July 17, 2016 Breakfast. Granola, strawberry yogurt, Apple and mango. Lunch Uchepo in Quiroga. Dinner Steak, corn, potato, avocado, and onion fricassee with blanched carrot and string bean.

See July 16, 2016 entry for July 17, 2016 Breakfast. Granola, strawberry yogurt, Apple and mango. Lunch Uchepo in Quiroga. Dinner  Steak, corn, potato, avocado, and onion fricassee with blanched carrot and string bean.

We made the simple satisfying breakfast described above this morning with an apple from the garden and one of the mangos we bought yesterday at the market.

We then drove around the south side of Lake Patzcuaro to Quiroga by way of Thintzuntzan all three villages are on the lake.  It was market day in both Thintzuntzan and Quiroga.  It feels like Mexico celebrates Sunday's be dressing up and going to church or shopping.  After looking at the market at Thin. and visiting its old convent and church with its 500 year old olive trees,  we drove to Quiroga.  Quiroga was a mad house.  We parked in a lot in a side street and walked the short two blocks to the main market, if there was such a thing.  After further inspection on our way out of town, the market extended for many blocks on each side of the main roads through town.  There were hundreds of booths.  According to trip advisor, Quiroga is known for its shellacked wood furniture.  Each small village is known for a unique craft.  This is not coincidental.  As I understand the history, after the end of economedia (enslavement by the Spanish) after 1715 father De Vasco in Quiroga suggested that each village select a handicraft to concentrate on as a means of establishing a local economic advantage.  Quiroga was located near Forest and chose wooden furniture. Thintzuntzan was located on the lake and chose tule/reed woven wear, Santa Clara de Cobre sat on a copper deposit and chose copper ware, etc.

Those economic distinctions and advantages persist to this day.

The other thing I must tell you is that if you have not gotten sick after eight or nine days, you tend to think your system is gaining resistance to some of the nasty bacteria in the food and drink down here.  This is reinforced by seeing everyone eating all the time.  Food is plentiful and cheap and delicious.  It is hard to resist when you have passed the three hundredth food stand in the market crowded with local eating fried tacos or are offered a sample of BBQ pork by a vendor, as we were today in downtown Quiroga.

So today we finally jumped in at Quiroga.  We stopped at a small booth one the Main Street in the market that sold small triangular shaped tamales wrapped and steamed in banana leaf that is a local specialty, Uchepo.  The tamale has no stuffing and is made with fresh ground corn instead of dry corn flour (masa), so it is spongy and a more alive food and usually served with a sauce and crema.  Sort of the difference between fresh pasta and dried pasta.

We bought one for 10 pesos.  The young woman tending the shop asked if we wanted salsa and Crema and we said yes.  So she unwrapped the tamale from its two foot long leaf and put it into a clean plastic bowl and ladled a light creamy broth with chile rajas (strips) over the triangular tamale and garnished it with a dollop of crema.  We covered our bowl with another bowl to carry it and crossed the street to a street front dispensary of beverages.  Food service is mostly segmented in Mexico in the market.  We saw our favorite Mexican beer, Bohemia, and so I selected a light and Suzette selected a dark.  I took them to the lady who ran the store and she said, “30 pesos.” I asked if that was for both beers, because we had never paid less than 35 pesos in any Restaurant. She said, “Yes.”  So I paid 30 pesos or $.83 per beer and asked her to open the bottles.  I then asked her where we could find a table or seat to eat our lunch and she directed us to the park beside the church at the crossroads about one block away.  We soon found an open bench in the park next to the throng of small open air eateries next to the church and enjoyed our echepo with the light chili cream sauce (salsa me and sauce in Spanish) enriched by the dissolved dollop of crema.  We washed down the lovely tender tamale bathed in its spicy cream sauce with gulps of Bohemia for our first adventure with Mexican street food.

We then made our way out of town through. The throng of people and shops in the market.  Driving into or out of a Mexican town on a market or festival day requires a certain combination of emotional control and resignation just to survive.  At best the unspoken driving etiquette is observed.  There are usually no signals so drivers trade turns entering an intersection and yield to the first car turning if two cars enter from different directions.  Pedestrians sometimes have the right-of-way when the traffic is congested in crossing the street.  When the road is open to vehicular traffic, pedestrians usually yield or stay on the narrow sidewalks beside the streets.  But this somewhat confused on market and festival days when there is a more complex relationship when the throng of pedestrians pours out into the street because it can not be contained on the narrow streets or it is weaving between the stalls lining the street.  When driving, one can either enjoy the seething mass of goods and humanity moving around you or not, buy you soon must resign yourself to it or you will go crazy.  I find it best to be a careful observer and try to enjoy it.  Suzette and I call it window shopping from the car.  Sometimes cars do stop in the street to consummate a transaction, because there is nowhere else to stop.  All of this makes for a unique driving experience.

