Things below the surface- Part I: Your Digestive Tract (Thursday, July 20)

“In Mexico, we eat bullets.”

-Dr. Victor R. Rodriguez Brambila, our new gastroenterologist

Not actual bullets (although that is a sharp description of certain Mexican realities) but rather a reference to the fact that a good portion of the food in this country will either clog your arteries or blow out your guts. Every day in this city is a simultaneous battle with heart disease and gastrointestinal disorder. So far it is difficult to tell if I am winning.

Mexico is a fried food and fat-fest. Sundays start with Menudo, a tasty tripe stew that Sara’s family loves. It’s delicious. The beautiful red broth is full of thick sections of different parts of the cow stomach from the chewy outer lining to the bee hive textured inner layer. Some recipes even call for the addition of boiled cow foot. Sprinkle it with oregano and a stir in a dried chili and let the healing begin. We ate pickled pigs feet at a restaurant in the hills. I like chewing, so that was better than it sounds. Oh, and there are always, always plenty of fried crisps most slathered in chili powder or hot sauce. The favorite crisp is Chicharron(fried pork skin). Everything is covered in Chicharron, sold in huge sheets by the quarter, half, or full kilogram. Do you know how much fried pig skin a kilogram is? All of it, that’s how much! The best chicharron are the ones with bits of meat still attached. That gives that extra little salty kick. Sara and her friends talk fondly of the childhood trauma of biting into a piece with pig hair still on it that the scraper missed.

Next are the things stuffed into other things. An endless variety of tacos filled with cheeses, the fatty cuts of every animal, more often than not deep fried, more often than not pork. I probably shouldn’t have had the fried tripe tacos, but it’s hard to feel bad about that one in moderation. Gorditas stuffed with chile relleno in Guanajuato were especially tasty. Sandwiches(tortas) galore, usually with fried pork parts. I recently had my first torta de milanesa, which is a few layers of chicken fried steak with melty cheese, avocado and tomato. That one is likely to be habit forming since I can’t seem to find really good fried chicken for my occasional binge.

Anyway, that’s just the stuff I will eat. There are a host of items I refuse to touch out of sheer preservation instinct. Fresh donuts are sold in the subway for 5 pesos. The smell fills the long tunnels between platforms. Every other food stall on the street seems to sell fried empanadas full of fried meat that are then fried again before served to you on a styrofoam plate. There is this strange sandwich where the bun is filled with pork, soaked in tomato sauce, and then deep fried in a suspiciously old looking bowl of oil. Those seem to be a crowd favorite as well. There’s a glass window display near the Zocolo that is filled with roasted pig snouts. I’m not sure what is going on there but it’s pretty medieval (see picture). It goes on and on…

Every Mexican I speak to about the food problems I’m facing here immediately denies that Mexicans eat this way. They always say they only eat like this on special occasions shortly before chuckling and admitting that there are special occasions for everything in Mexico. The good news is that there really are a number of staples of the Mexican diet, that are delicious and supremely healthy. The basis of every meal are fresh corn tortillas (maiz, water, and salt). I’m also getting good at making black beans (beans, water, a small wedge of onion, a clove of garlic and 4 or 5 hours in a slow cooker). Avocados are nature’s butter; just spread on everything with a sprinkle of salt. Fatty? Yes, but it’s the good kind, right? Eggs, lentils, tomatoes, fresh fruits and vegetables of every kind, all the other beans, amaranth cakes, limes, chili peppers (serranos are my new favorite). These are the things I buy for our home. There are delicious brothy soups like Pozole and consomme that are not filled with beef and pork organs. The markets even have wonderful fresh fish, which was a big surprise because we are fairly in-land. The orange juice is all fresh squeezed and tastes like liquid sunlight, as good as anything I have ever tasted. All is not lost.

There are a few options with doubtful health benefits. Corn, for example, is super healthy on its own, but it’s hard to resist the elote on the street, slathered in mayonnaise, grated cheese, and sprinkled with chili powder. I love the beautiful tamales they sell in the morning. I thought they were healthy, too, until I was informed that they are full of lard. They get you even when you don’t know you are getting got.

So we sought out a lovely gastrointestinal expert to sort us out. He has a chart of chili peppers in his office with the different heat ratings next to them. We told him that the food in Mexico was conspiring to kill us. He gravely told us to focus on fiber and to take three different pills twice a day for the next month to stabilize the mechanics. We’re trying to eat at home more often. It saves money and helps us avoid the cravings that assault us every day. Sara likes the bistec tacos and the sopa de carne, and I’ll take a few pork tacos al pastor, with some extra pineapple.

First Blog Entry- Easing in to this.

Monday July 18th (This is my first entry. Trying to get back into the writing habit)

Mexico City is a sensory feast. It’s just layers upon layers. Every cranny is filled with someone trying to eek out a living. Something is always going on: a tortilla being flipped, a shmata being sold, music, organ grinders, scam artists selling medicinal herbs, 3-card monte(didn’t think anyone in the world still fell for that one) more and more the more you look and understand.

