Return to the Yellow Brick Road

by hound dog Mon Feb 07, 2011 3:18 pm

We had been in Ajijic and other places thereabouts for nine months and a fine place that is but, as I noted elsewhere on this board, Saturday we returned to home #2 in San Cristóbal de Las Casas and today made our first visit to the huge warren that is the indigenous market a block from our home here and what a pleasure that was. One has to experience this market, which is and offshoot of and surrounds the traditional San Cristóbal municipal market, to understand its value to the community. After all that time dependent on the Ajijic and Jocotepec tianguis (a term that does not exist here) and municipal markets in Chapala and Jocotepec where the great majority of meats and produce comes from the Guadalajara abastos, what a pleasure to be back in a market run by and for the benefit of Chiapas´ indigenous communities. We came home with produce grown on small local mountain milpas including several varieties of cooking greens from collards to chard and sweet young avocadoes tender enough to eat without peeling, small, tender and sweet radishes far superior to the large, mealy and woody overgrown radishes normally found in Jalisco markets, tiny sweet but tart cherry tomatoes I have never seen anywhere else in Mexico, ginger (used only medicinally around here but of the best quality - indigenous vendors often ask us how we cook it), fresh small incredibly sweet tomatoes and all sorts of herbs from mint to basil to you name it fresh from local gardens and on and on.

Later we found some farm fresh eggs and potatoes and white onions to make a Spanish Tortilla to go with these veggies and that, along with widely available and inexpensive Spanish wines should make for a fine supper.

Juat to add a Lakeside touch, I have some Best Foods Mayonnaise I brought down from Chicken Joe at Puritan Poultry because the mayonnaise around here in Chiapas sucks. One cannot live on indigenous produce alone.