After leaving Quiroga, we drove back to Tzintzuntzan where I had a major shopping experience.  We had seen and I had tried on a woven tule hat of the type I have bought in Puerto Vallarta for $20.00 each on two prior trips.  When we first stopped in Tzin., I had asked the shop attendant at the street stall in how much her hats cost and she said 35 pesos, so we decided to stop on the way back and get one.  The hats and the lady were still there when we returned to Tzin., which was much less crowded than Quiroga, so I offered her 30 pesos and she agreed to that price.  At the current 18 pesos to the dollar, the price of my new tule hat was $1.66.

We then went to the archeological site on a flattened mound above Tzin., which was quite impressive a row of five huge rounded connected pyramids facing the lake.  We also visited a museum of archeological artifacts on the site of the Tarascan culture that built the ceremonial and political site about 500 B.C.

“Today, the site of this ancient capital consists of five yacatas, or temples, that date back to the 13th century, each erected on a terrace of carefully laid stone blocks. Below the temple you'll come across the 16th-century Convento de San Francisco. Note the twisted olive trees in the courtyard, planted by Bishop Vasco de Quiroga himself in the mid-1500s. The village of Tzintzuntzan boasts several handcraft traditions and is another delightful stop-over en route to Paztcuaro.

On the arrival of the first Spanish soldiers, Tzintzuntzan was a booming urban centre of between 25 and 30 thousand inhabitants spread over almost 7 km2 between the shores of Lake Patzcuaro and the city’s two hills. The city had for centuries been the cultural, religious and social heartland of the ancient Tarascan people: wooden temples were built on five keyhole-shaped pyramidal structures known as yacatas, which were used to perform rituals by both the public and the government.” Visit Mexico.com 

Here is some history of the region from serious eats:

Like the Mayans, Michoacán's native Purepecha people didn't just submit to the Spanish, or the Aztecs before them, and today the state is home to one of Mexico's most diverse indigenous populations. This heritage is reflected in the local cuisine, one that, journalist and Mexican food expert Gustavo Arellano wrote, maintains unusually close ties to its traditional kitchen.

Attesting to the fact that the site at Tzin. was not conquered by the Spanish, it was inhabited after the conquest of Mexico by Cortes and there were Colonial period artifacts that resembled prior artifacts.

On our route back to Patzcuaro, we drove to Ihuatzio, another lake side colonia with an earlier and larger site than at Tzin. with an economy also based on reed objects.  Suzette was interested in a set or reed furniture which we found in a shop near the ruins until she discovered that a whole seating arrangement with stairs, ottomans, sofa, and coffee table was 14,000 pesos ($630.00) and the shop did not ship.

“Ihuatzio is a city located near Lake Pátzcuaro in the Mexican state of Michoacán. It was once the capital of the Purépecha kingdom. It was the capital until the change to Tzintzuntzan.

Archaeological site

Further information: Ihuatzio (archaeological site)

Ihuatzio is also the name of an archeological site located at the southern slopes of “Cerro Tariaqueri”, just north of Ihuatzio town, in the Tzintzuntzan municipality, of Michoacán state. The site is some 7 kilometers south-east of Tzintzuntzan, on the south-eastern shore of the Lake Pátzcuaro. Human settlements vestiges are registered from two different occupational periods; the first occurred between 900 and 1200 CE, corresponding to Nahuatl language speaking groups; the second group corresponding to the maximum development reached by the Purépecha culture, between 1200 and 1530 CE.” Wikipedia.mx

We then drove back to Patzcuaro an it took about twenty minutes to find a parking spot on the street three blocks above our casita, due to the throng of folks in town to celebrate the balloon festival; not unlike Albuquerque’s Balloon Festival.

We were tired and tried to go out to find some wine to drink with dinner but I only made it one block. Soon after we got back from our thwarted effort to find an alcoholic beverage for dinner at 6:00 we lay down to rest and relax, when it started raining which ended any hope of getting out.

Suzette usually likes a drink to unwind in the evening.  Without beer or wine, she had to get creative and came up with hot chocolate with one of the lavender marshmallows we bought in San Miguel spiked with rum.  I thought it was a delicious drink and sipped my cup of chocolate as I prepped dinner and during dinner.

We decided to use our PPIs.  I stripped the kernels off the uneaten corn, diced the PPI steak and potatoes, and diced about 1/3 onion and two cloves of garlic, 1 ½ Roma tomatoes, and the fallen avocado from the garden.  I also diced a carrot and snapped the string beans we bought yesterday. Suzette blanched the string beans and carrots and fricasseed the corn, onions and potatoes and then the garlic and tomato, and finally the avocado and steak to make an appealing élan get of ingredients.  Finally, Suzette heated several tortillas in the microwave for a minute and we plated the fricassee on warm tortillas with blanched carrots and string beans for a pleasant, healthy hot meal.