Flores de Aguascalientes

For all my flower-loving friends in the "Great White North".
I know you've all put your gardens to rest in anticipation of another long, hard winter and I feel for you. So here are a few flower pictures to cheer you up. These photos were all taken within the last 2 weeks in Aguas. You'll of course recognize the bouganvillea and the sunflower (sunflowers like this one grow wild everywhere). The hibiscus bloom belongs to the plant we currently have on our balcony. The bright purple blossom and the orange one I havn't yet identified. Both belong to trees which I found growing on a boulevard near Lucinda's school.

Panaderia Colon

Señor Pedro Gonzalez














A "concha"











Pan de muerto

Meet Señor Pedro Gonzalez. He is eighty-years-old and he’s been baking bread for seventy years! He is the proprietor of Panaderia Colon where he runs the shop and bakes all the pan dulce himself. The locals call him el maestro de pan. He gets up early each morning to mix the various types of dough by hand on a massive wooden table. By 1:00 pm or so, evident from the mouth-watering smell of baking bread wafting down the street, the first batch is ready for sale. If you arrive at his shop (the ovens and shop are all in one room) before things are ready, then he tells you un ratito (just a few moments more).
He makes 500 pieces of pan dulce per day. Most of these are single-serving sweet buns, sugary danish, muffins, cookies, and fruit-filled empanadas. Señor Gonzalez says that the most popular type of pan he sells is the concha. It’s a round bun made with the regular sweet dough and topped with a crumbly, sugary mixture which is either vanilla or chocolate flavoured. This type of bun is commonly eaten at breakfast and dipped in coffee or chocolate (hot chocolate). However when we buy them they usually don’t last until next morning’s breakfast.
Señor Gonzalez usually finishes baking his last batch of bread around 4:00 pm and it’s shortly after this that he closes shop because his breads sell out as fast as they come out of the oven. Lucky for us, Panaderia Colon is just across the street, so it’s all too easy for us to secure our daily quota of goodies.
These days Señor Gonzalez is also baking pan de muerto (bread of the dead) which is eaten a few weeks before and on the Day of the Dead. Pan de muerto is a sweet egg bread often flavored with cinnamon or sometimes anise. The top is decorated with dough in the shape of bones and it’s sprinkled with icing sugar. Most grocery stores these days are selling it in anticipation of one of Mexico’s most important holidays. I’ll be writing more on Day of the Dead in next week’s post.

Pictures from Zacatecas

View of Cero de la Bufa, Zacatecas















The cathedral in Zacatecas






















Lucinda just inside the main entrance of the Museo Rafael Coronel





































Some of the masks from the Museo Rafael Coronel

Zacatecas

On Saturday we visited the city of Zacatecas, about a one-hour drive north of Aguascalientes. Zacatecas is famous for its silver mines. The indiginous people of the area, the Zacatecos, had been extracting silver and other minerals for centuries before the Spanish arrived. Shortly after the conquistaors arrived on the scene in 1548, they began formal mining operations (using the indiginous people of course to perform the heavy and often dangerous work). Much of the silver made its way to Mexico City and eventually Spain and the Spanish who settled the town became rich. The El Bote mine founded 200 years ago, is still in operation today.
Zacatecas itself is quite a picturesque city. It’s comprised of beautiful colonial buildings, narrow streets and hidden plazuelas all situated at the foot of a steep hill called Cerro de la Bufa.
We were suitably impressed by the façade of the cathedral built in 1752. The detailed stone carvings are incredible. The inside of the building though is less than spectacular and indeed the Guadalupe church here in Aguas is far more impressive.
Probably the highlight of our day-trip was our visit to the Museo Rafael Coronel.
The setting of this magical museum is a 16th century former convent. We walked through room after room of stunning, whimsical and sometimes scary masks. There are reportedly over 2000 of them on display here. Quite a sight!
It was a tough decision, but we decided to head out of town before the start of the 5th annual Festival International de Teatro de Calle. We wanted to be well on our way throught the winding mountain road, south of the city, before darkness fell. It was shortly after we left that it started pouring rain and I’m not sure the openning show, an Italian troupe, would have gone ahead.
Johnny however, being in the right place at the right time, managed to secure two spots at the festival this coming week.

Photos will be published in the next post.

Chocolate

Enjoying a chocolate at
Café Con Sentido
















Chocolate (cho-co-la-tay)

Now that the nights are getting a little cooler here in Aguas, it's getting to be the perfect time to enjoy a cup of Mexican hot chocolate.
Did you know...... ?
......the cacoa (kahkow) tree was discovered about 2000 years ago in the tropical rainforests of Mexico and Central America. The Mayans were the first people to make chocolate from ground cacoa seeds, chile pepper, cornmeal and water.
The Aztecs used cacoa seeds as a form of money but they also consumed the spicy, frothy drink. In Aztec culture it was primarily the upper classes, royalty and priests who drank it, claiming that wisdom and power came from chocolate. (well, doesn’t it?) It is said that Moctezuma drank up to 50 goblets of it every day.
Later the Spanish conquistadors brought the cacoa seeds back to Spain where new recipes were created and the drink’s popularity spread throughout Europe.
Solid chocolate wasn’t created until 1847 in England and in 1876 the Swiss devised a way of adding milk to make the first milk chocolate.

Here in Aguas chocolate is served with a bit of cinnamon, unsweetened, or slightly sweetened (you add sugar to taste), and very frothy. Yum!

Lime press

El exprimidor de limones

If there was such a thing as the Handy-Dandy-Kitchen-Tool-of-the-Month award then I nominate the lime press. Now, it's probably true that lime presses can be found in Canada, but if I ever had seen one, I wouldn't have known what it was for.

In México the most common type of lime you can buy is the limón. It is green, small, only slightly larger than a Timbit, and contains seeds. The yellow lemons we're used to seeing at home don't exist here. Expressing juice from a limón using one of the plastic, manual juicers would work, I suppose, but no need. Aqui esta el exprimidor de limones! It's slightly larger than a garlic press and although you can buy them made of plastic I prefer the metal type. You simply cut the limón in half, place it in the press and squeeze the handles together and out comes fresh squeezed lime juice. It nicely uses all available juice from the limón with a minimum of mess.

Lime juice is a prime ingredient in things like guacamole, on carné for tacos, in salad dressing, and of course in tequila. We've found the best way to drink tequila is with a bit of lime juice and some soda water and ice. Salud!

Sabinolandia

On Sunday we drove to a park 2o minutes southwest of Aguas called Parque Recreativo Sabinolandia.
It's known for its 400-year-old trees, which I believe are a type called sabinal.
It was a great spot to take a stroll, check out nature (we did see two turtles) and to have a picnic.






Picnicing with our friends Leo and Angie.
Leo's originally from Puebla and Angie's from Edmonton.








Can you spot the kitty?

















Lucindita perched on one of the trees.