There are a number of couples who might tell us their relationship centers around their bedroom. Great! I hope that sustains them for decades to come.
My wife and I are not young folks anymore. Well, she is but I'm not. Our relationship centers around the kitchen. We both love to cook and experiment.
On my web board a friend in Tzintzuntzan and I were discussing fusion food and wondered what could be done with Asian/Mexican fusion. After a brief
discussion he decided it would be fun to have a fusion food fiesta with our expat friends and local neighbors. The idea sounded worth the 40 minute
drive over to that P'urhepécha pyramid town to try a secret recipe I had already dreamed up.
I made some spring roll wrappers with my pasta machine and made a stuffing with cabbage, onion, egg, and chicharrón along with a few spices. I made a
chile sweet and sour sauce to go with them. Meanwhile my wife Tere was making some chiles rellenos but I asked her to use some of my egg roll stuffing
along with the usual cheese filling, and instead of the usual tomato and onion salsa to top them I would use the sweet and sour for chiles rellenos
agridulces. They were the hit of the party and the most inventive fusion food served that day.
So Tere and I play around with ideas in the kitchen and she really has taken to gringo foods but adds some of her own touch. That is in evidence by
the breakfasts she serves me daily. I will provide some examples.
I sat down at the breakfast nook seeing what she had served. Enchiladas, I said. No, she tells me she had run out of chiles guajillos so these were
entomatadas, a tomato and onion sauce without chiles. These were served with fried eggs and mango with strawberry yogurt topping. Eggs for breakfast
are not traditionally Mexican but have crept into the Mexican breakfast. You can see I threw a good-sized glop of fresh chile salsa on my eggs and the
mango is sprinkled with a lemon-chile powder.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/5b6f1be1c962.jpg[/atsimg]
these photos were taken less than a month ago. I decided to take my camera for breakfast and feature my daily breakfast for a week. The next day she
served me fried eggs again but with a corn tortilla filled with al pastor along with beans with some cheese sprinkled atop and some totopos. This
morning there was sliced melon with plain sweetened yogurt sprinkled with granola. Fresh chile salsa is splattered about liberally.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/f5b25aba4ca0.jpg[/atsimg]
My next morning I had to give a double-take. There was some kind of egg pie or turnover taking center-stage. tere knows how I love grits so makes
those for me regularly. I believe she has an agenda though. In a city the size of Morelia, nearly 1 million people if you take in the outskirts, grits
cannot be found. That is true for most parts of Mexico, but, there is a supermarket in the gringo-haven town of Ajijic along the banks of Lake Chapala
where we can buy them. It is a three-hour drive so we typically spend a few days there eating in gringo restaurants. Tere is enthralled with the town
and never knew there was a little slice of the US there in her native country, a place where her lack of Englis skill makes her a bit of a stranger,
but she loves it. A US culture-haven with a helping of salsa which makes it easier for me to swallow. I believe she feeds me a lot of grits to try to
use them up so we have to make another trip to Ajijic that much sooner.
Oh yeah, Tere didn't know about asparagus before but there is one store I know in Morelia that sells it. Tere believes it is best suited for a
beakfast vegetable, and I won't argue with her about that. Again there is melon with zarzamora yogurt (blackberry) and granola.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/742d33ff2736.jpg[/atsimg]
I believe the one gringo food, although there are many she likes, her best favorite is french toast. There actually is french toast on that plate, it
is made with a type of wheatberry bread with flax seeds and buried in banana slices and plain yogurt with zarzamora mermelada and a light sprinkle of
granola. The scrambled eggs have bits of asparagus mixed in and I have my grits with butter and some strips of bacon sliced fresh at the carnicería
for us.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/26973f29d7d0.jpg[/atsimg]
Breakfast is usually our most elaborate meal of the day. It is the one where she can usually count on where I will be at that time. Comida, the
mid-day meal is typically the biggest meal of the day in most homes here. We have a good comida and go out to eat at least once a week, but at home it
is less of an organized and a smaller meal for us. I hope I made you a little hungry. That would be a nice thing I could tell Tere, that her meals are
inducing hunger pangs around the world.
edit on 14-4-2011 by Erongaricuaro because: (no reason given)