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One of the experience I most looked forward to in Mexico was the food. From what I learnt through Oziel’s cooking and our discussions of food, it is mainly Tex Mex that has been exported around the world under the guise of Mexican.

Oziel had his second hard shell taco last week. While he had heard of these, it wasn’t until he moved to Sweden three years ago that he actually saw one. The first two pictures below show Mexican tacos, with the second three showing quesadillas (tortillas filled with cheese and another filling).

Mexico has supermarkets like in Australia or Sweden, so for me the food experience began in the local markets.

One of the first things that struck me was how much more connected people are with where their food comes from. As I showed in my previous post it was possible to see in the bakery the entire process of turning the corn into flour, then dough to make the tortillas. But in butchers you can see entire carcasses (from chickens with feathers and their heads to cows) to parts of animals I knew people ate (eg. brains, livers, stomaches, chicken feet), to parts of animals I did not know people ate (eg. chicken intestines). This made me think about how much food we must waste.

In the fruit markets in Oziel’s village I was surprised that there were no prices on any of the items. Oziel asked the fruiterer for the things he wanted and she went about carefully picking the items, weighing them, and handed over a shopping bag stating the price. When I asked Oziel what was going on, he said that the fruiterer knows the people in the village, their quality requirements and what they can afford. Someone with limited funds might get fruit and vegetables that have to be eaten today, at a discounted prices, while someone with more money will get a higher level of quality and service – for example, cleaning the spikes off the cactus (third photo) comes at a cost.

And it was in the markets we bought the ingredients for Oziel’s birthday barbeque. Grilled cactus anyone?

There was also a great variety of food and drink available on the streets. People would sell lollies in the subway, and go car to car selling cold drinks, ice-cream and children’s toys in traffic jams. From the tacos and quesodillas (top of page), to flavoured crushed ice and tlacoyo below.

But my biggest surprise was the beer sold on the streets. The glass was rimmed with lemon, salt and chili. The glass was first filled with the juice of half a lemon, then the most liberal pinch of salt I’ve ever seen, and then filled to the brim with beer. (For the less adventurous it was possible to buy the beer by itself.)

Unfortunately I don’t have many photos of our dining out experiences, but here are a few (although more street food). The first is breakfast of “divorced eggs.”

Finally this is the window display of a famous wedding cake shop in Mexico City. There were many that were much more elaborate (some even involving built in wiring for in-cake lighting), but it was not possible to take pictures of these.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 4th, 2009 at 21:42 and is filed under Photo Albums, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.