This weekend, we took the subway to see an Annie Leibovitz exhibit. The line was too long so we decided to walk the mile or so to our lunch date at a Lebanese restaurant (Al Andalus). This walk took us right through the Centro Historico, past the Government buildings, past the park where the teachers have set up camp like Occupy Wall Street to protest the killing of several protesters at an event a month or two ago.  There they have erected a large village of tarps and tents held up by an elaborate web of ropes tied to the trees and anchored by big water jugs filled with run-off. An entire marketplace has moved in to supply the protestors and to benefit from the short-term economic opportunity that the shanty town represents. Some of this is just the Mexican protest business and some is genuine outrage fueled by a system that is rife with corruption. It is probably impossible to tell one from the other and I don’t think it particularly matters. Everyone is either pushing an agenda, trying not to be exploited, or a combination of both.

Beyond the protest park, we headed down the Calle de Messones, where a seasonal bazaar has popped up selling all sorts of school supplies for the coming school year. It didn’t occur to me until just now that the timing of this sale is weird by U.S. standards. It turns out that the Mexican school system roughly follows our own, so I guess everybody likes to get the off-season deals. Anyway, the sidewalks are completely filled with little booths, forming a kind of shanty town of their own for blocks and blocks along the sidewalks.

As we walked along the sky darkened suddenly and it started to pour. All around us, the shop owners sprang into action, throwing up extra tarps and sheets of plastic to protect the merchandise. There was so much cover that Sara and I were able to continue on our way despite the heavy downpour. We just darted from one covered stand to the next like active little cockroaches, hiding from the worst of the deluge, then skipping out across the streets when the rain ebbed a bit. The poor market folk were getting soaked all around us as the rain pooled in huge bowls formed by the tarps, and then crashed to the sidewalk, pushed by a broomstick, or simply overflowing the edges. It even hailed grape-nuts sized stones for a few seconds. All the while we were racing through, we could smell elote grilling on little charcoal burners, the incessant calls of the shop keepers, the non-stop hawking of cheap Chinese merchandise.

Sara pointed out that these goods used to be produced in Mexico, but even they can’t compete with foreign prices. As a side note, she has urged me not to buy U.S. products, like clothes, in Mexico. I asked why, since much of those products are manufactured in Mexico. She said that in many cases, they are shipped from Mexico to the U.S. and then sold back to Mexico for re-sale. The analogy is that of buying an Apple computer in China. It would first be shipped to the U.S. and then after the purchase, shipped again to China. I wonder about all of this foolishness.

We got to the restaurant around 5:30, which to me is a very early dinner, but to Sara and her friends, is just a really late lunch. As a result, the restaurant closed to prepare for dinner right after we ordered. There are too many conventions about serving the customer for them to ask us to leave, so they gave us food and we got to eat our delicious Lebanese feast alone at the far end of a beautiful empty room as rain poured down outside.

After that, we went over to Jose Carlos’s(One of Sara’s best friends and, along with Germain, the brains behind their restaurant, Cassius) house. We arrived unannounced, and joined another friend Rigo and his wife Patty, who were already there hanging out. So the crowd was Sara, me, Germain, his wife Alejandra, their infant, Rigo, Patty, their 2-year old son, Jose Carlos, his wife Cynthia, and their infant as well. The two babies were in the back sleeping, Rigo and Patty’s son was wolfing down chocolate cake, the music was on, and all the adults were snacking and having cocktails. Someone mentioned to Rigo that maybe the kid shouldn’t be eating so much sugar, which he acknowledged, but sadly added that it was too late. Half an hour later, Santiago(the son) was sprinting laps around the kitchen island and alternately doing somersaults across the sofa, destroying the pillow forts he had previously created like a mad mini Godzilla.

Obviously, parenting in Mexico is a bit different than it is in Brooklyn. This is not to say worse. The scene above is fairly exceptional. What isn’t exceptional is that parents do not put their lives on hold to raise kids. They bring them along. Even/especially infants. Children simply learn to sleep through the hubbub, get used to being held by many friendly adults, and on special occasions, eat inappropriate things and stay up WAY too late. By and large, though, everything is kid friendly and no one thinks it odd if you bring your child to a social function. On the contrary, they don’t understand why you would leave your child at home, unless they were being watched by a relative or the occasional babysitter. Here it is a strange concept to keep parenting separate from socializing, as if the baby were somehow separate from the rest of your life.

I’m sure that keeping a schedule is important for a growing child. I’m sure that establishing routines helps development AND helps the parents get a better night’s sleep. I am equally sure that the many kids I have seen at social gathering have taken just as many naps as they would have if they were home. They get used to being around others. They learn and adjust and the parents don’t fear the consequences of these decisions, perhaps because they have established their own routines that seem to work well for both parents and children alike.

Sara and I often worry about what it will be like for us as parents. It’s a longer discussion for another time. One thing I’m certain of is that the Mexican approach to parenting (the small slice that I have been privy to) is far less daunting than the privileged U.S. version I’m used to.