The best tamales in Playa del Carmen

Barbequed Tamal - OK, it doesn't look like much, but it's delicious!

Playa del Carmen is generally not the place for tamales.  Although different styles can be found brought from people from all over the country of Mexico (a natural result of the fact that the people who live here come from all over the country), the quality is generally lower than those in the place of origin; they tend to be dryer, lack flavor, and are over-priced. ($1 is average; in most places 50 cents is normal.)

About a week ago, however, my wife and I discovered tamales that are not only by far the best we've had here, but some of the best we've had anywhere in Mexico. (If any chilangos are reading, they are even better than most from Mexico City, as much as you could never dream of the possibility!  I have to admit, though, until trying these, I was part of the "only Mexico City knows how to make real tamales" club.)

The unique part about them is that they are entirely barbequed.  The lady who makes them first barbeques the chicken, then mixes with some other ingredients (including onions and boiled eggs) which are used as the filling in the tamale dough.  She uses banana-leaf wrappers, and they are a flat, square shape (the common practice in the south and east of the country, as well as Guatemala, as opposed to the corn-husk and sausage-like shape predominant in the center of the country.)  I'm not sure if she steams them are not first (the normal cooking form for tamales), but the final stage is to cook them over a wood-fired barbeque.

They are crispy on the outside, and the banana-leaf wrapping is almost burnt off by the end.  The wood flame gives a very unique and rich flavour.  Also common for banana-leaf tamales, a very slightly spicy red sauce is served on top.

The typical kind of tamal from Mexico City, in a bun.

We discovered these tamales outside of our fruit and vegetable store.  When we finished shopping last week, we were waiting for a taxi, and the smell of the tamales beside us was unbearably tempting.  Having had generally negative experiences (with only 2 exceptions) with tamales in Playa del Carmen, we hesitated buying.  Then a regular customer came by and ordered 8.  He told us that they were amazing - he drive halfway across the city to get them (this is only 10 minutes, but for residents of Playa, driving 10 minutes for tamales shows a fairly strong dedication.)  So, we decided to try them, and we were delighted!


They are a little expensive (20 pesos, or about $1.70), but they are large - about the size 2 or 3 of the standard, Mexico City style tamales) and the flavour is amazing!

The lady agreed to let my wife take pictures of her making them.  So, after she does that, I'll post the pictures.  When ever I remember to take our camera vegetable shopping, I'll also take some pictures of her barbeque booth outside the store.

To read more about tamales:

Vitamin T - The Mexican Special

Our homegrown tomatoes

Our accidental tomato plant

A bit less than a year ago, after filling our two flower gardens (front yard and back yard) with less-than-fully decomposed compost, tomatoes were among the first plants to sprout up.  While we pulled up most of the other kinds of plants, I recognized the shape of the tomato leaf (my parents have grown tomatoes in their garden for as long as I can remember) and we decided to keep them out of sheer curiosity.

Another view of the same home-grown tomatoes

As you can see from the pictures, the plants grew very large and produced beautiful red tomatoes.  Since my wife was running a little stationary shop for the local school at the time, kids took most of the ones from the front garden (seen in these pictures) but we enjoyed a few.  The ones from the back garden were smaller and there were fewer of them (although the plants grew quickly along the fence like vines,) but we also enjoyed a few of those.  They were delicious, as sun-ripened fruit always is!

More Gardening - Our Mini Rose Bush

A Beautiful Mini Rose - about 2" in size?

This is one of 2 plants that we grew intentionally from the beginning, our mini rose bush, the currently stand about 20 inches high, and is having it's 3rd or 4th burst of flowers.  It's located directly under the our living room window, with a larger bougainvilleas plant overshadowing it.  One picture shows both plans a bit more than a year ago not long after they were planted.
 

The entire bush - notice new buds, and fallen Bougainvilleas pedals

The recent flowers have been booming the most beautifully, and a greater number of them are showing up.

The rose can faintly be seen on the lower right, above the rocks

My Papaya Tree and Our First Homegrown Papaya

Our Papaya Trees

Have you ever grown your own fruit or vegetables?  We don't do it with any serious commitment, and it started mostly by accident.  We have a compost in our small back yard.  First some of the seeds from the fruit we buy spilled out of the container (not many) and others were carried off by ants (there are thousands of ants around here.)  Later more fruit and vegetables sprouted up from our less-than-completely decomposed compost when we spread it out through our newly created garden.

The first result of this accidental process was a papaya tree.  At first I thought it was just a big weed; weeds around here get HUGE.  But I hesitated to pull it up, because I had seen a similar plant in a neighbour's front yard, which seemed to be there on purpose. So I asked the neighbor, and he told me it was papaya.  So, of course, I let it go.

Our first ripe papaya - today!

That was about a year ago, and now we have to little trees (about as tall as me) growing side by side.  The smallest one was the first to grow fruit, but most of the little papayas kept falling off, very tiny and green.  Finally, about a week ago, a larger one fell off, and we left it in the sun to ripen.

