Mexico Cooks!

Looking Back Through 2016 :: Una Mirada Hacia Atras 2016

One of Mexico Cooks!' first restaurant breakfasts of the New Year was at Lalo, where I ate these delicious huevos a la florentina (eggs with spinach) served on an English muffin and quite simply fabulous.  This was the first of 2016's wonderful breakfasts at Lalo, but there were many to follow. 

In February, 2016, Mexico Cooks! was inundated with numerous wonderful tours going all over Mexico, from home base in Mexico City to San Miguel de Allende, to Oaxaca, to part of the State of Jalisco, and ending in March in rural Michoacán.  This year, let me know where in Mexico YOU'D like to go--starting now, we've added parts of eastern Veracruz to your choices!  This particular market stall, with its papel maché piggy mariachi, is a favorite joyous site along on of my tour routes.

I thought this little guy would be scared in the market's meat aisles--instead, he fell in love with a pig head!  Two seconds after I snapped this picture, he leaned over and kissed its snout.  


Tours with Mexico Cooks! aren't entirely about pig heads. In March 2016, we were with a group in San Miguel de Allende, visiting this extraordinary and very upscale shopping venue for home and garden decor.  The goods are pricey, but if your wallet can stand it, you'll be carrying beautiful items back to your home.


During a week-long tour to Oaxaca, our group breakfasted on typical pan de yema (egg yolk bread) and bubbly Oaxacan hot chocolate, made with water in the traditional way.


While in Oaxaca, we learned to make Oaxaca-style mole verde (green mole), among other dishes, in the most generous, love-filled, best cooking class ever. This simple dish, rich with flavor, is now a staple on Mexico Cooks!' table at home.  If you'd like to take this class, let me know and we'll schedule a tour in Oaxaca.

Another fantastic meal in Oaxaca included this gorgeous salsa, made in part with freshly roasted tomate verde (tomatillo, in English) and roasted tiny heirloom tomatoes.  It looks good and it is way better than good. The photo makes me want to be there now.


Later in the spring, Mexico Cooks! toured with another group in rural Michoacán.  One of the highlights of the trip was a comida (Mexico's main meal of the day) at the home of cocinera tradicional (traditional cook) Rosalba Morales. Rosy holds a bowl of charales (tiny lake fish) that she prepares according to her grandmother's recipe.  

In May, Mexico Cooks! took the opportunity to take two groups of visitors to an exhibition titled Indumentaria y moda en México, 1940 – 2015, sponsored by Fomento Cultural Banamex, A.C. This stunning show of hand-made indigenous dress plus Mexican high fashion, accented by paintings of the period, was mounted by the extraordinary curator Ana Elena Mallet and her team. The pictured Tzotzil clothing from the mid-1930s, from a private collection, was hand spun, hand woven and hand sewn in Magdalenas, Chiapas.


This is a giant tamal called a zacahuil.  I was fortunate to eat a portion of it in June 2016. The zacahuil, which in this case measured almost 1.5 meters in length, is made in many parts of Mexico.  This one, from the part of Mexico called la huasteca potosina, (where the ancient Huastec indigenous people lived in the western part of the state of San Luis Potosí), is wrapped in papatla leaves and contains very coarsely-ground (quebrada) masa de maíz nixtamalizado (nixtamal-ized corn dough) that is patted out along the leaf.  The women lay an entire butchered pig on the masa; the pig is then filled with whole raw chickens which are slathered with salsa, and the belly opening of the pig is closed.  The meat, wrapped in the leaves, is roasted directly on the red-hot coals in a clay oven.  The roasting takes approximately 10 to 14 hours.  Normally the zacahuil shines as the star of any wedding, baptism, quinceañera (a girl's 15th birthday party), or any important feast. Believe me, it was jaw-dropping to see and jaw-dropping to eat.

This marvelous Spanish-language video shows the complete process of making the zacahuil from the Huasteca potosina.  Even if you don't understand Spanish, you'll LOVE seeing the preparation of the giant tamal.  If you are ever invited to eat a portion of a zachuil, be sure to say yes, thank you!

Next week, Mexico Cooks! invites you to come with us as we travel through the second half of 2016.

Looking for a tailored-to-your-interests specialized tour in Mexico? Click here to see new information: Tour

Piñatas at Christmas in Mexico? Isn't the Piñata for Birthdays?

Huge piñatas at a Mexico City market.

Among clean ollas de barro (clay pots), plastic receptacles filled with engrudo (flour/water paste), and colorful, neatly stacked rounds of papel de china (tissue paper), Sra. María Dolores Hernández (affectionately known as Doña Lolita) sits on an upturned bucket.  Her birthday is on December 24, and she still lights up--just like a Christmas tree--when she talks about her business and her life.

The last point of the star-shaped piñata is in Doña Lolita's hands, nearly ready to be glued into place. 

"When I was a young woman, raising my family together with my husband, it was hard for us to make a good living here in Morelia.  We had eight children (one has died, but six girls and a boy survive) and we struggled to make ends meet.  My husband was a master mason, but I wanted to help out with the finances.  I knew a woman who made piñatas, and I thought, 'I can do that.'  So I started trying my hand, over 60 years ago."

Doña Lolita adds another layer of newspaper to this piñata in progress.  "You can't put too much newspaper on the pot, because it will take too long to break," she explained.  "And you can't put too little on it, either, because then the first child to hit it will break it.  That's no good, either.  You just have to know how much to use."  Click on the photo to enlarge it and get a good look at the clay pot inside the paper maché.

"The woman who made piñatas wouldn't give away her secrets, so I had to figure everything out for myself.  You should have seen me the first time I tried to make a bird's beak for a parrot-shaped piñata!  A man I knew told me to make it out of chapopote (a kind of tar), so I did.  It hardened all right, but later in the day the weather warmed up and that beak dripped down to here!  What a mess!  I finally figured out how to make the shape out of paper, but I just about broke my head thinking about it!"

The family has cut rounds of papel de china (tissue paper) that wait to be glued onto a piñata.  The black plastic bag holds strips of newspaper used for covering the clay pot to create the shape of the piñata. 

Doña Lolita told me about the different grades of paper used to create different styles of decoration on the piñata, and she explained different kinds of paper-cutting techniques; she's absolutely the expert.  Here, her son-in-law Fernando cuts tissue paper for fringe.  His hands are so fast with the scissors it made my head spin; he can even cut without looking.

"In those days, the kind of clay pots we use for piñatas cost four and a half pesos for a gross--yes, for 144. In the old days, I usually sold about 7,000 piñatas every December, so you can imagine the investment I made just in clay pots.  In the 1960s, I could sell a large piñata for seven pesos.  Now--well, now the pots are much more expensive, so naturally the piñatas cost more, too.  The large ones cost 45 pesos.  This year, I'll sell about 1,000 piñatas just to break during the posadas. " 

Piñatas in various stages of completion hang from every beam in Doña Lolita's tiny workshop.

