Saturday, March 6, 2021
It's laundry day again. This time I included two bath towels, so now all of my clothes are covered in white lint.
Aguascalientes doesn't fuck around with its sunsets.
Yesterday, Grace, her parents, and I visited the town of Calvillo. Manuel drove us down from the stratosphere and across swaths of characteristically Mexican landscape.
Calvillo has narrow streets lined with brightly colored buildings. Some of the streets (not pictured) were steeply inclined and reminded me of San Francisco.
We stopped for lunch at a nice outdoor restaurant attached to a hillside hotel.
For a desert-dwelling Mexican, Grace does not much tolerate hot weather. She prefers a vampiric lifestyle.
I've been eating food, can you believe?
That morning I fried some leftover bacon for breakfast.
Previously, madre Graciela had prepared Manuel's favorite dish for us: chile relleno. They are distantly related to the stuffed bell peppers that my mom used to make, except fried with egg whites and filled with minced meat.
Grace and I cooked a pasta/chicken/eggplant recipe of hers. There is still some left over...
I improvised some chicken-with-leeks-over-pasta dish. I got the wrong cut of chicken from the supermarket, but it was edible nonetheless. Grace had never had leeks before.
I also cooked a big batch of my chicken stew last night, but I don't have any pictures.
There's a tiny sorbet store of great renown near Grace's parents' place. She got strawberry and I got tamarind.
The real culinary innovation of the trip so far is how to eat fruit. In Mexico there are two magical condiments that form a dyad of fruictific perfection: chamoy and tajín. They balance the sweetness of fruit with tart, salty, and savory goodness. Grace's favorite is on mango.
Here she is looking smug about her preparation of pineapple.
Speaking of food, it's one o'clock here and I haven't eaten today. Let's put that microwave to use. ¡Adios!