LikestoEatout wrote:I just love your posts, they are so descriptive! I have a friend who is from Mazamitla and who is there now to spend Christmas with family. I know you are about 300 miles away but it sounds so similar to what you describe. She has shown me many photos. My mind pictures it very similar to where you are at. It is a beautiful area and I would love to see it some day!

I can't vouch for how similar my experiences are to you friend's. I am not familiar with Mazamitla but I will look it up. The mid country highlands are a distinct place here in Mexico, not like the coasts or something but we are similar here to DF and even Guadalajara, high up in the mountains. It's really great in the summer. The food is just so great. I've been cooking chilaquiles lately. They're so great.

We found by accident an absolutely fabulous place for birria the other day, Saturday, not too far away on the Pereferico, the highway that rings the city. We just saw painted on the side "birria de borrego", birria of lamb. It's a shredded meat stew in this case served as tacos, but sometimes as a bowl of stew with tortillas on the side, cilantro, onion and lime as well. From the neighboring state of Jalisco (where Guadalajara is) most of the birria here in Morelia is birria de res, beef, and it's just not the same. A kind of ramshackle place in the traditional way, cinder block walls and corrugated iron roof, we got a half dozen tacos at about a buck apiece, pretty good size, not like the tiny al pastor you often find. Just heaven, with a couple of fiery salsas (they like things hot in Michoacan) and onions and cilantro and lime. Dang, it made my day. They're open every day from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. I don't have an address or even a name but I'll find out. One of those serendipitous things. It probably holds 120 people and is crowded all the time. The waiter confirmed my suspicions that the owners have a small farm outside of town which supplies the meat. When we go back (soon) I'll get the info.

I have the info from the birria place. Just down the way from the big Costco. We've been several more times, Sunday mornings usually.


Barbacoa de Borrego "José Luis"
Pereferico 3332, corner of Granada
443-174-5416
Morelia

Luckyguy wrote:I'll second (third? fourth?) the praise for these dispatches. Every year, we head down to a friend's house in a little village near Salvatierra in GTO, and your missives bring up very nice memories. We're heading down in February and it can't come soon enough. Thanks for tiding me over!

Hey, if you come through Morelia send me a message we'll go around.

Will do, trpt2345. Don't know what our itinerary will involve but we've made a day trip to Morelia in the past and I'll definitely ping you if we're heading your way. I feel like I should buy you lunch for all these awesome posts.

Cool, keep me in the loop/

Hey, trpt2345: My apologies for not getting in touch while in GTO. The trip got a little complicated. Our host's 94-year-old mother (who had never been in a hospital in her life, despite having seven kids) fell at the market around the corner and broke her hip about midway through our visit. She did not survive the resulting hip replacement surgery in Salvatierra. (I report this with all due respect to the Mexican medical system, which impressed me.) In the sprit of the board, I will say my visit resulted in some of the best meals I've had in a while, all home-cooked down there - pozole, tamales, barbacoa, etc. - and if I can ever figure out how to post photos, I will. I love Mexico.

Sorry to hear that. Surgery at that age is dicey at best. A side note: Mexican health care is in fact very good, and what's more it is free and universal. We just went last week for our monthly check up, all meds free, no co pays or anything. And we were paying $800 a month in Chicago for Blue Cross HMO with co pays and deductibles. Makes you wonder. America from across the border looks whacky sometimes. Universities are virtually free here too, you have to pay like five bucks for registration.

Back to food. Spinach was two pesos fifty a bunch yesterday, so I made a nice spinach/romaine/tomato/red pepper/onion/celery salad, with a loaf of crusty bread from the local bakery. Tomatoes 9 pesos a kilo (about 35 cents a pound and freshly ripe), red peppers 15 pesos for a bag of five at a stop light (people sell fresh produce on the street all the time), romaine seven pesos a bunch. A little homemade olive oil-lime juice-garlic-mustard dressing.

Since you bring up roadside produce, I'll call out one of my very fave Mexican food experiences: garbanzos. Each year, we drive to a village a short distance from our own where there are several guys on the side of the road peddling bundled garbanzo bushes out of the back of their pickups (dunno why they harvest the whole bush, but they do). My host is very particular about the product, so there's lots of sampling, examining of the plants, sifting through the bushes, etc. We then take the acceptable bushes home, pick off the bean pods and our hostess either steams them or roasts them on a flat pan over a wood fire (the picked-clean bushes get fed to the sheep - nothing gets wasted). The result isn't unlike edamame - you bite the end of the pod and coax the bean out with your teeth. They're crazy good and just writing this makes me miss them. For some reason, I've never encountered anything similar up here.

Interesting to hear your thoughts on the Mexican medical system, trpt2345. Like I said, I was very impressed by what I saw, even if the end result was less than optimal. It was also crazy efficient, which isn't a quality one finds in a lot of Mexican institutions.

I've been offline for a while, we moved a couple months ago and just got internet service at the house here. New neighborhood, new places, mostly the cheap neighborhood variety. Finally found a pretty good al pastor place only a block away, that has the added advantage of being open until five Wednesday through Saturday, although there have been some Sunday mornings while walking the dogs that I've seen people spilling out about seven. Guelaguetza if I have the spelling right, my wife says it's a Purepacha term meaning special occasion or event. Our favorite bakery, Trico, is within walking distance. Across from our local laundry is a butcher shop/sidewalk restaurant that only serves pork products, and they make fabulous chorizo and cheese quesadillas on oval shaped handmade corn tortillas among many other things.

It's been two years now since we first got here. I would kill for some good or even average Chinese. Or Thai. Or kim chee.

trpt2345 wrote: I would kill for some good or even average Chinese. Or Thai. Or kim chee.

re Kimchee. There may be hope.

Kimchee of all varieties, young, aged, artisanal or industrial is easily sourced around here. Please PM me.