What We Eat

Bean Burritos

 

Bruce's Baja Specialty

Someone asked, after my last blog entry what our daily menu was down here. Since we usually eat at home and spend quite a bit of time thinking about food, getting it into our casita and preparing it, it seemed a fitting subject.

What we eat is bounded by several immutable realities:  I'm devoted to a heart-healthy, cholesterol-reducing diet; our culinary abilities are sadly lacking; and the nearest groceries are two miles away and differ significantly from what is available in the states.  In some of the bigger stores, like those in Cabo, we are starting to see familiar staples like brown rice and pasta.  In fact, this year in Cabo, we even found a Mexican version of cottage cheese and some plain Greek yogurt. 

But here in our little local store, things look a little different. Leche delactosa (milk without lactose) is everywhere, but skim milk cannot be found.  This year, however, I found "leche light!", supposedly bajo en grasa (low-fat). No matter which kind of milk you buy, you'll find it in boxes on the shelf, not refrigerated:

Yes, that expiration date is 6 mos from now!  They use an ultra-pasteurization process, then package it in this air-tight, light resistant box and put it on the shelf.  Once the lid is cracked, however, it needs to be refrigerated just like milk at home.  And boy, does it taste creamy! (Maybe because I'm used to skim?). Bruce, who never puts cream in his coffee, puts this creamy milk in his coffee!  The nutritional label says .4ml sat fat to 100 ml milk, but it feels too much like chem class to convert volume to weight and figure what per centage of fat this milk really is.  I just prefer drinking creamy "light" milk for my calcium to swallowing down mega-sized tablets.

Eggs are eggs, it's just in how they're sold, you'll notice the difference.  In the big Cabo grocery stores they come in cartons like at home.  My theory is that because they are taken from farm to packaging plant to big store in Cabo and, they are not as fresh as what you'd find in local small stores.  The difference is in presentation.  Instead of cartons as we know them,  this is what our local store offers:

One carton (3 doz) for 100 pesos, or $6 USD

Yes, they are at room temp.  To take less than 3 doz home, you need to grab one of those thin plastic produce bags, fill it with your eggs, tie a knot in it (no twisties here) and hope like heck you get your eggs home unbroken.

What is plentiful here and looks like much of what you see at home is the produce.  While lettuce and broccoli are hard to come by, tomatoes, onions and peppers are everywhere, fresh and beautiful. Peppers!  Red, orange, green, yellow, serano, jalapeno, poblano. Onions: red, white and perfect.  Tomatoes, usually Romas, firm, ripe, beautifully red and tasty.  Avocadoes 4 times the size of those at Town and Country, and every one without a blemish.  Oranges to eat and sweet juicy ones to squeeze.  Fresh cilantro that actually lasts a week or so in the fridge. Small limes by the bucket for your margaritas, pico de gallo and guacamole.  And these days, we see specialty items: mushrooms, lemons, apples and green grapes.

Beans, either pinto or black are everywhere and cheap.  Locally made tortillas are sold in stores warm and by the kilo.  Cheeses are interesting.  Local varieties, white and soft from sheep or goat are everywhere.   Cheddar is unheard of; Panela, Chihuahua and Manchego are prevalent.  My devotion to "heart-healthy" puts cheese in the "no-fly" zone, but I do remember sampling it all when we first started coming down here and loving all of it  On our last trip to town, the friendly butcher caught me eyeing his collection of local cheeses.  Wonder if, next trip to town, I could talk him into one little taste?

Next trip to town?  Yes, it's a challenge.  Yesterday I mapped it:

Our walk started on the left of the map, at our casita near the sea.  I turned off my tracker when we reached Rosarita's where we treated ourselves to breakfast (eggs scrambled with loads of fresh veggies, best refritos I've had down here and tortillas for $6 each).  The map shows us just getting to the Transpeninsular Highway.  The grocery store is another couple of blocks east of the highway. The walk there, in the cool of the morning is pleasant.  It's the walk back with groceries on our backs that is the challenge and the reason for all our efforts to "stock up" while we had a car.

Our first few years down here, we rarely found meat in the stores.  The cattle we saw from the bus windows looked emaciated and very short on beefsteaks.  Sometimes, in Pescadero, there was a guy grilling and selling his cooked chicken along the highway and we could buy a whole cooked chicken from him.  We haven't seen him these last few years down here. With Baja's year-round high temps, fish needs to be eaten shortly after capture and very near the dock.  Restaurants and families of fishermen seem to have first dibs as seafood is seldom seen in the stores.  In Cabo we did see packaged frozen fish, but facing an hour drive with no cooler, I was scared to buy it.  In Cabo we did find whole frozen chicken and managed to get one to Pescadero unthawed.  It wasn't until we hit our local store, the day before we turned in our rental car, that I found my staple: frozen, skinless, boneless chicken breasts.  I got to know the friendly butcher when I asked him to bag me up 7 breasts.  He looked at me doubtfully, explaining it was a lot.  I hoped I clarified I wanted 7 pieces (as opposed to 7 kilos or whatever the favored unit of measure is).  When he again looked askance at me I explained that today was the only day we'd have a car.  That seemed to make sense and he wrapped me up a good-sized pile of chicken breasts.

So our meals are centered around what we can get down here.  Breakfast is easy: eggs, potatoes, rice, granola, avocado toast (no bagels).  Lunch is dinner left-overs, yogurt, peanuts, fruit.  Dinner is where we get imaginative, first with our grocery stock and second with our cookware.  It's really kind of minimalist.  With no colander, the vegetable steamer drains our washed veggies, pasta and lettuce (when we have it).  We have plenty of fry pans, but only 3 burners that work.  A fry pan with metal handle serves as our only baking dish.  Witness my enchiladas:

And we don't go all-out buying spices.  my mainstays are cumin, chili powder, fresh garlic and fresh cilantro:

The chili powder says it has lime flavor in it too, but that doesn't explain the bright red color.  It even turns my chicken pink, but I like the flavor it gives my fajitas.

Chicken Fajitas

And so what is available is what determines our menu.  Bruce got creative our first meatless years down here and combined sauteed veggies serving them over rice, potatoes or pasta and garnishing with one of those great cheeses melted atop.  We still eat that often, but sadly, my portion bears no cheese. Pico de Gallo adorns most everything because we like it so much.  I suppose that is why all our meals look so much alike.  At home we like poblano burgers as our one beef meal a week, when we don't have steak.  At home we buy the leanest burger and make mine small.  Here, in the big store in Cabo, Bruce was pretty excited to find frozen "hambergesas" ready for the grill.  We bought a pack of 8 patties and prepared our first two as poblano burgers:

Being composed of pork and soy in addition to a little beef, they mostly taste like cardboard and needed some dressing up.

As I finish typing, I can hear the workers next door singing heartily in Spanish as they tend the landscaping in the unoccupied house next door.  I can smell my next batch of beans simmering on the stove.  And so, another day in the Baja begins.