"When my daughter Mercedes was about eight years old, she wanted to learn to make piñatas.  She'd been watching me do it since she was born.  So I taught her, and I've taught the whole family. Piñatería (making piñatas) is what's kept us going."  Doña Lolita smiled hugely.  "My children have always been extremely hard workers.  There was a girl for each part of making the piñatas.  Every year, we started making piñatas in August and finished at the beginning of January.

This gigantic piñata, still unfinished, measures almost six feet in diameter from point to point. 

"One time, we had so many piñatas to finish that I didn't think we could do it.  So I thought, 'if we work all night long, we can finish them by tomorrow morning.'  Only I couldn't figure out how to keep the children awake to work all night."  She laughed.  "I went to the drugstore and bought pills to stay awake.  I knew I could keep myself awake, but I gave one pill to each of the children.  And in just a little while, I was working and they were sleeping, their heads fell right down into their work!  What!  Those pills didn't work at all!  The next day I went back to the drugstore and asked the pharmacist about it.  'Oh no!  I thought you asked me for pills to make them sleep!' he said."  Doña Lolita laughed again.  "We finished all the piñatas in spite of those pills, but you had better believe me, I never tried anything that foolish again."

Doña Lolita builds piñatas with her son-in-law, Fernando Cedeño Herrera (left), her daughter Mercedes Ayala Hernández, her grandchildren and her great-grandchildren.  A close friend, Oswaldo Gutiérrez López (background), works with the family.  Her grandson Enrique, 19, says he intends to keep the family business going.

Oswaldo Gutiérrez works on this piñata in the doorway of the tiny taller.  Doña Lolita has taught many people the art of creating traditional piñatas, but her family and her loyal customers say she's the best piñatera (piñata maker) in Morelia.

"People come from everywhere to buy my piñatas.  I don't have to take them out to sell; I only sell them here in the taller.  Because they're so beautiful and well-made, all the best people in Morelia--and lots of people from other places--come to seek me out and order piñatas for their parties.  I've taught my family that our work is our pride and our heritage, and my children have all taught their children the same.  That is our legacy, our family tradition."

Fill the piñata with candy like these bags of traditional colación (hard candies especially for Christmas).


A group of Doña Lolita's piñatas, hung up for sale outside her workshop.

But why piñatas, and why in December?  During the early days of the Spanish conquest, the piñata was used as a catechetical tool.  The body of the piñata represented Satan; each of the seven points symbolized the seven capital sins (pride, lust, gluttony, rage, greed, laziness, and envy).  Breaking the piñata equated with the triumph of good over evil, overpowering Satan, overcoming sin, and enjoying the delights of God's creation as they pour out of the piñata.  Doña Lolita's most sought-after piñatas continue the traditional style, but she also creates piñatas shaped like roosters, peacocks, half-watermelons, deer, half moons, and once, an enormous octopus!


What the piñata might contain at Christmas--but fill it with whatever you think the kids will like best!  Candies, small seasonal jícamas, sugar cane, mandarinas (tangerines) and cacahuates (fresh roasted in the shell peanuts, in season now) are all popular.  Photo courtesy Google Images.

Now, for the nine nights from December 16 through December 24, Mexico celebrates las posadas.  Each evening, a re-enactment of the Christmas story brings children dressed as la Virgencita María (ready to give birth to her baby) and her husband Sr. San José (and a street filled with angels, shepherds, and other costumed children) along the road to Bethlehem, searching for a place to stay.  There is no place: Bethlehem's posadas (inns) are filled.  Where will the baby be born!  For the re-enactment, people wait behind closed doors at certain neighborhood houses.  The santos peregrinos (holy pilgrims) knock, first at one door, then another.  At each house, they sing a song, begging lodging for the night.  At each house, the neighbors inside turn them away in song: 'No room here!  Go away!  Bother someone else!'  Watch a lovely video filmed in Michoacán, a traditional small-town posada:   

I hope that one day you are able to participate in this beautiful tradition.

Freshly toasted cacahuates (peanuts) also stuff the piñata.  The wooden box holding the peanuts is actually a measure, as is the oval metal box.

After several houses turn away la Virgen, San José, and their retinue, they finally receive welcome at the last, previously designated house.  After the pilgrims sing their plea for a place to stay, the guests assembled inside sing their welcome,  "Entren santos peregrinos..." (Come in, holy pilgrims...).  The doors are flung open, everyone piles into the house, and a huge party starts.  Traditional foods like ponche navideño (a hot fruit punch), buñuelos (a thin fried wheat dough covered with either sugar or syrup), and tamales (hundreds of tamales!) pour out of the kitchen as revelers sing villancicos (Mexican Christmas carols) and celebrate the coming of the Niño Dios (the Child Jesus).  Finally, all the children line up to put on a blindfold and take swings at a piñata stuffed with candy, seasonal fruits, and peanuts.

This five-pound bag of hard candies shows a blindfolded (but peeking) boy ready to break open the filled piñata.  Luis Gómez, a merchant at Local 290, Mercado Independencia in Morelia, offers these and other bags of piñata candies.

Mandarinas (tangerines) are in season at Christmastime and round out the goodies in many piñatas.

The piñata, stuffed with all it will hold, hangs from a rope during the posada party.  A parent or neighbor swings it back and forth, up and down, as each child takes a turn at breaking it open with a big stick.  Watch these adorable kids whack away at one:

The piñata, lovely though it may be, is purely temporary.  Nevertheless, happy memories of childhood posadas with family and friends last a lifetime.  

Looking for a tailored-to-your-interests specialized tour in Mexico? Click here to see new information: Tours

Holiday Gift Recommendations from Mexico Cooks!: Books About Mexico That You'll Love

During the course of the last year, Mexico Cooks! has received several new books about Mexico's people, places and things.  You can see that my desk is stacked up--and this is just the short stack!  It's time for holiday giving, and the Mexico-phile on your gift list would definitely enjoy one of these.  In alphabetical order by last name of author, they are:

Many of you may already know Suzanne Barbezat, who writes extensively about Mexico travel for About.com. Suzanne is based in Oaxaca and has years of experience as a travel and cultural expert, particularly in the southern part of Mexico.  She's taken her cultural expertise one step further--and a giant step, at that--with her newly minted book Frida Kahlo at Home.  Photo courtesy Suzanne Barbezat.


Fully illustrated in both color and black and white, the book features Suzanne's writing, photos of Frida's paintings together with archive images and Kahlo family photographs, many objects and artifacts that the artist collected, as well as photographs of the surrounding Mexico City landscape to provide an insight into how these places shaped this much-loved artist and how the homes and streetscapes of her life and travels relate to and shape her work.  Even though books about Frida Kahlo abound, Suzanne brings a fresh look at the artist in her hogar--her own home.  New insights, fresh research, gorgeous photography, and a beautiful format make Frida at Home the perfect gift for any Frida fan.

