#2981, Tuesday, January 31, 2023: Adiós, Oaxaca, y gracias

Post 2981

- 13 years and 31 days since I started this blog -

January 6, 2023

Journal

(written January 31, 2023)

Read this once (it won't change for the rest of the trip(s): I'll be linking this post to Facebook. If that's how you got here, here's some background: About 12 years ago I started this blog as a food journal. I had a medical situation and needed to lose weight. Initially, that's all I did here: Journal my food intake and my weight. It contributed to helping me lose 20+% of my body weight in 6 months, and continuing has kept me on track since then. I started adding commentary after a while, but lately it has become infrequent. 

While I'm traveling, I let go of the weight-tracking and food journaling, except for food shots when I've eaten something interesting or pretty. And that's where we find ourselves now.

Oh, Oaxaca, I'm going to miss you. You may not be the right place for me to live, but you're a place I'm always going to want to visit.

Why can't I live here? Because I've been here four weeks and only played three times, privately. Enjoyable as those times were, they weren't enough. It's been many years since I was healthy and four weeks passed with so little playing for me.

And being part of the music scene, getting to play out, is the box Oaxaca doesn't check.

On the other hand, it takes the mantle from Chiang Mai for the best food. I eat great in Chiang Mai, and some of my favorite food in the world - dessert, salad, and, of course Thai food - is in Chiang Mai. But I have never eaten so much great food anywhere, any time else. And, it turns out, I like Mexican cuisine at least as much as I like Thai. 

And, while Thailand has, indeed, gone pot-crazy (that's a positive), and is much easier to get than here in Oaxaca, while here, I've been smoking the best weed I've had in years, including at home and in LA.

And, there's the color of this place. You'd have to wear a blindfold to avoid the eyeball-vibrating colors everywhere here. I'm always surprised, still, that everywhere I look, every new path I take, I encounter something to make me stop and take in the brilliance of what I'm seeing.

Speaking of which, another pleasing aspect of my stay here is that I can walk with no pain. That actually started about eight months ago, but I haven't gotten over the novelty of it, as, when I'm traveling, I usually do a lot of walking. This is the first time in many years that my walks haven't been limited by pain in my knees and calves.

I'm still not over the novelty of it.

Which brings us, finally, to a guided walking tour I did of (some of) the local markets, 

The Joke's On Me Dep't: For three weeks, I walked past this and thought it was just an organic fruit stand. Ha! It was the first stop on the tour, and it turns out that once you get inside, and past the fruit stand, it's an entire food court of organic, farm-to-fork food stands serving up all the local (Oaxacan) specialties! Although some more generic Mexican food is included, every bit of it is cooked to order with respect for local traditions. I am lucky the food tour clued me in!

, 

Tavo, our tour guide, with a plateful of fried ants, and an explanation, unfortunately for me, in Spanish, of why they're good for you. So, I just assume they're pure protein, and they were crunchy and good tasting. I eat ants. Who knew? Well, not such a stretch, I'll try anything.

Atole - which I am told is the most popular traditional breakfast drink. It's made of corn, cinnamon, vanilla, unrefined sugar cane. I know it looks like a cereal in this picture, but that's actually just a little foam, and the weird 'spoon' is just a stirrer.

At this  food court, you order, pay, and then it is brought to your table. On the tour, the guide has a standard order, of course with customizations for vegetarians and allergies, but the result is that a ton of food is brought to the table, so you get to sample everything. The above two pictures show only a part of this feast, and I can't tell you what's what. When I come back, I'm going to really study Mexican food (which I love), and take this tour again, so I know what I'm enjoying. From here, it was a nice walk - about fifteen minutes or so, to the next stop, Mercado 20 de Noviembre.

The 20 de Noviembre Mercado was completely new to me (like the organic market), and it wasn't too impressive at the entrance (above). But step past the snack stand at the entrance there, and you are in a truly enormous building, housing row after row of vendors. It is more food-centric than the Mercado Benito Juarez, which I had been to allready (and which was the next and last stop on the tour).

Pasillo de humo means 'smoke corridor' - it is a special part of the mercado dedicated to all things smoked, especially meat. This section celebrates the traditional meat-smoking buildings that are part of the local culture. You walk past the tables where they bring the food you've ordered, into this:

The entire section is filled with the smoke from dozens of grills and smokers! This, too, is traditional. There are restaurants that specialize in puting you in this smokey environment. No idea what a vegetarian would make of this. It's a carnivore immersion.

There are probably two dozen or more stands like this in the pasillo de humo.

We had a lovely mezcal tasting in the mercado, too. in this photo, I tried but failed to convey the size of this in-the-mercado mezcal store. Really, really big. I like mezcal, too. .

