April 9, 2022 Breakfast - Ham, cheese, and mushroom omelet. Dinner - Traditional foods on the Plaza at Uruapan
Today I ate the best and worst meal of our trip. The worst was breakfast at the hotel restaurant across the street named Uno del Barrio.
The service was slow an the omelet was so salty, I could hardly eat it and it was made with a slice of processed ham and processed cheese and canned mushrooms. I ordered a glass of orange juice and it tasted as if it was out of a can. The worst meal of the trip.
After breakfast we walked back to Cafe Traditional as the parade started where i got a really wonderful glass of fresh squeezed orange juice that made me instantly happy and Suzette drank a Negra Modelo.
We asked up stairs to an empty private dining room that had opened windows overlooking the street on which the parade passed.
There must have been 50 to 70 villages marching, each with their own musicians playing music and holding their local handcrafts. Some even had special dancers dancing traditional dances in costumes and masks.
There were lots of old men dancers wearing masks with long beards and funny hats.
We sat and watched for over an hour as group after group passed.
The history of this area is important to the celebration of crafts that occurs here every year. Soon after Cortes conquered the Aztecs in 1521, a Jesuit priest visited this area of Mexico and told the people that if they did not want to be conquered they needed to develop local crafts. Since many villages had existing craft industries it was easy for them to agree. The Father helped the communities establish a craft institute in Patzcuaro to teach their children the local crafts around 1540, which is one of the oldest buildings in Mexico and is built on the site of an existing Pyramid with its stones that still continues to teach crafts.
That is the wonderful aspect of this celebration of crafts. The descendants continue to make their traditional crafts and they show up in Uruapan to celebrate their culture through their crafts and traditional garb and music and to honor their craft persons.
As we walked the three blocks to the parade we walked through the plaza were families of cooks were preparing traditional foods on wood burning stoves on three sides of the plaza.
When the parade ended every one rushed to the plaza to eat the traditional food, but since we had just eaten breakfast we bought another lime flavored Penefiel mineral water and went back to the room for a drink of Penefiel and brandy and a nap.
When we awakened around 4:00 we walked back to the plaza and got in line at one of the restaurants that looked like it served good food. It took about twenty minutes to work our way to the front of the line. As we waited I was fascinated by the two women making tortillas the traditional way, grinding the masa on a stone and then hand making each tortilla and cooking them on a large pan over a wood burning stove made from a 55 gallon oil can.
Here are some photos.
When we neared the front of the line I saw a woman getting a dish I had never seen before. An oddly shaped tamale like steamed ball of masa wrapped in banana leaves or corn husks. I asked the lady what it was and she answered Corunda, I ordered one. It was served with crema, a slice of Mexican panetela cheese and I asked for rice, lettuce, and tomato.
Here is an explanation: Corundas: Similar to tamales, but triangular in shape, corundas are wrapped in corn leaves and accompanied by cheese, sour cream and sliced poblano peppers. Legend has it that this was the Purépecha Emperor Caltzontzin’s favorite dish, and that he would eat it on special occasions
. That’s why they are sometimes called “panecillos del palacio”, or “palace rolls”.
Suzette ordered two chicken tacos smothered with Mole sauce and garnished with cheese.
I had bought a cup of tamarind fresco (tamarind pulp mixed with water and some sugar) and we found a place at one of the tables in the tent covered plaza.
Suzette went to the corner store and bought a Dos Equis beer.
We loved the food. The mole was not spicy and had a wonderful flavor.
The corunda contained three types of beans, pinto, Lima, and garbanzo and was a little tough but very edible and unusual. I liked it mixed with some crema and cheese.
We loved the fluffy freshly baked tortillas filled with chicken mole.
Soon Suzette went to another stand and bought a pipian filled taco made with a freshly handmade blue corn tortilla and one filled with carne in chili rojo sauce. Both of these were delicious also.
We were lucky because we sat at a table with a group that were sponsoring the evening’s entertainment, a band backing Lilly Dunn.
They were working their way through a case of Mil Diablos Mezcal and offered us cups of it with slices of tamarind oranges that counteracted the harshness of the mezcal. We enjoyed talking to them and promised to attend the concert at 8:30.
Dinner was the best meal of the trip with all of the good traditional food and friendly neighbors who shared their mezcal with us. It reminded me of dinner at Omaha beach on June 6 when the three communes react a mile long table and everyone brings food and cider and shares it with others to celebrate D-Day and their Liberation by the Allies from Nazi occupation.
At 5:50 we returned to the hotel to rest until the concert.
At 8:30;we walked back to the plaza on the other side of the church where a stage had been erected and listened to the music for a few minutes, but became bored and decided to go buy a dessert at the Cafe La Lucha coffee shop by the church.
We ordered a chongas and a hot chocolate that we took back to the room and ate on a bench outside our room after adding some brandy to the hot chocolate with milk. The hot chocolate was made the traditional way by using the steaming unit on an espresso machine to mix the milk and small lumps of sweetened chocolate into a frothy mixture.
The chongas were not very good until we ate our way to the bottom of the cup where the clumps of milk solids had settled.
We then watched two episodes of the Last Kingdom on the I Pad and Suzette went to bed at 10:30.
I stayed up to blog and marvel that my gut was not in revolt after all the local food and beverages I had consumed.
It was a very special day of food and activity.
Bon Appetit
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