Sheri Brautigam is extraordinarily well-versed in regional Mexican textiles.  She's recently written Textile Fiestas of Mexico, a lovely and comprehensive book about the textiles fairs of several of those regions, including Chiapas, Michoacán, Puebla, and Oaxaca, among others. Photo courtesy Norma Schafer.


It's exciting to read this compendium of textile fiestas and shopping; the book is subtitled A Traveler's Guide to Celebrations, Markets, and Smart Shopping and Sheri is as good as her word in sharing wonderful information with the reader.  Sheri was at one time a well-known textile designer and collector and now sells fabulous things from her online Etsy shop, Living Textiles. Whether you want to go to a tempting textile sale in Michoacán, an indigenous market in Oaxaca, or a fair in the state of Chiapas, her new book will get you to some of the top textile venues in Mexico. The photos are terrific for studying the variety of hand-woven fabrics used in all sorts of indigenous dress. Regional differences in dyes, weaving, and dress are well-covered, and Sheri offers wise advice on everything from bargaining to laundering your acquisitions.  This is a great starter book for sourcing textiles, both wearable and decorative, and I recommend it highly. 

Meet Lydia Carey, the author of La Roma, the excellent new guide to Mexico City's Colonia Roma.  La Roma (the neighborhood) is one of the truly hot spots in the city, filled with restaurants (and more restaurants!), galleries, street food, cantinas, pulquerías, mezcalerías, cozy little (and not so little) hotels, and up-to-the-minute modern shops.  Lydia is a relative newcomer to the city and I was quite frankly surprised and delighted by the extraordinary scope of her research. She's done a superb job of scouting out the most interesting, most fun, most delicious of everything La Roma has to offer.  If you're coming to Mexico City and want to explore the trendiest part of the city, you will want--nay, you will NEED this book.  The book is bilingual English and Spanish--the cover means "Come right in!" 


La Roma is organized by sections of the colonia (neighborhood), which makes it very easy to look up or walk the area, section by section, to see just what interests you.  Whether you need a shoe repaired, need a street stand recommendation for tacos, want to buy wonderful fresh-baked bread, or you're thinking of buying a home, La Roma will point you in the right direction.  It's terrific to have a bilingual guidebook dedicated to one of Mexico City's brightest and most entertaining colonias. Two thumbs up for Lydia and her book La Roma! 


Lesley Téllez is the author of Eat Mexico, a book about the joys of Mexico City market stalls, food on the street, and more, featuring Lesley's updated recipes for classic street food and home cooking favorites. Lesley's personal story is about discovering her own roots; born in California into a Mexican-American family and raised on Cal-Mex food, Lesley moved to Mexico City when her husband's work brought him here in 2009.  She quickly discovered that she knew almost nothing about the food of Mexico's interior, took a short course at a local cooking school, and started her own blog and her own Mexican food-oriented tour company. Lesley lived and wrote in Mexico City for about four years; when she moved back to the USA in 2013, she produced the book Eat Mexico.  From her home in Queens, New York, she continues to direct a group of tour guides in Mexico.  Photo courtesy Lesley Téllez.


Lesley's most impressive accomplishment is her zero-to-sixty zoom from neophyte to self-proclaimed expert. She writes with style, although not 100% accuracy, about a most complex subject.  Her recipes look quite authentic to the casual observer, although many are simplified for cooks who might not have access to standard Mexican ingredients.  Certainly we can't all follow Diana Kennedy's traditional methods and recipes that all but instruct us, "first you plant your corn". A good example of that simplification is her suggestion to use masa harina (corn flour) or even cornstarch to thicken atole (a thick hot drink with a corn masa [dough] base). It seems logical that not everyone who wants to prepare corn-based recipes has access to raw tortilla dough, and masa harina might well work as a short-cut thickener, but thickening atole with cornstarch gives the finished drink an unpleasant slippery texture; I wouldn't recommend that short cut. There are a number of similar conveniences in the recipes, created with the best of intentions for the modern home cook.  Overall, Eat Mexico is a well-designed, well-organized cookbook that will get the user into the home kitchen to make Mexican food. It will be a start in learning about commonly eaten foods in Mexico City and its surroundings.

It's a month before the year-end holidays!  You have plenty of time to order any or ALL of these books as gifts for that special someone on your list--and maybe even an extra of each for yourself.  Enjoy!

Looking for a tailored-to-your-interests specialized tour in Mexico? Click here to see new information: Tours

The Catrina, Mexico's Iconic Legacy from José Guadalupe Posada

José Guadalupe Posada, born in early 1852 in the state of Aguascalientes, Mexico, developed his skill as an artist into a career as the foremost political cartoonist of his era, regularly skewering the high and mighty of late 19th century Mexico with his engravings.  His portrait (above), engraved by mid-20th century engraver Leopoldo Méndez, is a classic.

Posada's satirical efforts started when he worked as a teenage apprentice in Aguascalientes.  His boss, José Trinidad Pedroza, assigned him the job of creating a finger-pointing cartoon depicting the misdeeds of a local politician.  His characterization was so successful that it created a tremendous hullabaloo in Aguascalientes; both Posada and Pedroza had to leave town in a hurry to avoid the politico's wrath.  When the tumult calmed down, the two printers returned to their work of exposing nefarious political goings-on. 

Posada, photographed around the turn of the 20th century, standing in the doorway of his Mexico City taller de grabado (engraving workshop).

When Pedroza's Aguascalientes workplace was destroyed by a flood in 1888, Posada moved to Mexico City to open his own workshop.  After the move to the capital, Posada began publishing and distributing frequent volantes (flyers).  He used the medium to continue to puncture the egos and expose the foibles and serious crimes of government and social figures of the day.  During a time when many in Mexico were illiterate, the message of political cartoons could be easily understood even without reading the articles.  Many credit Posada with raising the political and social consciousness of the peón (common laborer), exposing social injustice at a time when most at that level were blind to it.


Posada's first published fashionably-hatted calavera (skull).  The cartoon is titled, "Big Sale of Grinning Skulls".  Over the course of the rest of his career, it is estimated that the prolific Posada published as many as 20,000 political volantes, at a penny apiece, including many thousands that were illustrated by calaveras.

