Thursday. 11.25.10

Today we spent the whole day with los abuelos. Abuelita Cata showed me how to make gorditas! First for lunch we made them with just beans, refried beans that she prepared with epazote. Then again for dinner we made some more this time at Josue’s request, we added cheese into them as well. They came out very good! Gorditas for all you who don’t know, are corn tortillas, made a little thicker, hence the name “gordita” and before you cook up the tortilla, you add in the filling of choice. Today it was beans & cheese, but other common fillings are avas (lima beans), carnitas, or chicharron. Then once you have the filling in you fold over the sides & pinch the ends together so it sort of makes a football shaped “hot pocket” sort of thing. Then you throw them on the comal to cook up the tortilla part, the filling is always already cooked and it just warms up as the outside tortilla is getting cooked.
We went for a walk in the afternoon with Abuela, she needed to figure out what the water schedule was like and when it’s their turn to receive water from the canals. This is another difference over here, there are canals, throughout the neighborhoods, and there is a schedule as to when you can pull water from them. On the way back from the walk we encountered some little ones on their way home from kindergarten. And met a lady that was walking with her son, who Abuela introduced us to. In a very distant way, she is Josue’s cousin. She invited us to her house to see their flowers and how they grow their crops, and she offered to give us some flowers. We said thank you and maybe we’d stop by later.
So after a while back at the house, Abuelita, wanted to gather some “misperos” to take to the lady we just met. Misperos are a fruit that grow on trees down here. They are hard to describe - I’ll have to take pictures of them later. They are small & have a pretty large seed inside that is bright brown & smooth. You can eat the peel, but we usually end up pulling if off. The meat sort of resembles that of a grape or a plum. Anyhow, they’re very tasty. We picked a bunch from the trees and filled up a bag to take, then we were on our way to take her up on her offer.
When we got there, she began to show us around their property. Flowers is their business, and the first green house we went in to was for the roses, and she was showing us a new color they grow. Then on to other green houses, and across the street in to a whole other lot. This was a little hike down a private road, where we then encountered on a hillside another set of greenhouses filled with what looked like some type of lillies. Here she plucked one single yellow one for us to take with us. She explained different processes to Josue about how they take care of them. All this is right up his ally, being the plant lover that he is.
When we got back to her house, she showed us the freezer that they store all the freshly picked flowers in, before they go off to sell them. Here she gave us a gift of fresh roses, packed in a bunch of 15, and they were one of the new color varieties that they grow. A pretty blend of bright yellows, oranges and hot pink/reddish tones. Josue was asking lots of questions on how they get the different colors to grow, and since he’s showing interest, she took us to see another process. It was the beginning stage of how the graft the plants. It was where all the stems that had been cut, were now in little bags to grow roots. This is a process Josue would like a chance to work at.
We thanked our host and left back towards Abuelita’s house.
What a relaxing day. We ate, we relaxed, snacked on fruit, went for a walk, snacked on fruit, went for another walk, ate again.
A nice time spent with the grandparents in Buena Vista.
Some more things that I’ve been taking in…
An evening/nightly tradition is to drink some tea or coffee, warm drinks to soothe, I guess. My dad predicted that in my lifetime, I will become a coffee drinker… well not yet!! Although this nightly tradition is growing on me, especially since often times it’s accompanied with pan dulces, I still tend to lean more towards the teas!! Which even that is a big difference for me, because I was never much of a tea drinker either. But I like the teas a lot here!!
We’ve noticed that the side of the road clean up, when they’re needing to clean the hedges or overgrown weeds, is done by hand with machetes!
Also, those fires I’ve mentioned before, that’s also a common way people will kill weeds in their yards as well.
Today as we were walking, I see big cow pies in my path, but because I have my head down watching my path, I didn’t realize, that the cow who left them there was standing right next to me!! She was just hanging out, eating some grass!