settling in Oaxaca

        OK, we've been here two months,so the title of this post makes no sense, does it?  But, I was playing catch-up when we first arrived in Oaxaca.  I still love the thrill of arriving in this beautiful, elegant city, and getting my kitchen settled in.  The delight of eating REAL food still makes me grab the camera. 

From left:  the hand-made tortillas from a woman who begins her day by grinding the corn and building a fire under a huge clay comal.  She is not on the way to anywhere we normally go, but I go out of my way to buy her hand-made tortillas.  Bring your own plastic bag, and cotton towel, in order to get them home in good condition!  Un peso cada uno.  One pese each!  The freshly made yogurt, from el mercado Pasquaz Sanchez, on calle Porfirio Diaz.  Go in the north door (there are several entrances, of course), go down the steps, the yogurt people are in front of the chicken lady.  They scoop the yogurt from a five gallon bucket.  And, they no longer ask me if I want "natural"...they know my face!  The papayas are more delicious than I can describe:  soft and velvety on the tongue, sweet and perfectly ripe.  With a squeeze of lime, please!  The locally made queso fresco, the crumbly cheese you MUST use on beans, or just about anything else.  Salty, tangy, delicious.  The strawberries must be coming from Pueblo, not so far away, and sweet and perfectly ripe, and like everything else, cheap.

Every Saturday, I walk about 15 blocks to the 5 Senores neighborhood.  It's a nice walk, not much traffic in this part of town on Saturday morning.  There, I find the weekly tiaguis, a pop-up market.  Fruit and vegetable, pork, beef and chicken vendors, a dozen or more kitchens and fruit juice squeezers, clothes, flowers, nail polish, and just about anything else you can think of, they're all there.  They set up early Saturday morning, and by mid-afternoon, the best stuff is sold, and folks are sitting on plastic stools at the taco kitchens filling their bellies for a few pesos.  You'll find Stuart and me there, too! I  buy a week's worth of fruits and veggies, more than I can comfortably carry.  The bus stops at the corner of the market, right by the orange truck, which is where I make my last purchase.  Twenty five oranges for about one dollar!  Sweet, juicy and cheap.  The bus costs 6 pesos, about 50 cents, and takes me right to my apartment.  Life is good!

Last week, I stopped to buy some garlic from a woman sitting on a bucket.  She had something I didn't recognize, and the young woman buying some of the unknown veggie offered me a taste.  Roasted garbanzo's, in the pod.  Delicious!  A bag of them cost less than a dollar, and that smokey goodness went into a wheat-berry salad I made later that day.  Along with that ugly, heirloom tomato, that was almost smashed when I got it home.

Before we left Wilmington, I had dreams of buying a sewing machine, to put in The Box.  I checked a couple of stores, the new machines were reasonably priced, but something made me hold off.  We were walking one morning, past a pawn shop, and I went in.  They had FOUR machines for sale!  Well, a couple of days later, I went back with a demo kit in my pack:  decent thread, a piece of fabric, new machine needles and a pair of scissors.  To my surprise, all the machines had been sold.  That will teach me.  So, the kit stayed in my bag until I bought this sweet little Brother XL3200 for about $110US  few days later.  It needed a light bulb, easy enough to replace in a city that doesn't think twice about having clothes repaired or altered.  It runs like a dream.  I've made a skirt, top, 2 rugs, hemmed several kitchen towels and a pair of shorts for our neighbor.  Oh, and I made a pair of slippers.  That's another story. I'm happy to know I can stitch anything I want.  Next year, I'll bring a few supplies back with me, including my rotary matt and cutter.

We spent about 2,000 pesos getting settled in with other kitchen necessities and household things.  You don't think about reaching for the salt shaker or the clorox to soak the veggies (ok, not in the States), and of course we needed everything else.   Our kitchen is adequately outfitted for non-cooks, I needed a cheese grater, a decent knife, a pot of a Certain Size with a lid for popping popcorn.  We needed a decent orange juicer, an extension cord, a blender and coffee pot, some of which we found at the pawn shop, and some at the Chedraui supermarket, and some at the big Abastos mercardo. Plastic containers for food storage and ziplock bags, clothes pins and toilet tissue.  Yep, all the important stuff! 

We have a short list of things to bring next year, but mostly, we have everything we need.  The things on the list are duplicates, otherwise, we'd buy them here.  Oaxaca is a beautiful, elegant, modern city.  With the best food in the country.