gulfporter

I am halfway through McIlhenny's Gold: How a Louisiana Family Built the Tabasco Empire. It's well-written and the geological facts about Avery Island (one of largest salt domes on earth), as well as how the family was able to trademark the word "tabasco" (illegally through political connections) are quite interesting. When we were moving from the east to AZ in 2003, we stayed in New Iberia but didn't take the time to tour Avery Island and I always regretted that decision. https://www.amazon.com/McIlhennys-Gold-Louisiana-Family-Tabasco/dp/0060721855

For many years (in the past), Michoacan was the state with the highest number of immigrants going to the US; many villages were left without any adult men. Almost any time I meet a Mexican in Florida, when I ask, they are from Michoacan. I tell them the truth: even though we live in Jalisco, sin duda Michoacán es la mas bonita estada en Mexico. It really is. Sadly much of it was and is, cartel turf fight territory.

This Michoacan abuela is rocking the internet with her down-home Youtube shows. Read about her here: https://hiplatina.com/mexican-abuela-traditional-recipes-youtube/ She is very sweet and straightforward. The closed captioning can be set to either English or Spanish. Link to videos here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJjyyWFwUIOfKhb35WgCqVg/videos

Thanks @chromedome. FYI, 2 of the 5 eateries are including butter tarts in their dessert offerings, but also have the requisite pumpkin pie. I have heard Canadians rave about butter tarts, but have never tasted one. I may try to grab one of those if I can (my husband detests TDay foods so we don't participate in either US or CDN meals).

The expats here are mostly Canadians, so some of the local eateries will have a Thanksgiving dinner on Monday. Of the 5 ads I've seen, 3 are serving Waldorf salad. I don't see it mentioned yet in this thread....is it traditional?

@Panaderia Canadiense Best wishes to you at this time. You have the right attitude to deal with this; many expats do not. We have had intermittent shortages of goods and services, and some nasty cartel violence during our years in Mexico, though never a shortage of most foodstuffs simultaneously that you are experiencing. Like you, we figure if such a strike or stoppage of food deliveries should occur, that the family farms near us would help pick up the slack, though after the prolonged gasoline shortages we experienced last winter we wonder how the produce would get to us, or vice versa.

They leave the head on so you know it's not a cat (that is a joke that refers to my purchase of rabbit at a meat market). I grilled it for exactly 5 minutes skin-side down since it is thin fleshed and boneless. Before grilling I slathered with a bit of a homemade quasi-zarandeado schmear with a Mediterranean bent....mayo. dijon and capers. Another thing I love about it is that it thaws in an hour on the counter (for those days when life gets ahead of my meal plan).

Recently a few Ajijic restaurants have offered trout (trucha in Spanish). I asked our waiter where it came from. Mazamitla, he replied, which is a small Sierra Madre mountain town (2500 meters or 8000 feet altitude) to which we once did a day trip (it's a 90 minute drive each way). Senor Google confirms there is a rainbow trout hatchery there (we did not know it when we visited). A few days ago I was rooting around in the freezer section of a local grocer and found these trout. The price on all the packages (no matter their weight) is 74 pesos, or $3.75 USD.

I am all for convenience, yet I see his point. Why not put all sauces together, all noodle products together, rather than by ethnicity. It may open some eyes (and taste buds) to more culinary diversity if they saw an ethnic product in a "regular' aisle, especially if they don't normally venture to the international aisles/shelves. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/voraciously/wp/2019/09/30/to-david-chang-the-international-food-aisle-is-a-last-bastion-of-racism-others-see-it-differently/

Neither of us drink soda, but I buy an awful lot of Cokes. An unwritten Mexican law requires homeowners to provide Cokes to workers at least twice a day when they are working at your home. And they must be sugared Cokes; when we first moved here I added some Diet Cokes to the mix and all went unopened. Pepsi is unknown here.

Never seen a Domino's with Roman columns and chandeliers, and table service. No, we didn't eat there.

Here in Mexico, chamorro (pork shank) is extremely popular. I have never shopped for pork shanks in the US, maybe it is reasonably priced. You might want to try it. Quick! before it gets featured on Food Network 👩‍🍳 🖥️ Chamorro is not as delicate as lamb shanks; it holds up well to a spicy red chile sauce. Every bit as tender as lamb shanks if not more so.

Rack of lamb on the grill. I marinate overnight in olive oil, fresh lemon juice, fresh garlic, fresh rosemary and a squirt of dijon mustard, lots of fresh ground S&P. Frenched racks usually weigh between 1.2 and 1.4 pounds where we shop. My grill method (after I preheat gas grill to 400) is normally 9-9-9. Nine minutes side one; nine minutes side two, nine minutes rest. Larger racks I may go 10-10-10 and smaller, 8-8-8.

Another al fresco person here . We eat out 7 days a week (5 dinners and 2 lunches). At our MEX home, we can walk to 25+ restaurants including Thai (3), Italian (4), French (2), Argentine (2), Spanish (3), Polish, German, vegan (2), Greek, Cajun, Chinese (but it's awful), Vietnamese, a myriad of what I'd describe as International or Continental and of course, Mexican. Only a few have solid roofs from wall to wall. Most have patios or gardens. Our weather here allows us to eat outdoors almost 365 days a year. It's one of the top reasons we chose it! From our FL home we can walk to a dozen non-chain eateries and all but 2 have outdoor seating available. We are rarely at our FL home these days (only 5 weeks so far this year), but when we visit next month we will seek indoor a/c, for sure). We aren't crazy. We make the same choices on vacation. For the past 5 years our vacations have been to Spain, Portugal, Guatemala and other parts of MEX and we are always able to find very good to excellent restaurants that offer outdoor dining.