What was Posada's purpose in utilizing a skeleton--albeit a well-dressed skeleton--to illustrate his articles?  Mexico's president/dictator at the time, Porfirio Díaz, appreciated and aped all things French.  During his rule, known as the Porfiriato, Mexican government officials and high society alike dressed in the French mode, expressing what was known then and is known now as malinchismo: over-valuing foreign imports over Mexico's national products. The Frenchified calavera engraved by Posada is offered as a satirical portrait of those Mexican natives who, Posada felt, were aspiring to adopt European aristocratic traditions in Mexico's pre-revolutionary era. The irony of Posada’s drawing—a fabulously over-dressed skeleton—is that no matter what we’re wearing, we all end as bones.


El Jarabe en Ultratumba (Dancing Beyond the Grave).

In Mexico, we play with, make fun of, and party with death. We throw our arms around her in a wickedly sardonic embrace and escape her return embrace with a zippy side-step, a wink, and a joke.  Every day is a dance with death.  Death is a woman who has a numerous affectionate and humorous nicknames: la Huesuda (the bony woman), la Seria (the serious woman), la Novia Fiel (the faithful bride), la Igualadora (the equalizer), la Dientona (the toothy woman), la Pelona (the bald woman), la Patrona (the boss lady), and a hundred more. She's always here, just around the next corner or right over there, behind that pillar.  She waits with patience, until later today or until twelve o'clock next Thursday, or sometime next year--but when it's time, she's right there to dance away with you at her side.


In the fairly recent past, Posada's politicized calavera became known as la catrina, a figure now closely related to Mexico's celebration of Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead).  Renowned Michoacán-based painter and sculptor Juan Torres Calderón, Mexico Cooks! good friend, was the first to present Posada's catrina vision in clay.  In 1982, his wife, Velia Canals, began production of Maestro Torres' catrina designs.  Their workshop in Capula, Michoacán, is open for sales to the public.

The Mexican word catrina--the word now used for any representation of Posada's original French-attired calavera--simply means a woman who is dressed to the nines.  Her male counterpart is known as a catrín—a handsome man, usually dressed in elegant male attire. Together, the couple are catrines.  Even today, if you go out to a formal event, your neighbor (seeing you leave the house) might well say, “Uff, qué catrina!” Unless you’re a man, of course, in which case the neighbor would say, “Qué catrín!”.


These catrines are made of paper maché.  On the far right, you see a bride and groom.  Mexico Cooks!' kitchen shows off this same artisan's chef figure, in a green chef's jacket and a high white toque.  Enlarge any photo to have a better view.


Some of the many Día de los Muertos figures displayed at the fabulous bakery Hornos de Los Ortíz, in Morelia, Michoacán.  The owner makes these gorgeous figures out of bread dough!  If you happen to be in Morelia in the next few weeks, DO NOT MISS this bakery and its annual display.  The owners, in a typical Mexican play on words, call the diorama a pan-teón: bread cemetery.


During the 2015 Noche de los Muertos events in Morelia's historic center, this young woman dressed in a skirt and hat made of totomoxtle (dried corn husks)--the husks normally used for making tamales.  Her mother made her outfit and painted her face.


During the last few years, many Mexican children and adults have begun to paint their faces for Día (and Noche) de Muertos.  The little girl in the chair lives in Opopeo, Michoacán, a small town not far from Morelia.  In the town square's bandstand, young people were designing a special face for each child who wanted one.

Posada's century-old political calavera has evolved into one of Mexico's most beloved icons, the catrina.  When your friends ask you about her, be sure that they know the history behind this beautiful creature.  She's more than just a pretty face.

Looking for a tailored-to-your-interests specialized tour in Mexico? Click here to see new information: Tours

Mexico Cooks!' Winter Tour to Oaxaca, 2016 Part IV: Tlacolula Market and Teotitlán del Valle. Food! Food! Food!

You can get anything you want--including these highly colorful, durable plastic shopping bags--at the exciting Sunday market in Tlacolula, Oaxaca.  In Mexico Cooks!' opinion, the Tlacolula Sunday market is the best market in all of Mexico, a do-not-miss whenever visiting the central valley of Oaxaca.  Located about 30 kilometers (17 miles) from the city of Oaxaca, it's an easy trip on a Sunday morning.  Take a bus or a colectivo (shared) taxi, or hire a driver and make a day of it.  Best of all options, let Mexico Cooks! take you on a three-part Sunday outing: Tlacolula, Teotitlán del Valle, and Santa María del Tule.

Metates, Oaxaca-style, carved and painted with colorful flowers.  These volcanic rock grinding stones (and their manos [grinding pins]) are always tempting to bring home. They're used to grind everything from nixtamalize-d corn to chocolate and from beans to toasted tomatoes, onions, and chiles.  Unfortunately, they are also extremely heavy and impractical to carry if one is traveling by plane.  Next time I drive to Oaxaca, though, temptation might get the better of me.


Groups of like objects fascinate me.  These are the business ends of molinillos, the wooden hot chocolate frothers used in Oaxaca and most other parts of Mexico. Like everything else pictured, they're for sale in the Tlacolula market.


A market vendor sorts through her goods.  She's selling beautiful radishes, verdolagas (purslane) and many kinds of herbs, including epazote (for seasoning dried beans during the cooking process and for adding to quesadillas and other dishes) and hierba buena (one type mint).


Inside this gallina (laying hen) you can see egg yolks of every size, from pin-head to the mature yolk that we see in the eggs we eat (foreground).  The majority of people who buy eggs at a store, either by the kilo or by the carton, are astounded by the formation process of an egg. First the yolk grows to its mature size, then the albumin (egg white) collects around the egg, and then, less than a day prior to the egg being expelled by the hen, the shell forms around the yolk and albumin.  A few hours later, boom: breakfast!  Click on any photo to enlarge it for a better look at the detail.


A pig head, ready to be long-simmered with chiles and other herbs and spices to make pozole.  


Flor de calabaza (squash flowers), ready to use in any number of traditional Oaxaca dishes: quesadillas, sopa de guías,or stuffed with requesón (similar to ricotta cheese) and fried.  Only the male flowers are cut; the female flowers are left on the squash plant to develop calabacitas (little Mexican squash much like zucchini).


Mamey fruits were everywhere in the Sunday market at Tlacolula.  These fruits, which look like small, slightly fuzzy footballs, are deep orange inside and taste quite a bit like baked sweet potato.  The flesh is used to make licuados (smoothies) or to eat out of hand; the seeds are used to make tejate, an iconic drink from Oaxaca.


This tejate stand at the Mercado Tlacolula is unusual in that the vendor prepares tejate made of the standard chocolate, but also sells tejate made of coconut (middle back).  I tried them both; the coconut is excellent, but I still prefer the chocolate.

We were on a deadline at the market: our appointment for comida in Teotitlán del Valle was waiting.  I had talked with Restaurante Tlamanalli's Rufina Mendoza several weeks prior to our anticipated arrival to make certain that the Mendoza sisters would be there to greet the group and make sure that we had a wonderful meal. As we walked from the heat of Oaxaca's mid-February sun into the cool shade of the restaurant, I saw Abigail, Marcelina, and Rufina at work in the kitchen.  It's so wonderful to see good friends after an absence!


