Sorry for the blogging delay.  I needed a little break. 

In two days we will head back to the United States for the first time in over 5 months.  There are so many things I am looking forward to – seeing friends and family, being able to fully converse with everyone around me, filling my belly with way too many cookies and various other American food offerings, the list goes on….

But for those who will actually have to get to see me in person I have a few warnings.  Some parts of Mexican life have become second nature.  Please don’t be surprised if I do any of the following:

1)      Greet every person I pass on the street with good morning, good afternoon, or good evening (probably in Spanish).

2)      Enter a room and greet each and every person before sitting down or stopping to have a full conversation (and also when leaving).

3)      Give you a kiss on the cheek when I greet you or say goodbye.  I assure you that I am not hitting on you.  It is simply the Mexican way.

4)      Feel the need to search for something for toilet paper and some change to pay the attendant before entering a public restroom. 

5)      Throw my toilet paper away in the trashcan rather than flushing it in a public restroom (although, unless you are stalking me, I’m not sure how you’ll know about this one).

6)      Expect there be someone to help me park in any given parking lot.

7)      Tip the bagger at a store or anyone helping out in the parking lot.

8)      Drive as if everyone on the road is out to get me and treat general traffic laws as somewhat optional (don’t worry, I’m going to really work at keeping this to a minimum).

9)      Try to light your stove or oven with a lighter.

10)  At any point reply to something you have said in broken Spanish.

That’s right, 2 days until we’re in Maryland and 11 days until we’re in Nevada.  Now you too can count down the days until you get to see these smiling faces.

salty snack foods.

Yes, they exist here in Mexico, but not in the same variety they do in the U.S..  Yes, this is probably to the benefit of my health, but that doesn't make the current craving go away.

Here are my top five favorites (in no particular order) that I can't find here:

1.  Wheat Thins
2.  Rold Gold Honey Wheat Braided Twists Pretzels
3.  Pop Secret Homestyle Popcorn
4.  Utz Salt and Vinegar or Carolina BBQ Potato Chips (Although I couldn't get these on the west coast of the U.S. either)

and for the salty + sweet bonus...

5.  Take 5 Candy Bars

So, if anyone has an overwhelming urge to spend a lot of money on shipping you can feel free to send any of these items my way! Or, if you happen to have a recipe that might help my craving subside that would be greatly appreciated as well!

It seems that each time I go to the grocery store Eli has taken it upon himself to get wigglier in the shopping cart and make it a bit more difficult for me to get my shopping done.  Lately he has taken it upon himself to try to swipe things from the shelves as we go.  I’m afraid he may have inherited my go-go-gadget arms.  Seriously, I’m 5’3” and my husband is 6’2” - from shoulder to wrist my arms are as long as his.  But back to Eli…

If I had allowed him to do the grocery shopping this week we would have come home with:

2 bags of cotton balls

1 large package of tortillas

A few potatoes

A tabloid magazine

and

3 ring pops

Hopefully this isn’t a reflection on his future grocery shopping tendencies.

Sorry for the cutesy title, but alliteration just seems to trip off my tongue these days as we work on language development with Eli.

I’ve had a growing urge to bake since we moved here.  I think this urge came from the fact that I simply couldn’t bake because I couldn’t find all the ingredients I needed at first. (I see the same urge in Eli when I tell him he can’t touch the tv remote – suddenly it’s the best toy in the house.)  So, I finally found baking powder and baking soda in Mexico and I was ready to realize my baking dreams - and then I realized why Mexicans don’t bake. 

You see my oven is a little old school.  I have to actually light it with a lighter each time I want to use it, plus there’s no actual temperature setting.  The labels on the knob read: Apag (Off), Asar (Broil), Hornear (Bake), Precal (Preheat) – which is useful, but not ideal. And yes, I realize there is a nifty little gadget called an oven thermometer, but if I bought one here it would be in Celsius and I just don’t feel like constantly calculating back and forth between Celsius and Fahrenheit. Luckily my lovely momma will be bringing me an American oven thermometer in a couple weeks.

Until then I’m working on mastering the art of baking with my old school oven and the added bonus of the high altitude (7000+ ft.).  Here are some of the yummy things we’ve enjoyed so far: lemon yogurt cake, banana nut muffins, and apple cinnamon pancakes.  Delicious!  Next I think I’m going to have to try this glazed apple cinnamon bread.  The apple cinnamon pancakes and glazed apple cinnamon bread are from WhatMegansMaking.com.  Megan lived a couple doors down from me my freshman year of college and although I didn’t get to enjoy her culinary creations back then I’m now a big fan of her site.  Even if you’re not into cooking, you should check it out just to see the pictures of her food.  She’ll have you drooling in no time!