By "larger" I mean 6 inches - hardly the right size for a papaya.  It's ripe now, and tomorrow morning we're going to try it.  We're excited!  This will be our second home-grown food; although the tomato plants showed up later, they produced fruit much quicker (last summer) - they were delicious!

Green papayas still on the tree

About 10 more papayas are currently growing and are already longer than this one, although they are thinner; hopefully this means they will fill out and become full-sized papayas.

I'll pictures and posts of our other plants over the next few days, both accidental (tomato, pineapple, avocado, beans and Mexican Marigolds - the famous Cempoalxochitl, pronounced "CEM-pa-su-chil"or flower of the dead) and planned growth (Bougainvilleas, and miniature roses.)

A papaya flower

A Poor Canadian Living in Rich Mexico - Part 2 - The Stats

Wealth Distribution - two scenes from Mexico City

Of course, the idea that Mexico is financially richer than Canada is absurd; I acknowledged that in my last post!  But it's not just my imagination that Mexico has a lot of very well-to-do people.

Comparing some of the stats from the two countries will help show the bigger picture.

These are taken from the CIA World Factbook, a great source of statistical info for just about any country:




                                                                         Mexico                    Canada
Population:                                                 110,000,000             31,000,000
Gross Domestic Product:                         $1.56 trillion            $1.3 trillion
GDP per capita:                                          $13,800                     $39,600

Average household income:                    $10,000                   $26,000
                                                                    (these last two are from Wikipedia - it's all in US dollars)

So, while both countries are "trillion dollar class" economies - a status shared by only 14 countries - and Mexico actually has a larger economy than Canada, the fact that Mexico shares that wealth between more than 3 times as many people makes it pretty clear where average wealth is higher.

But there's one little detail the CIA World Factbook points out:

While in Mexico "per capita income is roughly one-third that of the US, income distribution remains highly unequal."

 In Canada, on the other hand, this is less of a problem.

The World Factbook backs this claim with it's "Distribution of family income - Gini index" ranking Canada (32) much better than Mexico (46) (A lower number means better family wealth distribution; the "best" country has a score of 22; the U.S. is only slightly better than Mexico at 42.)

While Mexico has very low unemployment it has big problems with underemployment - people who have jobs, but don't get paid enough for that job.  Putting all this together means, while Mexico has one of the world's best economies (being in the trillion dollar class is really impressive!) there are really rich people who have most of this money, and there are really poor people who see little of it; the idea will come as no surprise to most Mexicans, who complain about this often.

What they forget, though, is that this same fact means that many Mexicans have a good deal more wealth than many Canadians.  By visual impression, I would think there are more really rich people in Mexico than in Canada. But Forbes' list of country by number of billionaires suggests the opposite; Canada has 24 billionaires, while Mexico has 9.  Canada also has considerably more millionaires.  Maybe the Mexican wealthy just like to show it off a bit more.

These same stats also means that a "poor" Canadian really doesn't compare in any way whatsoever to a poor Mexican; but in this case it's Canadians who need to be reminded of this fact, not Mexicans.

Canada tends to be a very middle class country, while Mexico's middle class seems to be smaller than it should be.  One of my friends from Mexico City pointed out that the middle class of the city's southern area is a very small community that tends to be fairly closely connected; this is surprising from a city with almost the same population as Canada.

Canada hasn't accomplished this through socialism; in fact, the Heritage Society ranked Canada #6 worldwide, in its "Index of Economic Freedom World Rankings" - and I don't believe socialism figures very positively into this ranking. I'm definitely not bragging, here, just an analysis.

(Completely contrary to popular beliefs and absurd blanket statements from both sides of the political spectrum in the Canada and perhaps the U.S., Canada actually has more capitalist economic freedom than the U.S. which ranks #9.  It's very strange, for that reason, that left-leaning Canadians like see the country as more socialist, and right-leaning Canadians as well as right-leaning detractors of  Canada from the U.S. like to complain about Canada's "socialism," which seems to be a fabrication of political image.)

Back to Mexico, though, some people are saying that the country's middle class is growing.  I don't enough about economy to say how this would be best done, but I just hope it's true.

The first part of this post was about  my personal experience living in Mexico with very little money - and the difficulties in convincing people of that fact:

A Poor Canadian Living in Rich Mexico

A Poor Canadian Living in Rich Mexico

We're not all as rich as we "look."

Early on in my life in Cuernavaca, my wife was working taking pictures at events at a little event-garden (kind of like an event hall, but completely outside, something that only works a couple of months in Canada.)  The owner of the place ran it as a small business where he did everything pretty much; all the event services were contracted out, but maintenance, promotion, etc. he and his wife did.

One day when the business had been growing nicely, he decided to buy a new place.  The new one was pretty much a house with a really big yard and a pool; personally, I liked the first place better, since it has a lot of trees and was picturesque in a truly rustic way, but the second place was "nicer" by just about all standards but my own.

One day we were chatting about it:

"It's not much of a place," he observed.  "I know up there in Canada you're used to much more.  But I'm just a poor Mexican, I can't afford much."