Left to right (clockwise) in the photo: Marcelina, Rufina, and Abigail Mendoza Ruíz, the hearts and soul of Restaurante Tlamanalli in Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca.


The restaurant's daily menu, hand-written on the Tlamanalli chalkboard.  There are just a few offerings for soup and main dishes, but when what's on the menu is as fabulous as the food at Tlamanalli, no one cares.  Mexico Cooks! dined on sopa de guías (squash flower soup), segueza de pollo (a delicious pre-Hispanic tomato and corn sauce served with post-Hispanic chicken), rice, and beans.  


All of our group enjoyed the house mezcal and guacamole with totopos (in this case, house-made blue corn chips) and pepitas (squash seeds) before and during our meal.


Sopa de guías (squash tendril soup), with pieces of squash, the tender shoots, and squash flowers.


Mole zapoteco (Zapotec-style mole with chicken).  This is a relatively simple mole to prepare, but it has a marvelous fresh and complex flavor.


Segueza de pollo, with a roasted tomato afloat in the delicious tomato broth.  The broth is thickened with toasted and ground corn and is prepared with hoja santa (an anise-flavored leaf) and other herbs.  In pre-Hispanic days, the dish would have been prepared with native turkey or rabbit, as there were no chickens in Mexico until the Spanish brought them from Europe.


I would love to take you to Teotitlán del Valle to introduce you to Abigail Mendoza (photo) and her family, and of course to have a meal at Tlamanalli!

Next week: A cooking class, filled with recipes, nostalgia, and beautiful memories.

Looking for a tailored-to-your-interests specialized tour in Mexico? Click here: Tours.

Mexico Cooks!' Winter Tour to Oaxaca, 2016 Part III: Barro Negro, Alebrijes, and FOOD

Day Three of Mexico Cooks!' February 2016 Oaxaca tour started with a superb breakfast at the municipal Mercado de la Merced.  For starters, we ordered hot chocolate, traditionally made with water rather than milk, and frothed to a fare-thee-well.  The bubbles lasted to the last drop in the cup and the flavor and texture were swoon-worthy.  Pan de yema (egg yolk bread), iconic to Oaxaca, came with the hot chocolate.  When you're in Oaxaca, be sure to have at least one breakfast at Fonda Florecita in the market; it's the only place to be on a Oaxaca morning.


Breakfast's main course: cecina enchilada (semi-dried beef flavored with spicy red sauce and then grilled), accompanied by enfrijoladas (tortillas dipped in anise-y black bean sauce, then topped with queso fresco and slivered onions).  The anise-y flavor of the black bean sauce comes not from anise, but from the dried, powdered small leaves of the aguacate criollo (native avocado).  All this and a huge glass of freshly squeezed orange juice got our day off to a bang.


After breakfast, our driver took our tour group to San Bartolo Coyotepec, the original home of Oaxaca's unique and famous barro negro (black clay).  We spent most of our time in San Bartolo at the Museo Estatal de Arte Popular de Oaxaca (MEAPO), where many of the museum-quality pieces are actually for sale. Enriqueta López García made this huge cántaro de rosas (water jug decorated with roses); the piece measures more than two feet high. Barro negro is actually light grey prior to firing. After the clay is prepared by grinding and kneading, each piece is formed either on a pre-Hispanic wheel or in a mold and then dried in the sun for several days.  The piece is then polished with a stone to bring out the color and the shine; after polishing, it is again dried for several more days. Once thoroughly dry, the piece is ready to be fired. During firing, it acquires its glossy metallic black finish.  A high-quality piece like the one in the photograph can take a month or more to create.


Our next stop was San Martín Tilcajete, where I had arranged for the group to visit Maestro Jacobo Ángeles and his wife María, makers of world-renowned hand-carved, hand-painted copal wood alebrijes (realistic and fantasy animals).  Jacobo and María are arguably the most successful alebrije makers in the village, although others have also had considerable success.  They have a large workshop where Jacobo gives fascinating demonstrations of ancient aniline dye-making techniques.  Although other alebrije makers have switched to modern acrylic paints, Jacobo Ángeles remains faithful to original aniline dyes.  Due to the success of Oaxaca's alebrijes in the world crafts markets, approximately 150 households now make the majority of their annual income in their manufacture.  Photo courtesy Chiripa.



The road from San Martín Tilcajete took us back to Oaxaca city, where we enjoyed a marvelous comida (main meal of the day) at La Teca.  In the photograph, you see a plate of ikake, a fruit in conserve that was one of our desserts.  The cooked consistency of the fruit is similar to that of a cooked plum, and the stone is nearly as large as the fruit itself.  Mexico Cooks!' spelling may be incorrect; the name of the fruit does not appear to be Spanish, but is most likely a transliteration of a Zapotec word.  If you are familiar with this fruit, please email me!  You can read here about all of the delights of La Teca's wonderful food from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.  It's one of my favorite restaurants in all of Mexico.

Restaurant La Teca
Calle Violetas #200-A
Colonia Reforma
Oaxaca, Oaxaca
01.951.515.0563 (from within Mexico)

Next week: Day Four of Mexico Cooks! 2016 winter tour to Oaxaca, in which we visit the best market in Mexico and are privileged to eat with Abigail Mendoza.

Looking for a tailored-to-your-interests specialized tour in Mexico? Click here: Tours.

Mexico Cooks!' Winter Tour to Oaxaca, 2016: Part II, Ocotlán de Morelos

The second day of Mexico Cooks!' February 2016 tour to Oaxaca was devoted to visiting Ocotlán de Morelos, less than an hour south of Oaxaca. The small city of Ocotlán is the home of indigenous Zapotec artist Rodolfo Morales (May 8, 1925-January 30, 2001).  In addition to working at his art, Rodolfo Morales devoted much of his later life to restoring historic buildings in Ocotlán and to working with the painters Rufino Tamayo and Francisco Toledo to further artistic achievement in Oaxaca.  For more than ten years before his death in 2001, Morales was considered to be one of the two greatest living artists from the state.  The other, Francisco Toledo, is still living.  The painting (oil on linen) above is a portrait of Morales's mother. 


Family kitchen, Casa Rodolfo Morales.  The Morales home is still open as a museum, and tourists are welcome to visit.

At the Ocotlán Friday outdoor market, our group first tasted tejate, a cold and refreshing chocolate drink iconic to Oaxaca.  It's made with several ingredients (cacao, rosita (aka flor de cacao), and the ground seed of the mamey fruit, among others, and mixed with the bare hand until thick foam rises to the top of the liquid.  This vendor has covered the top of her huge vessel of tejate with plastic.


