Ants and grasshoppers and caterpillars (in a tortilla), oh my
Well, I’m an adventurous eater, and figure I should try anything once. So when I found the innocently named “Tortillas Azteca” on the menu and looked up the ingredients (none of which I recognized) in the handily provided translation guide, I decided I should give it a shot.
It’s rare enough that a menu in Spanish has anything I’m not able to translate, but ant larvae, caterpillars, and grasshoppers are definitely among them. These were or are all considered high-protein delicacies in various parts of Mexico at various points in history, much like in Africa.
In this dish, each of these three items is provided in its own little bowl, accompanied by dried oregano, onions, a spicy brown sauce, and small but very thick corn tortillas, from which you assemble your choice of fillings. I was a little concerned that the couple sitting next to me would want to move once they saw what I was eating, but thankfully they turned out to be curious and pleasant dinner companions.
The dish turned out to be a mixed experience. The ant larvae were not recognizable as such, and were crunchy, round, and tasty. The grasshoppers were predictably spiky, very crunchy, and spicily prepared, but were surprisingly quite good in the chewy, thick corn tortillas. The caterpillars, well. I ate just enough of them to determine that they were edible, but they had nothing particular to recommend them in terms of flavor or texture, and were much too obvious in appearance!
In any case, I enjoyed the strange experience, and am considering it payback karma for all the bugs that continually bite me no matter where I am. I found the thick corn tortillas very filling, especially after salad and bread, so was chagrined that I couldn’t eat more of it (even though I would have) – because I’m sure the waiter though it was just too weird for me :) Macho eating at its best, LOL.
Not much else to say at the moment except that I had a very nice massage this morning – one of the best I’ve ever had, which I tried to get in before it got really hot. Now I am indulging in an iced latte and getting ready to wash my clothes. Sadly, the birding guides that I had hoped to use appear to have folded or moved on, so I’ll have to find another option for getting out to the nature reserve later in the week (hopefully on a day with some cloud cover)!
Getting to Zihuatanejo
For a series of three flights overnight through LAX and Mexico City, it really wasn’t a bad trip – everything went smoothly. I had a moment of fear when my bags didn’t show up in Mexico City to take them through customs, but for some reason, they booked them through to Zihua to go through customs there. Thankfully someone else had already asked and received the answer!
I upgraded to first class on the LAX to Mexico City part – my latest strategy to avoid crowds of potentially flu-carrying passengers right at the beginning of a vacation – and comfortable for the overnight flight. It’s a good thing I got to LAX early… Aeromexico was crowded with large families bringing everything imaginable back home, including flat-screen TVs and other electronics. I’m not sure why the economics of that would make sense, but who knows.
Flying into Zihuatanejo, I revived at the sight of jungle-covered steep hillsides, just what I had been hoping for. I spotted a large lagoon and other likely bird-watching sites from the air, and confirmed with the local taxi/everything-coordinator at the airport that these are in fact reachable and birdable with a little bit of planning.
The condos are really beautiful – the whole complex made of dark wood and stucco painted soothing colors – sage green and terracotta – and lush green plants everywhere. Each room has its own generously sized terrace, and the larger rooms have their own little minipools from which you can gaze out over the gorgeous bay. Zihua is the less developed of the two areas here, Ixtapa the more touristy. My room looks out over the central bay, a rocky island with lots of birds, and a marina, with waves breaking on the shoreline as a backdrop.
It’s definitely monsoon season here. I think I was expecting it to be almost over by now, perhaps based on Puerto Vallarta weather – but this is much more tropical. At least I’ve been through that once and have some idea what to do and expect. There are showers in the morning, then it is hot and humid all day, followed by cooling in the late afternoon, and drenching rains and thunder/lightning storms in the evening, making for an interesting dinner spectacle. I really should have bought some of those new clothes that can get soaked and 5 minutes later are dry – something to do when I get back. I tend to favor natural fabrics like cotton and hemp, which are exactly wrong for this.
I arrived mid-morning, showered, and spent the rest of the day variously studying a new I Ching text and napping. A more perfect and restful day would be hard to imagine. Plus a little bit of birdwatching – I’ve been trying to determine whether I would need to wear glasses with my binoculars now that I’m wearing them for distance vision, which is a little bit crossed in my case. It appears that my binoculars may be correcting for that, which would be a big relief. I’ll test it out further later in the week.