"Well, I'm from a pretty humble background," I explained. "I'm sure it's beautiful."

"The thing is, I had to go into it with an investment partner," he went on.  "I could only afford 4 million pesos.  The other guy put up the rest.  It's nothing much compared to what people spend up there."

4 million pesos would have been about $450,000 CDN at the time (slightly less US)!  I didn't really know what to say to that.  I had never lived in a house worth that much, and I don't believe that any of my friends' parents' houses were worth that much.  The average home in Canada last year was worth about $350,000.  I know a lot of people have homes that are worth more, but since this is the average, that means there are plenty whose homes are worth less than that - just about everyone I know, I guess.  This was also before Canada's post-recession housing boom - even before the recession, in fact - so the average values would have been less than that, which was a record high.

This property he bought was worth more, since the $450,000 was just his part - there was also the other investor.

At this point I had just begun teaching part time, and was earning about $700 dollars per month, and my wife was earning another $300, plus what we got from the photography (I helped take the pictures to be developed and sell them to the guests; I even took pictures now and then!)  A home worth $450,000 was well beyond anything I could imagine at the moment.  Yet this guy was sure that the amount would have seemed trivial to me.

I just nodded my head, and told him I was sure he made a good choice; business was good.

I know that this was for business, but what shocked me was the idea that $450,000 was a negligible amount of money!  I know well-to-do people, but I think any of them would consider that amount an amount to treat with care.  This guy was certainly treating them with care - he was kind of "betting the farm" in this new undertaking - but he was sure that that kind of money was nothing for me, since I was Canadian; all Canadians are filthy rich, after all. (I don't know what he thought my motivation was for working with my wife as a photographer on my weekend evenings.)

It seems to me that many Mexicans, like this friend of ours, regardless of how much money they make, will assume that all foreigners are richer than they are.

During a slightly earlier time in Cuernavaca, when my income and funds were even tighter, a man selling chicken in the market got really angry with me because I asked him for 15 pesos of chicken; when he gave me 20 pesos worth, I told him I only had 15 pesos, and he would have to give me less.  This was the absolute truth.  I really only had 15 pesos.  I had a bit more cash at home, but that had been carefully rationed for transportation and other needs.  In my pocket I didn't have another cent - not even a Mexican cent!  My wife and I were going to walk home.

"What's 5 pesos to you!" he shouted.  "It's less than half a dollar.  Stingy gringos!"  Some people will joke around like this, but this guy wasn't joking.  He was fuming mad.  He finally chopped off half a leg, and gave me my 15 pesos worth of chicken, cursing under his breath as we walked away with our chicken, cent-less.

Most of the time these kinds of encounters aren't so aggressive; taxi drivers here regularly try to tell me their price in dollars (elevated.)  I always politely say, "Sorry, I only earn Mexican pesitos.  What's that in pesos?"  (in Spanish, of course.) That usually gets me laugh and a better price.

While in general Canada is definitely richer than Mexico, there are plenty of Mexicans who are richer than plenty of Canadians.  Getting many Mexicans to believe that is virtually impossible, though.

Tomorrow, or some time down the road, I'll share some stats about Canada and Mexico from the CIA World Factbook (a great source for statistical information, free online) and tell you what I think they mean.

To read more about those of us who live in Mexico, and either by necessity or choice are living the "real thing", read:

What is an "Expat"?

The Beauty of not Knowing the Time

Starting in the late afternoon, I had 3 different appointments today.  After each one ended, I went to the place of the next one, and waited for it to begin.  Not once during the entire evening was I aware of the exact time; I could guess the approximate time by the setting sun and the beginning of each appointment; since Mexicans aren't very punctual, the second point counts for little.

I didn't have a watch on, and I had left my cell phone with my wife.  (She lost hers, and we're still waiting to buy a new one; see Have you ever flushed your phone down the toilet? )

Nor at any given point was it necessary to ask the time or even try to guess.  I only found out the time when I arrived home and realized it was a full hour earlier than I guessed just before entering the door.

I did hurry home; but that was because I was tired and I wanted to see my family; I knew they would all be sound asleep, but I still wanted to see them. There was no pressure from the numbers on a clock.

At one point, on the bus home, I became aware of my lack of knowledge of the time, and the lack of need for  it.  I felt in awe.  It wasn't so much not knowing the time that was beautiful, but more not needing to know the time, and for briefly, not even being aware that you don't know the time or don't need to.

It's like being in a place where there is no electricity - and I don't mean turning the lights off;  I mean no electric current or power source anywhere nearby, above the ground or under it.  Electricity has a light humming, even when all your own lights and appliances are off.  It's impossible to identify that humming when you live in it.  Then one day you arrive to a place where there is no electricity, and the unidentifiable lack of that unaudible humming first haunts you like you are in a strange fantasy world, then overwhelms you with its beauty.  That is true silence.


I felt that way about the time today.  It's the lack of it's ever-present existence in your mind that makes it wonderful.

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"Heaven is a place where everything that is not music is silence." - George MacDonald (I believe I got the quotation from C.S. Lewis)