Flat cracker. one handed. Our eggs here in Mexico are always very fresh, ungraded, unwashed and sold by weight.

I'll try anything once.

Ahhhh 💡. Maybe it was the time spent thawing and sitting in fridge, post-freeze? When I made the initial mix, I grilled the burgers almost immediately. When I thawed the frozen ones, I put in fridge overnight and grilled for dinner; they were likely sitting thawed in the fridge for several hours. Thanks Smitty.

I don't often use ground meats, but have been experimenting with making Banh Mi pork burgers. I made a batch with a pound of pork, seasoning it with sesame oil, soy sauce, fish sauce, Worcestershire, fresh ginger, fresh garlic, chopped green onions, minced cilantro, ground black pepper. I grilled 2 of the formed burgers and froze the other 2 burgers for about 10 days. Both of us felt the burgers that had been frozen tasted stronger (and better) than the fresh batch. Does that make sense, or are we kidding ourselves?

We eat half our meals at home and half at restaurants. We also do carry-out once a week. And here's what we've noticed: At the BBQ place in FL and at the rotis chicken stand near our Mexican home, when he goes, he comes home with more food than when I go for the same food. The chicken and ribs are portioned out (we always get a whole bird and a whole rack), but at the MXN chicken place he literally gets twice the number of baby potatoes (swimming in chicken fat) than I get; and at the Florida BBQ place he gets twice the number of their homemade BBQ sauce containers (8 versus 4). For all the years we've been going to these places, the counter staff has always been young women. In case you're wondering; I'm not a shrew and he's not a schmoozer. We tip the same. Anyone else ever notice this?

For over a decade we have enjoyed the free spiced jicama sticks that many bars in MX serve (though rarely in our neck of the MXN woods). I tried at home to replicate them, using lime juice and various spices and never got it right. A few weeks ago I got a tamarind margarita and the rim had the BEST spice mix...nice salty crunch, some heat and a good sour. I asked the waiter what he used and he came back with the Tajin jar. Duh....I have seen it in the spice aisle for years but never knew what it was. It is addictive. We put some on grilled corn on the cob last night and it was fabulous.

I just got hooked on this a few weeks ago and while was never a fan of adding salt to fruit, these salt-lime-chili crystals are great sprinkled on mango, melons, pineapple and also cukes, jicama, radishes. Makes the best rim for a tamarind margarita (and probably others).

How about sending back "house" wine? My husband says you can't send it back no matter how bad it is. Here in Mexico house wines were very often gawd-awful a dozen years ago when they cost 20-30 pesos a glass. Nowadays they are mostly quite drinkable at 50-70 pesos a glass. With the exchange rate difference, the US dollar equivalent is almost the same over those 12 years, $2.50 to $3.50 and that includes tax. Maybe twice a year these days we will be served swill and DH says to just cowgirl up and drink it or order something else, but that complaining about an inferior house wine is tantamount to going to McD's and complaining there are too many kids there. Then there's the issue of explaining to a Mexican waiter that the wine is "bad," since the server has likely never tasted wine of any sort. If there is an owner around, maybe you could make that point. My guess is that if a glass of house wine here cost $10 USD (as it often does in the states), that he'd change his tune and complain. He says no he wouldn't, but that has yet to be put to the test.

Hardly ever, even to my own detriment. 10 years ago I ordered a medium burger. It came out blue-rare. We usually share or taste each other's meals and when my DH asked for a bite I told him, no, it's just too rare. But I ate it (hungry, in a rush, DH already had his meal, not the type to send meals back unless it is not what I ordered and not what I normally eat). Result: E Coli. Which I ignored a tad too long and ended up in the ER. It was a long recovery.

For future meals.....pesto from the basil plant that is taking over the geranium in the same pot.

Condolences, @Shelby We sashay between Mexico and Florida. Electricity in Mexico can be a crapshoot. We live in Centro where the restaurants, shops, businesses are, and this usually ensures rare and short power outages. We do however suffer from "brownouts" where half of our house electricity is "on" while the other is "off." Oh...and which half is on versus off, changes every time, and even changes during brownouts. We have a closet full of extension cords to handle this when we are home and we also always have a 10 kilo bag of ice in the freezer part of the fridge. I keep very little protein in our MXN freezer for these reasons. Maybe 4 or 5 meals worth of fish/shrimp that during an outage I can grill to feed ourselves and a few neighbors. Prior to any trip, we eat our way through our freezer. Not a scintilla of protein is allowed in there while we are away. I do the same at the FL house (where the grid is much more stable), however after Hurricane Irma hit us in September 2017, the home was without power for 5 days. We were away during Irma; and while we have an excellent FL property manager, he was unable to get to our home for 3 days due to road closures. We are in the better safe than sorry camp. Even those of you without 2nd homes may want to consider eating your way through your freezer before you go on vacation.