Oh, and the food is excellent. Which certainly is not the case at all of these condo resorts, especially those with meal plans. Lots of regional Mexican specialties tastefully and creatively presented – enough to keep this foodie interested and coming back for more :)
A cheese and pickle sandwich
One of my favorite topics of discussion is food – whether it be food sustainability, the eat local movement, organic and environmental issues, consumption/dieting, or cooking – it’s all there, in that thing we do at least three times a day. Today I was thinking about food appreciation. It’s so easy to buy meals these days and make or cook them instantly that we just don’t appreciate what we have, and we take it for granted (which global warming may change someday, but don’t get me started).
Everyone has those “throw-together” meals – the fall-backs for when you’re just too busy to figure out what to eat. The makings are always in the fridge or the cupboard just in case. Aside from mac & cheese, one of mine since college has been the very strange cheese and pickle sandwich. It sounds odd, I know. But to me, it’s enjoyable, easy, and has only four ingredients (or even less, if I’m skipping the mayo). The other day I was eating this sandwich and realizing that even this lowly food item that I slap together and could eat just about every day for lunch on auto-pilot, has so much to it. Never mind something as complex as an actual multi-course dinner, or a typical American processed food item like a frozen dinner.
Let’s look and see what we’ve got:
- 2 pieces of bread
- a couple of dill pickle slices
- a couple of slices of cheese
- Kraft olive oil reduced-fat mayo (or alternatively, Dijon mustard)
Simple, right? Well, let’s see. That slice of bread – I’m kinda partial to the multi-whole-grain with oats kind, which means its got at least four types of flour and grains in it, if not a lot more. That’s at least four individual farmers growing their individual crops, worrying about the weather and waiting all season for my grains to ripen, harvesting them, milling them, selling them to the bread or flour companies, along with all the transportation and energy that goes into all those steps. Someone bakes and delivers the bread – I try to buy local, so that part of it probably isn’t very far away; maybe a bakery within 20 miles of where I live. Every now and then I stop in at that bakery for a latte and treat, and watch them making bread, rolls, and pastries.
Dill pickles – eek. Well, I know it starts with cucumbers, and I like kosher dills. So there’s probably not TOO many ingredients. Let’s see… vinegar, salt, natural flavors. Yep, not too much in that jar. But again, someone somewhere grew the cucumbers, who knows where. Then another business went to the trouble of being certified kosher. The salt – who knows where. Normally I buy from a more local company, but was at a different store this time. My jar says, ack, “made in India” !! How very strange. Kosher dill pickles made in a Hindu/Muslim country all the way across the world, shipped to Portland, OR, then distributed to a local store near me. Given the source of the pickles, the cucumbers probably came from northern Africa, based on what I’ve been reading lately, and the salt and vinegar from the middle east or the Mediterranean. Oh, and don’t forget conveniently sliced at the factory the better to fit on my sandwich. Sheesh. I wouldn’t have bought these if I’d seen that “made in India”. Not that I have anything against Indians making a living. Just that it’s a heck of a long way and a big environmental footprint just to have pickles.
Cheese… Trader Joe’s. No point of origin specified, which makes it hard to identify whether I’m meeting my buy local goals. They are a west coast company, so one hopes they’re buying from someone here, since there are multitudes of dairy farms from WA to CA. Let’s pick Tillamook, just for fun. I’ve actually seen that factory, on the coast of Oregon. They buy from local dairy herds, make the cheese in their factory with natural ingredients (although they are not certified organic, why I’m not sure). And again, presliced. Lazy, lazy, I know. I don’t usually do that. Not sure how I ended up with it this time, except that TJs had a wider variety of reduced fat cheeses than most stores, which actually taste good. So I may be buying it again. Here we must not forget the dairy hands getting up early to milk the cows… hmm. Does anyone still do that, or is it all by machine?? Paint me woefully ignorant about this part of the process. Most likely I really do not want to know.