The mezcal store above had these gift bottles of mezcal - I couldn't resist a picture. Color everywhere you turn.

Nieves - ices - are very popular here. They're different from Italian ices and snow cones due to the flavorings, which are local fruits, singly and in combinations, lightly sweetened with unprocessed local sugar cane. This is mango and jamaīca, which I grew to love here, and it was the last thing we had in the 20 de Noviembre Mercado.

The last stop was the famous Mercado Benito Juarez. I had been before (you can find my pics from there in a previous blog post), and, amazingly, had found and eaten at the two stands we visited on my solo visit. Pure luck - they just looked good to me. It turns out they are both famous. The tour operator who created this tour grew up working at the Rico Taco stand, run by her family for more than forty years. The woman who makes the tejate - a traditional Oaxacan variant on atole - we had turns out to be one of the most famous vendors in Oaxaca, which I had no idea about when I visited on my own. Hilariously, she remembered me from a couple of weeks ago, and gave me a huge smile, and said something in Spanish I didn't understand that made Tavo the guide laugh.

And that was it for the tour. Two stops in the Mercado Benito Juarez, tip the guide, walk home. Since I didn't see anything new there, I didn't take any pictures.

And now it's time for the walking around pictures. 

I happened to catch the tail end of a demonstration. No, I don't know what the protest was about, I couldn't see the leaders in front. But there was chanting and signs. And, because Oaxaca, a lot of color.

I just happened to be walking by this gallery which was partly open to the street, and liked the composition. Oaxaca has an amazing art scene. There are galleries everywhere. And a few art museums. I would occasionally browse a gallery I passed, but never made it to any of the museums. Next trip.

That's Darren, above, and below, with Alix, who we met at the organic market, and who quickly became a friend.

Darren and Alix contemplating the statue above.

This is Tavo, proprietor of Pig & Fish La Cochera, and one of the friendliest people in Mexico. I know he made me feel like family from the first minute we met. On top of his fabulous host-manship, his restaurant serves up some of the best food I ate. I probably ate here more than anywhere else in Oaxaca, and look forward to coming back.

And, thus, we bring my visit to Oaxaca to a close. I've enjoyed this visit. I want to come back, in fact I know I've barely scratched the surface of all the good things here. But, early tomorrow, I'm flying to LA, to celebrate my son Alex's - and my just-passed - birthday. Next night, thirty-eight short hours after my plane lands in LA, I take off for Cuenca, Ecuador. My next post will be from there. 

Food Comment

A 'vegetarian stew,' Oaxacan style, from La Jicara, a Mexican-vegetarian restaurant I enjoyed. We have sweet potatoes, garbanzos, peanuts, corn and a few beans or peas I couldn't identify, in a yellow molé with rice pilaf (that is not what it is called in Oaxaca). Probably the healthiest meal (of many, many healthy meals) that I ate here, and it was delicious. And filling.

Note: This picture and caption is out of sequence. It was supposed to be the last one in the blog. There was a formatting glitch I could not resolve. Sorry. Carry on). A flight of the seven 'main' moles (with chicken). This was birthday dinner. I didn't get a picture (this picture is from the restaurant) because of a bit of drama when my phone bricked (it was back two hours later). So, no birthday photos. Sorry. But, the restaurant was my choice, and it was chosen because they offer this sampler. It was very good, and there were a few types I hadn't tasted, but of the ones I'd had before - yellow, black, coloradito, oaxacaña - these were as good or better. What a treat! 

A blue corn memelle with a veggie-beans-pork-and-cheese filling, from the Organic Market.

Quite possibly my favorite breakfast in Oaxaca, at one of my favorite restaurants anywhere, Chepiche Café. Straight from the (English-version) menu: Huevos Divorciados: Two eggs sunny-side up on a fried tortilla with red and green salsa. Served with avocado, refried black beans, chorizo and queso fresco. And, that's some very good oatmeal (with nuts, fruit and yogurt). It think I've had only one better, but that's a story for next week - or from last year - in Cuenca. 

Birthday breakfast at AM Siempre. This was the most wonderful start to a wonderful day, beginning with a nice, longish walk to the restaurant - the day was perfect (but that has actually been the case every single day I've been here. The high and low temperatures vary a few degrees day-to-day, but it has been nothing but sunny. No rain the entire time I was here. But I digress: Above we have avocado toast with smoked salmon, fresh greens and raspberry herb sauce, and poached eggs on toast in mole negro, with roasted corn and prickly pear. Once again, two breakfasts at a time. But it's my birthday. But I don't need an excuse (see above at Chepiche).

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