Some of the ingredients for tejate: on the flat basket, a goodly amount of rosita.  Below the rosita, mamey fruit seeds.


Mamey fruit with the seed already removed, displayed for sale.  This creamy, sweet fruit looks like a little brown football and tastes like a baked sweet potato.  Delicious!


Our group had heard about the Ocotlán indoor market food stand called "La Cocina de Frida" (Frida's Kitchen). The owner's stock in trade is her strong resemblance to painter Frida Kahlo!  Click on the photo to enlarge it; you can see the owner, on the left, standing at the stove. We were intrigued and decided to eat there.

Her resemblance to Frida Kahlo is extraordinary.  The food didn't live up to our hopes, but we did have a good time.


Our other main goal in visiting Ocotlán was to meet the Hermanas Águilar: we spent time with gifted sister potters Josefina and Irene and visited Guillermina's home as well.  Their talleres (workshops) are in three consecutive houses near the entrance to the town.  Our first stop was with Sra. Josefina Águilar, whose work has been collected since the 1975, when Nelson Rockefeller bought some of her pieces for his own notable collection of Latin American folk art.


Sra. Josefina Águilar continues to work clay, here forming the masa (clay 'dough') that will become the charming and original figures that she calls muñecas (dolls).  Diabetes has made her blind, but she still makes her muñecas by feel.  Doña Josefina is one of four daughters of potters Isaura Alcantara and Jesús Águilar; Guillermina, Josefina, Irene, and Concepción are all master potters.


Typical clay village figures by doña Josefina Águilar.  The tallest of these measures approximately 10" high.  Photo courtesy Liveauctioneers, 2013.


A relative paints careful detail on a small clay figure in doña Josefina's sunlit patio.
 


Juan Jesús García Águilar, doña Josefina's grandson, made this 6" high dancer with the fabulous sloe-eyes.  The brilliantly talented  young man is the fourth generation of potters in the Águilar family.  Please click on the photo to enlarge it for a better look at the detail.  Mexico Cooks! collection.

A pair of paper maché and bamboo mojigangas (giant dance puppets) created by doña Irene Águilar Alcantara. These are meant to be worn on the shoulders of adult dancers; they stand about fifteen feet high once attached to the dancer!  The soft, loose fabric arms twist around and around as the dancer gyrates.  Doña Irene also makes clay figures and other artistic work, but she creates these mojigangas by special request. 

 
This video will take you right to the heart of Oaxaca City--and make you want to dance along with the mojigangas! We wended our way down the street in Oaxaca along with a wedding calenda (street dance/celebration) and had a marvelous time.  Mexico Cooks! can make it happen for your group, too--just ask!

By the end of our long day in Ocotlán de Morelos, we were ready for some down-time at our hotel.  After a good night's sleep, we were ready to hit the road again.  Next week: Day Three, with more adventures and some delicious food.

Looking for a tailored-to-your-interests specialized tour in Mexico? Click here: Tours.

Kitchen and Countryside Mexico 2015: A Recap of Some of Our Favorite Things

In Mexico, once we've rung in the New Year, the next party is ordinarily for Los Reyes Magos--the Three Kings--on January 6, their feast day. The photo above shows the traditional Mexican Rosca de Reyes (Kings' Bread) that is eaten (accompanied by a cup or two of delicious Mexican hot chocolate) at just about every table in the country on that day.  The sweet, rich dough is rolled into an oval or a ring and then decorated with sugar, ates of various flavors (similar to fruit leather), nuts, and then baked.  So what's the big deal?  Inside the dough, bakers hide a tiny figure of the Niño Dios (Baby Jesus). There's great hilarity as the rosca is sliced: who will get the muñeco (little figure)? The person who finds the baby in his or her slice is required to throw another party on Candelaria (Candlemas Day), February 2: tamales and atole (a thick, sweet corn-based drink) for everyone!  February 2 is the official end of the Christmas season in Mexico.


February took Mexico Cooks! to Oaxaca, invited to the wedding of dear friends Diana Miller and Adán Paredes. The wedding festivities lasted three days--we don't do things by half here!--and the guests still sigh and smile when we think or talk about the event's joyous beauty. The civil ceremony was a marvelous cocktail party and opportunity to socialize with everyone; the morning of the spiritual ceremony, Mexico Cooks! gave two Oaxaca market tours to guests from northern Mexico. Later that afternoon, a traditional Zapotec chamán and his wife presided over the spiritual ceremony (followed by all-night dining and dancing!), and the third day we toured with the wedding party to a market south of Oaxaca city and then shared a joyous meal at the ever-marvelous restaurant La Teca.  It was only February, but we knew that no other event on the 2015 calendar would come close to matching this thrilling weekend.


March found Mexico Cooks! at Pujol, Enrique Olvera's flagship restaurant in Mexico City.  Invited by a serious lover of food in all its aspects, we were not disappointed. In fact, we were overwhelmed by everything about our meal: the room, the service, and most of all, the food. There was no room at all for improvement: everything we experienced was perfect.


In April, we were back at Jing Teng, our favorite Chinese restaurant in all of Mexico.  Yes: not just Mexico City, but the entire country.  The photo shows perfectly cooked gai lan (Chinese broccoli) with garlic, one of the you-absolutely-gotta-get-it dishes on the menu.


Morelia en Boca, an international food and wine festival, takes place in Morelia, Michoacán on the last weekend of each May, and we were there.  This fish is a pejelagarto, an enormous fish found primarily in the Mexican state of Tabasco.  Look at its needle-teeth!  The pejelagarto has no scales; its skin is like a suit of armor.  This section of the fish was about one-third of its length; it measured between three and four feet long.  World-acclaimed chef Aquiles Chávez brought this giant animal from Tabasco and cooked it (turning it with a broomstick rammed down its throat, all the way to the other end) over an open fire on the festival stage!  The demonstration conference also included Rosalba Morales Bartolo of San Jerónimo Purenchécuaro, Michoacán, who prepared her famously delicious charales (fish as tiny as the pejelagarto is huge) in the style her grandmother taught her.  This was without doubt the single best food conference I have ever attended; the skill, knowledge, and sense of humor on the part of both participants combined to receive a standing ovation at conference end.


June (and every other month of the year) took Mexico Cooks! on tour with various groups from the United States, Canada, and other countries from around the world.  This pork butcher's sign is always a favorite photo opportunity: unsuspecting little pig mariachis sing for somebody's supper!


An old friend, visiting me in Mexico City, was as interested as I in visiting the church of San Hipólito, in Mexico City's Centro Histórico.  The 28th of each month, Masses are offered all day in honor of San Judas Tadeo. My friend and I were there on July 28, among a crowd that numbered in the thousands.  On San Judas Tadeo's actual October feast day, the crowds number in the hundreds of thousands. 