Last, mayo. I don’t eat much of this, but recently found this olive oil version that I like – again, lower-fat but tastes just as good. Let’s see what’s in it – well, this is a long list. Three different kinds of vegetable oils, vinegar, sugar, eggs, starches, salt, onions, garlic and the seven or eight other random ingredients that every processed western food seems to have in it these days. Focusing on the “normal” ingredients – at least 5 crops in there, along with the other seasonings, starches, and eggs. So now we’ve added chickens to the mix and another multitude of farmers – some of which are highly likely to be in other parts of the world (olives, soybeans). And chemical companies for all those funky food additives =/
All those people growing crops, raising chickens and cows, milling, cheese-making, pickling, packaging, transporting, processing, mixing, baking, storing, never mind the containers, labels, advertising, trucking, wholesalers around the world, buyers and grocers – all so that I can make and eat one sandwich in under 15 minutes and never give it a thought…
Which brings us to the slow foods movement – if we really thought about what we eat and the impossibility of personally creating it ourselves, gave thanks to all the people who brought it to our table, all the animals, crops, weather, and nature that made it possible along with the manmade infrastructure, we’d appreciate every meal, no matter how lowly. We’d stop and think about what we are eating, how complex it is, how far it came, and whether we want all of those attributes in our food. We might slow down, eat less and with more gratitude, and be healthier. Next time you eat your favorite comfort meal, give it some thought!
My latest publishing project – Tarotmoon Press
You’ve probably all seen it by now, but just in case… :) this is what has been keeping me too busy to blog lately: Tarotmoon Press. Tarotmoon Press is an experiment in self-publishing, like freeware for tarot and astrology books, course materials, and other writings. I’ve enjoyed working with Llewellyn in publishing past books, but I got interested in having a creative-commons type website for all kinds of writings astrology and tarot-related, including articles and resources for tarot readers, original spreads, course materials, and books in progress. Many of these have never been published on my website and I will be uploading them over the next couple of months. I’ll be sending updates through an RSS feed if you feel like subscribing, along with blogging more about tarot. This is part of a transition in progress away from doing online readings and toward doing more teaching, writing, and other online activities. Hopefully it will encourage me to finish that book that’s almost done, and keep making more steady writing progress. I just added a really fun 10-week online set of course materials we used one year to study the four elements in life and tarot – one of the most rewarding classes I ever taught.
This year in the garden…
I really NEED to get my digital camera working – I’m so bad with things like that but I’d love to be able to show you the pile of produce on my counter today. In any case… Here’s how things went this year:
- Lovely piles of herbs (always seem to be the easiest to grow) – with basil, rosemary, sage, and tarragon doing the best, along with chives. Cilantro and dill went to seed almost immediately, and I am still trying to convince the basil that it doesn’t want to go to seed yet.
- LOTS of peppers, mostly the long green ones. I also planted some smaller bell-shaped varieties, I thought they were supposed to be red and yellow but it seems I am only getting a couple of green ones.
- Broccoli, hmm. Supposed to be easy to grow here. The plants and stems did seem very strong and robust, but the heads were small and spindly. I did have lovely yellow flowers though :D The broccoli was quite bitter, I found.
- Eggplant, another disappointment. Had pretty purple flowers but then nothing happened. From discussions at the farmer’s market it appears I am not alone – the particular rainy weather we had in the middle of July is likely responsible for this. They need just the right temperatures to set fruit at just the right time of flowering, and it didn’t happen.
- Squash, yum. I am growing what I thought would be small yellow patty-pan squash, but they’re BIG yellow patty-pan squash, probably eight inches in diameter. Perfect for grilling and broiling and with a very nice flavor.
- Lemon cucumbers – I am getting lots of these. I was surprised to find that they had uncomfortable little spiky points all over them, but they easily scrub off. These have a nice flavor but the rind is a little hard.
- Butter lettuce – really nice clumps of perfect, yummy lettuce. Definitely met my expectations. The spinach, on the other hand, flowered (!) almost immediately and I never really got any. I was late starting this year and both of these crops probably should have been started earlier. The chard from last year lived through the winter, and had I trimmed it back better, it might not be so spindly. I’ll see how it’s doing next spring.
All in all, not bad. It’s fun to try new things each year – but I’m glad I didn’t bother with tomatoes. Too much trouble and not enough gain here in the Pacific NW. Next year I’ll try to get started earlier and see what else I can grow – strawberries might be nice!
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