ingredients. I'm sure a large book could be written about the variations of adobe homes. I've come across at least a complete magazine, and personally seen a dozen variations through various parts of central Mexico.

In the cities, adobe is a luxury for the rich, who pay double or more than the cost of a concrete construction to have the few craftsmen who still know the technique make the bricks and build their home.

In the isolated hills, its the building material for the poor who can't afford to have the luxury of concrete imported from the city.

It's this latter type that is important for Grandpa's farm. His two houses down in the valley that I mentioned in Part 1 were originally small but well-built adobe homes with dirt floors and red clay tile roofs. Arriving to grandpa's home, where he lives alone, we went through a tall, narrow wooden gate, and along a walkway whichh led to his patio, which was a long rectangle of about 2 meters by 10. On one side of the patio was a cistern (the one luxury item he had built out of concrete!) and on the other side were two doors, entering to the bedrooms. At the end was the kitchen.

Visitors are received on the patio, where there are a few wooden chairs, and a short wall wide enough to sit on. Meals are eaten in the kitchen, where in one corner is a table for grinding corn, and also the stove, which has a space for fire below it (the gas stove you see in the picture here is not connected and doesn't work.)



In the Kitchen (the gas stove is just ornamental)



Time has take its toll on the two homes, and now some of the bricks are cracked, and most of them have become quite worn down. Usually a clear sort of varnish is used to protect them, but since the only two men living on the farm are my wife's grandpa and great uncle, who are both getting up there in years, maintenance becomes ever more difficult.



The clay tiles on the roof are held up by a wooden framework. Some of the tiles were also in need of repair. In some parts of the house, paper or other materials are used to section of the living area from "attic." If not, you can see straight up to the clay tiles. Dry corn is also stored in this area. Sometimes roosters stay up there; I remember on my second visit that a rooster woke us up at about 5 am crowing directly above our heads!

Washrooms are any of the fields around the house – whichever one you feel most comfortable going to.



Adobe is comfortable, keeping a house cool during the heat of the day, and warm during the chilly nights. During the day, small, high windows let in some light, and at night candles and gas lamps were the main source of light. (He also had a flashlight which he lent us at night.)



I felt very relaxed in Grandpa's home; the only difficult part for me was at night when he took some blankets out of storage for us; since they hadn't been used in a long time, he shook the dust out – in the bedroom! Since I have allergies, I didn't react too well to this, but I knew his intentions were the best, so I did my best to block the sneezes.



My wife's great aunt, who we visited both times I went to the famr, lives nearby in a house higher up on the hill, closer to the road. Her home had been renovated by a grandson who works in the U.S. It was also adobe, but with pained, plastered walls, nice wooden window frames with shutters (no glass) and a well kept-up roof, fully closed off. This home had electricity, connected from the road, and electric lights. The basic structure was the same, but it had a larger line of bedrooms. One of the bedrooms had a large T.V. The kitchen pictured in Part 2 is in this house.

Up on the hillside next to the town's access road, those who have the money are now building concrete homes with glass windows – as I said above, this is a luxury. The grandson mentioned in the last paragraph, who renovated and paid for the renovation of the great aunt's home, worked in construction in the U.S. and spoke English OK. He complained that he would rather have a concrete home, or even better, one like they build in Texas. This, however, would have cost a fortune in that village, bringing all the materials from a city hours away; even in the city those kinds of materials are not common.



My wife and I have considered building a home in Cuernavaca (1 hr south of Mexico City) with the first floor constructed with stone, and the second out of adobe – we had seen one built this way in a nearby town. When we told her grandpa, uncles and cousins about the plan, they couldn't, for the life of them, understand why someone would pay to have a house made of adobe and stone; you only use these materials when you have no money for something better (according to them.)

We dream of living in an adobe home someday, or even out on her grandpa's farm. I don't think modern life will present an excuse to do this. It's one of those things where we'll just have to make up our mind and do it.

More to come ...

(Pictures will come later tonight)





Grandpa's Farm in the Hills - Part 2 - The Food

In Part 1 of this blog (click here to read) I described my first trip out to my wife's grandpa's farm in the isolated hills near the border of Mexico State and Guerrero State.

Two Women Making Tortillas (in a different house)

One of the items which stands out most in my memory about our visit was the food.  The food was very simple.  I believe the ingredients used for everything could be listed on half a page (corn, beef, squash, beans, onions and habanero peppers showed up regularly); yet it was some of the most delicious food that I have ever tried.

To start off, on my wife's advice based on past family visits, we bought a few kilos of dough to make tortillas from a tortilla shop in the last town.  This had been made from commercially produced corn flour.  When dinner time came, the women set the dough aside and started using a hand mill to grind corn from the farm that had been soaking in warm water during the afternoon, which they ground on a flat slab made of volcanic stone and another round tool made of the same stone - like a mortar and pestle, but different shapes.  The resulting paste was pressed into a round flat tortilla in a standard tortilla press (two flat metal or wooden plates with handle attached to one to make it easy to press down), and cooked on a hot griddle.

When they took out our commercially produced dough and tasted it, then made one tortilla, and tasted it, they made some doubtful facial expressions and told us that it was no good.  I may be that it had actually gone bad, but if after I tried their homemade tortillas made from the farm's corn, I realized that even if it had been good (which it may have been) it wouldn't have lived up to their standards.

These tortillas were amazing.

One of the Girls Grinding Corn

With the tortillas we had some strips of grilled beef, beans, which had been cooked in a clay pot, and a sauce made of onions, lime juice and habanero peppers.  (I put a few drops of the sauce one taco and realized that more than one drop was too much  for me.)  While the meal sounds simple, I can't remember having many meals that were better!  It was absolutely delicious.

Later that evening we had a drink called "atole" which is made of a very fine rice or corn flour with cinnamon and sweetened.  Everyone was trying to decide who should go up to the village to buy bread (baking is not a standard part of most Mexican household cooking habits, traditional or modern.)  In the end no one went, because they realized we would have finished the atole before the person got back.  After a repetition of virtually the same situation - concerning the tortilla dough - the following visit, we realized that the food to bring to her grandpa's house was bread, not tortilla dough.  "Bread" actually refers to Mexican sweet bread which includes sugar coated rolls and pastries.  For our next visit, we will bring bread.

Another part of this food experience was that they let me help in the kitchen, grinding the corn and making the paste.  Normally, only women work in the kitchen, but since I love cooking and learning new things about any kitchen or cooking style, I couldn't resist asking.  They were all to happy to see me try to make tortillas for a few minutes.  Of course, they did it all about 10 times as fast, but it was fun.

I love coffee, and we had the pleasure of drinking coffee made from home-grown and home-roasted beans.  It was delicious, but since I love coffee so much, I'll save that for another post.

They're probably be a few more coming up about Grandpa's farm.

For Part 3, which is about the homes, click here.