Meanwhile, I’ll be here working on perfecting my baking and expanding our wastlines.

Here's a shot of our corner store.
Ironically, it is named FarMart.

Dave and I first came to love having a corner store when we lived in Brooklyn, NY right after getting married.  If you know Dave well, you have probably heard him sing it’s praises at some point.  In New York we came to love the corner store because it was, in fact, right there on the corner - a brilliant realization, right? But seriously, it was great to walk home from the subway after work and be able to grab those last couple of ingredients you needed for dinner on the way.  Or, let’s say you’re making cookies for a get together right after work the next day and realize you’re one egg short and it’s 10pm.  No problem!  The corner is just a 2 minute walk away. Added bonus: in New York, most corner stores make killer sandwiches.

Now, the Mexican corner store doesn’t make sandwiches, but let me tell you about its many wonderful attributes:

1)      Once again, it’s on the corner, just a two minute walk away.  Who doesn’t love convenience?

2)      They deliver! I don’t even have to walk those 2 minutes. I can just call them up and order just what I want (if I can manage to clearly get it across in Spanish).

3)      Not only can I get eggs there, but I can get exactly the number I need.  I’m no longer required to buy them in multiples of 6.  What freedom!

4)      It’s a pharmacy too.  As long as I know exactly what drug I need and the strength I can just order it over the counter for human or animal alike.  (I assure you I’m not doing this without first actually seeing a doctor or veterinarian.)

5)      Directly next door to our corner store is a fabulous little taco stand with 2 for 1 tacos al pastor on Wednesdays.  Perfecto!

So, I’m still not sure I’m a big city girl, but I love some of the conveniences big city life has to offer.  If you have a corner store and haven’t yet taken full advantage of all it has to offer…it’s time.

Yesterday I drove for the first time in Mexico.  Yesterday marked three weeks living in Mexico.  It took me three weeks to get behind the wheel.  I drove to the grocery store.  The grocery store is less than 10 minutes away. I felt accomplished. 

When Dave’s brother first moved here someone told him that “driving in Mexico is a game of inches.”  Doesn’t that sound exciting?  Seriously though, merge lanes are a rare privilege here, lanes come, go, widen and narrow at whim (whose whim I'm not sure, certainly not mine), one way streets are semi-optional, and there’s a random guy at the corner of a major intersection in our neighborhood who has appointed himself director of traffic.  The traffic guy we like.  He occasionally gets tips when he’s particularly helpful. 

Added bonus: A picture of Eli in our rather empty apartment.

To drive here you have to be aggressive.  If you know me, you know that there is very little aggression in my petite 5’3” frame.  There’s going be a learning curve.  But last week I spoke with an American woman who has lived here for 4 years and never driven.  She’s afraid to try.  I drove after three weeks.  Check out that brazen courage!

Anyway, we went to the grocery store.  I’ve always been pretty good at finding things in stores.  Dave says that understanding the layout of stores and malls is my special power.  I’m not sure exactly what the action figure for Super Shopper Woman looks like, but I’m hoping soon you’ll be able to flip a switch on her back to put her in Spanish language mode.  In the meantime, thanks to the magic of Google Translator, I did manage to translate my whole grocery list before we went.  (Side note: Google advertising department, if you’re out there – I think I could be your next commercial, right after the girls who order Indian food.)  However, the Mexican grocery store is just a little different than the ones I’m used to in the United States.

Here are just a few of my insights: For one thing, Mexican’s apparently do very little baking at home.  The grocery store has a rather large section of fresh baked goods, but the section of baking ingredients is miniscule and I never did manage to find baking soda. Next, Mexicans don’t eat nuts.  I wanted to buy some raw almonds to keep around as a snack.  The largest package I found couldn’t have contained more than 20 nuts and cost double the amount I would have spent at my beloved Trader Joe’s (Trader Joe’s people, if you’re out there I will happily stand on the street corner and advertise for you if you’ll open a store in Mexico City).  Finally, Mexicans seem to believe that the main items that should be purchased in a can are refried beans and meat.  That’s right, meat.  There’s practically an entire aisle of meat in a can.  I wasn’t looking for meat in a can.  I was looking for butter beans in a can.  Butter beans are not an option in a can or otherwise.  Our tried and true White Chicken Chile will be made with Frijoles Bayo tonight (brown beans according to Google Translator), which came dried in a bag.  I currently have beans soaking in my kitchen for the first time in my life (I looked up how to do that on Google tooJ).  So, my cooking experiences are going to be a little different here.  On the upside, I will definitely become a more well-rounded and less recipe following cook.

Well, off to finish my cup of pineapple and coconut yogurt.  They don’t sell the vanilla yogurt I wanted, but I think I could get used to this breakfast version of a piña colada. More mundane to come…