The Primer Encuentro Nacional de Cocineras Tradicionales (first national reunion of traditional cooks) in Morelia, Michoacán, in August 2015 brought together home cooks from 25 of the 31 Mexican states--plus the Federal District.  Many of us who attended are long-time friends who see one another only occasionally. This memorable photo includes (L to R): Celia Florián from Oaxaca, Alma Cervantes Cota from Sinaloa and currently living in Mexico City, Susana Trilling of Seasons of My Heart cooking school in Oaxaca, Mexico Cooks!, and Calletana Nambo from Erongarícuaro, Michoacán.  We spent hours around that table, eating, drinking mezcal, and gossiping catching up with one another.


The rainy season in central Mexico begins in mid-May and lasts until the beginning of November.  During that time, wild mushrooms spring up in Mexico's oak and pine forests, especially in the more mountainous states.  This vendor, who was too busy selling on this September day to tell me her name, brought mushrooms that she and her family foraged to sell in Mexico City's markets.  Fresh chanterelles, boletes, and morels make up most of her wares.  I bought a pound of fresh morels (approximately 80 pesos, or $4.50USD), gave half to my neighbor, and made a pasta sauce of the rest.  Click on the photo to enlarge it and better see the mushrooms.  


In late October we were in Quiroga, Michoacán, for carnitas.  These, from a street stand under the traffic light downtown, are in my opinion the best carnitas in town.  The vendor gave us this taco as a taste--just to see if we'd like what he was selling.  Yes, it was exactly as enormous as it looks. And yes, we bought another half-kilo of carnitas to share among our group.  The carnitas come with fresh tortillas, limones, and several kinds of salsas.  Soft drinks and aguas frescas are available at a booth near your communal-seating outdoor table, and someone will come by your table to ask if you want to buy a cupful of guacamole.  Yes, you do.


October gets two mentions!  Suzanne Cope and her family came to Mexico City in the early Fall to tour with Mexico Cooks!.  This sweet toddler is her son Rocco, who fell in love with a pig head at one of Mexico City's best markets. Who knows, you might fall in love with a pig head too!


A friend from Washington, D.C., ordered this bowl of crema de flor de calabaza at Restaurante Azul/Histórico in Mexico City in mid-November.  She graciously let me taste it.  This cream soup was without question one of the best I've ever tasted.  Our waiter told us that each bowl contains 18 squash flowers plus the one used as decoration.  Did you know that only male squash blossoms are harvested for food? The female blossoms are left on the vines to allow squash to form.


Just in case you might think that Mexico Cooks! never cooks at home: a December dish of beautiful shrimp muenìere, served over fettucine.

Where will we travel and what will we eat in 2016?  You're welcome to come along, whether to a market, a restaurant, or an exciting festival in Mexico City, Michoacán, or Oaxaca.  Mexico City, just named the top travel destination in the world by the New York Times, is waiting for you.  When you're ready to visit, Mexico Cooks! will gladly show you all the hot spots.

Looking for a tailored-to-your-interests specialized tour in Mexico? Click here: Tour

Piñatas, Mexico's Christmas Tradition

Huge piñatas at a Mexico City market.

Among clean ollas de barro (clay pots), plastic receptacles filled with engrudo (flour/water paste), and colorful, neatly stacked rounds of papel de china (tissue paper), Sra. María Dolores Hernández (affectionately known as Doña Lolita) sits on an upturned bucket.  Her birthday is on December 24, and she still lights up--just like a Christmas tree--when she talks about her business and her life.

The last point of the star-shaped piñata is in Doña Lolita's hands, nearly ready to be glued into place. 

"When I was a young woman, raising my family together with my husband, it was hard for us to make a good living here in Morelia.  We had eight children (one has died, but six girls and a boy survive) and we struggled to make ends meet.  My husband was a master mason, but I wanted to help out with the finances.  I knew a woman who made piñatas, and I thought, 'I can do that.'  So I started trying my hand, nearly 60 years ago."

Doña Lolita adds another layer of newspaper to this piñata in progress.  "You can't put too much newspaper on the pot, because it will take too long to break," she explained.  "And you can't put too little on it, either, because then the first child to hit it will break it.  That's no good, either.  You just have to know how much to use."  Click on the photo to enlarge it and get a good look at the clay pot inside the paper maché.

"The woman who made piñatas wouldn't give away her secrets, so I had to figure everything out for myself.  You should have seen me the first time I tried to make a bird's beak for a parrot-shaped piñata!  A man I knew told me to make it out of chapopote (a kind of tar), so I did.  It hardened all right, but later in the day the weather warmed up and that beak dripped down to here!  What a mess!  I finally figured out how to make the shape out of paper, but I just about broke my head thinking about it!"

Pre-cut rounds of papel de china (tissue paper) wait to be glued onto a piñata.  The black plastic bag holds strips of newspaper. 

Doña Lolita told me about the different grades of paper used to create different styles of decoration on the piñata, and she explained different kinds of paper-cutting techniques; she's absolutely the expert.  Here, her son-in-law Fernando cuts tissue paper for fringe.  His hands are so fast with the scissors it made my head spin; he can even cut without looking.

"In those days, the clay pots cost four and a half pesos for a gross--yes, for 144. In the old days, I usually sold about 7,000 piñatas every December, so you can imagine the investment I made just in clay pots.  In the 1960s, I could sell a large piñata for seven pesos.  Now--well, now the pots are much more expensive, so naturally the piñatas cost more, too.  The large ones cost 45 pesos.  This year, I'll sell about 1,000 piñatas just for the posadas. " 

Piñatas in various stages of completion hang from every beam in Doña Lolita's tiny workshop.

"When my daughter Mercedes was about eight years old, she wanted to learn to make piñatas.  She'd been watching me do it since she was born.  So I taught her, and I've taught the whole family. Piñatería (making piñatas) is what's kept us going."  Doña Lolita smiled hugely.  "My children have always been extremely hard workers.  There was a girl for each part of making the piñatas.  Every year, we started making piñatas in August and finished at the beginning of January.

This gigantic piñata, still unfinished, measures almost six feet in diameter from point to point. 

"One time, we had so many piñatas to finish that I didn't think we could do it.  So I thought, 'if we work all night long, we can finish them by tomorrow morning.'  Only I couldn't figure out how to keep the children awake to work all night."  She laughed.  "I went to the drugstore and bought pills to stay awake.  I knew I could keep myself awake, but I gave one pill to each of the children.  And in just a little while, I was working and they were sleeping, their heads fell right down into their work!  What!  Those pills didn't work at all!  The next day I went back to the drugstore and asked the pharmacist about it.  'Oh no!  I thought you asked me for pills to make them sleep!' he said."  Doña Lolita laughed again.  "We finished all the piñatas in spite of those pills, but you had better believe me, I never tried anything that foolish again."

