July 21, 2016. A restful day in Patzcuaro

July 21, 2016. A restful day in Patzcuaro 

After our long dry last night we slept in.  In the morning I walked around the Villa Maria garden admiring Michael's booming orchids.  From what I have seen the cool rainy humid weather is in Patzcuaro is ideal for growing orchids.  Here are pictures of some of the blooms and the garden.

   The south side of the rear garden

  A bromeliad

   The passage from the front garden to the rear garden

    The rear garden seen from the walkway from the front garden

  An odd fern like plant in the back garden

 

I need to mention that Michael, the owner is an architect in Canada and a collector of regional folk art.

Around noon we went out sightseeing and visited mostly fabric stores, looking for a bedspread for our next project, the remodeling of our bedroom and bathroom.

We stopped at a store across the street from the museum of Technical Arts? And talked to the owner, Rick, who is a partner with Michael in the store.  He told us that the Museum was one of the oldest Colonial buildings in the Americas, dating back to the 1540’s.  It was built under the direction of Father De Vasco de Quiroga and it and the art museum next to it sit on the pyramids and platform that pre-dated the Spanish conquest.  We immediately walked across the street, paid our 50 pesos each and went in.  The museum is devoted to the history of the crafts that De Vasco encouraged the indigenous people to make, whose traditions last to this day.  Rick said, “De Vasco was a utopian idealist, who wanted to create a utopian community in the highlands of New Spain.”

The museum had many old and new craft items, including a portrait of De Vasco.  We then walked to the back of the museum and were confronted by a partial pyramid, partially reconstructed and partially in reconstructed.  We realized that the museum was constructed on and using the stones of the pyramids.  We were standing on sacred ground in all kinds of ways. 

We then walked to the big plaza, where we bought brownies and Kaiser rolls at one of the nicest bakeries in town.

It was starting to rain, so we scurried back to Villa Maria just before a torrential downpour began.  We decided to cook the pork chops we had bought with the candied fruits we had bought in San Miguel de Allende.  We peeled and diced the last two carrots and blanched them and then combined them into the sautéed fruit.

We also heated the PPI sautéed potato slices.

After lunch we rested and read in the cool rainy afternoon.

We were not very hungry for dinner.  Although Suzette made a lovely cream of mushroom soup with the last of the white mushrooms and cepes and ¼ of a red onion in the beef stock from our first meal, plus cream and a bit of 2015 Marques Del Valle Mexican white wine.

 I ate the unfinished portion of of lunch by making an open faced sandwich of pork chop and potatoes on a buttered toasted slice of integral bread.  The Danish smorgasbord tradition I established in the summer of 1968 in Denmark persists.

The rain continued into the evening, so we read and packed.  I ate a brownie with tea later in the evening.

Bon Appetit