#3168: Tuesday, March 5, 2024:

Post 3168

- 13 years and 65 days since I started this blog -

March 4, 2024, at Restaurante Taniperla Oaxaca.

Journal

(written March 5, 2024)

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 13 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.

Before this week's photo dump, some words about the Oaxaca portion of this year's travels.

First, though, right after publishing last week's blog post, I found out that a business trip by my hosts meant the Florida part of my trip had to be canceled. Oaxaca is now my last stop before returning home (two weeks earlier than planned).

About this year's Oaxaca trip: It cannot be said to be going well. True, there have been a couple of great nights, but due to my physical problems (self-inflicted injury to my right knee) and Oaxaca's very different weather in late February to early March, this year's trip is not going anything like last year's. 

Please note: This is a report, not a complaint. Journalism, if you will. It would be disingenuous of me to look at the current negatives I'm dealing with, and not acknowledge that they aren't ruinous, they are temporary, and they are not going to alter my outlook on life. I remain one of the, if not the, happiest guys you'll ever meet. I remain full of gratitude. And I acknowledge that even dealing with some unpleasant  stuff in Oaxaca, I am in Oaxaca, a city I love!

Last year, I walked around Oaxaca for hours at a time. The walks were glorious, and revelatory - there was something to arrest the eye around every corner. It is these walks that engendered my love of Oaxaca, and this year's visit, even though I'd crossed it off my future-residence list.

This year, walking equals pain, thanks to a blown-out right knee I got a couple of days before leaving Cuenca. This makes walking something I want to do, but am avoiding, to the degree I can. Long walks, such as to some of my favorite places, Xochimilco, or the Zócalo (city square), or the mercados, are out of the question: too painful.

The knee pain is self-inflicted, no one to blame ut the guy in the mirror.

In addition, there's the weather. Last January, the highs were in the low 70ºs, the lows in the mid-40ºs. This year, it has been mid-90ºs every day in the afternoon, with lows in the high-50ºs. Even without the knee pain, I wouldn't be walking around in that heat. I get back from breakfast (eaten, typically, around Noon), and even when I eat next door, I'm sweating heavy by the time I've walked back up the stairs to my apartment, whose black metal door is radiating heat in the hot sunshine as I take care not to touch anything while I unlock it.

I am mostly inactive and bored during the day.

I am also spending more time alone than on any other trip ever. As in, ever in my life. Last year, friend Darren came down to Oaxaca to hang, and we had an incredible time. Usually we wore long-sleeve shirts day and night. This year, no Darren, much higher temperatures, I haven't put on long sleeves once, day or night. T-shirts, and nothing but.

This year, I am walking alone, when I'm walking. Mostly, eating alone when I eat. There have only been three exceptions in these first two weeks, and I haven't missed a meal. 

It's just not as much fun.

Additionally, a couple of nights ago, what should have been one of my best nights turned out badly. It should have been one of the best nights because I went to a rather famous restaurant, with a name chef (well, maybe not outside of Oaxaca, but the restaurant is always listed as one of the best).

I got the best single dish of food, an elevated pulpe (octopus) taco, that I've eaten this whole trip. No picture, because, as excellent and well-presented as it was, it didn't photograph well. After delivering a dellicious cocktail, I was waiting for the waitress to pay some attention to the part of the dining room I was seated in, to bring me a knife, fork and napkin, to eat the entree.

Although her station was less than twenty feet from me, with an unobstructed view of the whole dining area I was seated in, she never looked up from the computer screen for more than ten minutes. Then she left to a different part of the restaurant without my ever being able to catch her eye. She came back after another couple of minutes, again never once looking at the dining room I was in, left after another five minutes, then came back with some food for a nearby table. I was finally able, with the help of the customer she was serving, to get her to come to my table, so, having finished eating the taco with my fingers, I could ask for an even-more-badly-needed napkin, and order dessert and coffee.

Five minutes passed, and she brought the coffee. I needed to remind her about the napkin.

After fifteen minutes, no dessert, my coffee is half-drunk and completely cold.

I get her attention again, by interrupting her with another customer, and ask for my dessert, and hot coffee in my cup.

She brings dessert (but not the dessert I ordered), and collects my coffee. I wait a few minutes, not eating my dessert without the requisite coffee wash and brings back the same cup of coffee she took, reheated, presumably, in the microwave. I don't reheat coffee at home, and have never, in my whole life, to the best of my knowledge, been served reheated coffee in a restaurant.

What should have been a great meal, ruined by shitty service.

So it goes. Another knock on this year's Oaxaca experience. I'll get over this quickly, but at the time, I was so saddened that some of the best food I've ever been served, was served in a way that spoiled my ability to enjoy it. 

I'm not getting out to take many pictures, but whenever I do, I'm reminded of why I love it here. So gorgeous. Here's what I have:

I had a great night, and took the longest walk, to meet up with friends Melissa and Roger at Tr3s Bistro, one of my very favorite places in Oaxaca. Located right on the Zócalo (the central park of Oaxaca City), its second-floor balcony seating has spectacular views of the Zócalo and the Iglesia de Oaxaca, the fabulous church adjacent to the park. The top photo is from our dinner table, the photo underneath it is of the spectacular entree: grilled salmon with pumpkin and mushroom risotto. The bottom two photos are from the walk home.

Random shots.

Food Comment\

From last year's brunch fav Café Los Cuiles, huevos divorciados, eggs with cheese and red and green molés. Runner-up to the too-distant Café Cepiche, still great.

This chia-crusted salmon was the second-best dish I've had so far, and, since first-best was at a meal with infuriatingly bad service (see above), it was the main dish of the best meal I've had this trip, so far. A treat from Café Taviche.

This is me eating paleo. Not as in the Paleo Diet (nothing wrong with that, except its' misleading name), but as in the way humans ate before the Agricultural revolution, when insects were a major source of protein in the diet (the Paleo diet is about eliminating foods that weren't available to humans in the Paleolithic Age, as opposed to actually eating what they ate in that era). Omelette Oaxacana is, basically, huevos, queso fresco and chapulines (eggs, fresh cheese and grasshoppers). By the way, Pan:Am, where I had this, isn't about a defunct airline or long Central-to-South American highway, its name means bread in the morning. A favorite brunch place.

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