Doña Lolita builds piñatas with her son-in-law, Fernando Cedeño Herrera (left), her daughter Mercedes Ayala Hernández, her grandchildren and her great-grandchildren.  A close friend, Oswaldo Gutiérrez López (background), works with the family.  Her grandson Enrique, 19, says he intends to keep the family business going.

Oswaldo Gutiérrez works on this piñata in the doorway of the tiny taller.  Doña Lolita has taught many people the art of creating traditional piñatas, but her family and her loyal customers say she's the best piñatera (piñata maker) in Morelia.

"People come from everywhere to buy my piñatas.  I don't have to take them out to sell; I only sell them here in the taller.  Because they're so beautiful and well-made, all the best people in Morelia--and lots of people from other places--come to seek me out and order piñatas for their parties.  I've taught my family that our work is our pride and our heritage, and my children have all taught their children the same.  That is our legacy, our family tradition."

Fill the piñata with candy like these bags of traditional colación (hard candies especially for Christmas).


A group of Doña Lolita's piñatas, hung up for sale outside her workshop.

But why piñatas, and why in December?  During the early days of the Spanish conquest, the piñata was used as a catechetical tool.  The body of the piñata represented Satan; each of the seven points symbolized the seven capital sins (pride, lust, gluttony, rage, greed, laziness, and envy).  Breaking the piñata equated with the triumph of good over evil, overpowering Satan, overcoming sin, and enjoying the delights of God's creation as they pour out of the piñata.  Doña Lolita's most sought-after piñatas continue the traditional style, but she also creates piñatas shaped like roosters, peacocks, half-watermelons, deer, half moons, and once, an enormous octopus!


What the piñata might contain at Christmas--but fill it with whatever you think the kids will like best!  Candies, small seasonal jícamas, sugar cane, mandarinas (tangerines) and cacahuates (fresh roasted in the shell peanuts, in season now) are all popular.  Photo courtesy Google Images.

Now, for the nine nights from December 16 through December 24, Mexico celebrates las posadas.  Each evening, a re-enactment of the Christmas story brings children dressed as la Virgencita María (ready to give birth to her baby) and her husband Sr. San José (and a street filled with angels, shepherds, and other costumed children) along the road to Bethlehem, searching for a place to stay.  There is no place: Bethlehem's posadas (inns) are filled.  Where will the baby be born!  For the re-enactment, people wait behind closed doors at certain neighborhood houses.  The santos peregrinos (holy pilgrims) knock, first at one door, then another.  At each house, they sing a song, begging lodging for the night.  At each house, the neighbors inside turn them away in song: 'No room here!  Go away!  Bother someone else!'  Watch a lovely slide show:   

 

Freshly toasted cacahuates (peanuts) also stuff the piñata.  The wooden box holding the peanuts is actually a measure, as is the oval metal box.

After several houses turn away la Virgen, San José, and their retinue, they finally receive welcome at the last designated house.  After the pilgrims sing their plea for a place to stay, the guests assembled inside sing their welcome,  "Entren santos peregrinos..." (Come in, holy pilgrims...).  The doors are flung open, everyone piles into the house, and a huge party starts.  Traditional foods like ponche (a hot fruit punch), buñuelos (a thin fried dough covered with either sugar or syrup), and tamales (hundreds of tamales!) pour out of the kitchen as revelers sing villancicos (Mexican Christmas carols) and celebrate the coming of the Niño Dios (the Child Jesus).  Finally, all the children line up to put on a blindfold and take swings at a piñata stuffed with candy, seasonal fruits, and peanuts.

This five-pound bag of hard candies shows a blindfolded (but peeking) boy ready to break open the filled piñata.  Luis Gómez, a merchant at Local 290, Mercado Independencia in Morelia, offers these and other bags of piñata candies.

Mandarinas (tangerines) are in season at Christmastime and round out the goodies in many piñatas.

The piñata, stuffed with all it will hold, hangs from a rope during the posada party.  A parent or neighbor swings it back and forth, up and down, as each child takes a turn at breaking it open with a big stick.  Watch these adorable kids whack away at one:

 

The piñata, lovely though it may be, is purely temporary.  Nevertheless, happy memories of childhood posadas with family and friends last a lifetime.

Looking for a tailored-to-your-interests specialized tour in Mexico? Click here: Tours

Día de los Muertos en México: Day of the Dead in Mexico, A Primer

Highly decorated cardboard skull for Noche de Muertos.

Pantéon Municipal (Municipal Cemetery), Tzintzuntzan, Michoacán.

Mexico Cooks! will be touring Morelia and surrounding areas again during this special time of year.  We'll be attending one or another special Noche de Muertos event every day for an entire week.  Traditional ofrendas (altars dedicated to the dead), spectacular crafts exhibits, concerts, and annual concursos (contests) will fill our days and nights.  Known in most parts of Mexico as Día de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead), here in Michoacán we call it Noche de los Muertos (Night of the Dead).  By either name, the festival as it's celebrated in Mexico is unique in the world.

These four-inch-long skeletal figures, laid out on their petates (woven rush mats), are hooked up to intravenous bottles of either beer or tequila!

Tiny sugar footwear, in styles from baby booties to high-heeled pumps, are ready to be given as gifts or for placement on an ofrenda.

Mexico celebrates death as it celebrates life, with extreme enjoyment in the simplest things. Life and death are both honored states. 

The home ofrenda (altar) may memorialize a cherished relative, a political figure (either reviled or beloved), or a figure from the entertainment world.  Traditional decorations include cempasúchil (marigold) and cordón del obispo (cockscomb) flowers, which are used in profusion in churches, cemeteries, and homes. 

Sugar skulls are often inscribed in icing with a living friend's name and given to that person as a small token of admiration. 

Relatives take favorite foods and beverages to the grave of a loved one gone before.  It's said that the dead partake of the spirit of the food, while the living enjoy the physical treats at the cemetery.

Pan de muertos (bread of the dead) is decorated with bone-shaped bread and sugar.  The bread itself is flavored with orange and anise.

This miniature ofrenda (altar) is filled with tiny representations of treats that the deceased loved in life.

Several years ago, an article in the New York Times quoted Mexico Cooks! about the Noche de los Muertos: "There's a mutual nostalgia.  The living remember the dead, and the dead remember the taste of home."  That nostalgia imbues the cities and villages of Michoacán at this time of year just as surely as do woodsmoke and the scent of toasting tortillas.

Looking for a tailored-to-your-interests specialized tour in Mexico? Click here: Tours.  And be sure to book your Mexico Cooks! 2016 Dia de los Muertos tour as soon as possible!  We'll reserve space for you and your group to make sure you don't miss anything!