EFM: Embracing Foreign Methods

Being able to adapt. Accepting other cultures are not inferior - just different. Willing to try new things.

All pretty basic stuff if you want to enjoy your stay in the foreign service. And a lot easier to say than to actually practice.

On Thursday (our first month in the books) I found myself in the grocery store by myself (for the second time) and having some difficulty buying food to prepare for dinner.

In my cart, there were some fruits, a package of chicken breasts and some processed foods. Staring at it, I couldn't think of a thing to make with what I had and I found myself growing irritated and depressed simultaneously.

Which led to my come-to-Jesus moment. My cart was bereft of local staples. During my previous solo grocery trip, I took note of some of the subtle difference between American and Mexican grocery stores. Some of the differences in the aisles and some of the different products available. But I was still pretty certain I would be cooking my foods. The stuff I was used to doing.

Now granted, once my toys arrive in our ground/surface/sea freight, that will make it a little easier to go back to cooking what I know, but for the most part, those toys just increase cooking efficiency. In other words, I'll probably still be facing the same problems of not knowing how to work with what they sell here.

Throwing caution to the wind, I went back to the produce and started filling my cart with some vegetables. They have a lot of tomatillos here, and in different places, so these must be important. Let's pick some up. Have to have some chili peppers, right? How about a couple of serranos, then. Onions are important in every culture, let's get one of those, too.

A brief side story: I don't know much Spanish, which can make grocery shopping a real treat at times. So I grabbed a reporter's notebook for this trip and wrote down the names of all of the foods that I didn't recognize or wasn't a 100% sure on. Then I looked them up on SpanishDict when I got home. The notebook will be my grocery shopping Bible. Best translations to date, a toss up between "chicozapte" (a delicious American fruit, which is odd because I'm not familiar with this fruit) and "grasa mixta comestible" (which literally means edible mixture of fat, but in practice, this is lard).

Now I have some stuff I can work with, but I still have no idea how to blend this altogether to make something "comestible." I try a few Internet searches with lines like, "These are my ingredients" until I finally came across a Web site I favorite'd immediately, www.supercook.com Go play with this Web site. It is incredible. You just enter the ingredients you have, then you can highlight the stuff you want to use, and it is filtering through various other recipe Web sites what options are out there for you.

I ended up with grilled chicken breast and a roasted tomatillo and tomato salsa. Not too bad.

But I was on a role now, so I needed to make a side, too. I love black beans, but I can never cook them well. So I did a few searches and apparently every one cooks canned beans. I wasn't interested in canned bean recipes, I have dried beans. Through the magic of Internet surfing, I eventually found the Web site to the American Bean Association which offered great tips on cooking dried beans.

I found that one of my fatal flaws was adding salt to the beans while they cooked. A big no-no that leads to very dry beans. And here I was just thinking I wasn't letting them soak long enough, which, by the way, the whole soaking over night nonsense is just a myth. Instead, add beans to hot water, bring to a boil, and let the boil continue for a couple of minutes. Then remove from the heat, cover and leave it alone for about four hours.

Using these tips and what I had in my pantry, I made my first successful black bean dish. And there was much rejoicing not only because now I can cook one of my favorite beans, but because I finally decided to alter my methods to fit the environment.

Grocery Shopping

I have completed my first out-of-the-house, flying-solo task since arriving here. I managed to drive to the grocery store and go shopping all by myself.

It only took about two and a half weeks, but I finally built up enough courage to drive about a half mile or so alone and rely upon only my own poor Spanish to communicate. Of course, one of the good things about shopping is that there really is not much of need to converse. Baby steps.

Getting started, I thought I would like grocery shopping a little more than I do. I figured this would be something similar to shopping in the United States. I was counting on there not being many American products, which is no big deal to me, and at first glance the layouts of American and Mexican grocery stores are fairly similar. You usually begin with produce and baked goods, there is a butcher usually along the back walls and then aisles of food.

Sadly, most of the produce we find is second rate, unless we go to Costco (annual membership, $14 USD), which easily has the best quality. There really aren't any leafy greens other than romaine, no russet potatoes and the corn is much starchier than American sweet corn. (That was a sad moment as we tried to enjoy grilled corn on the cob.) But otherwise, it was fairly similar to the States.

The snack aisle doesn't differ much either, other than they don't keep their salsa with tortilla chips (totopitos), and they don't seem to carry pretzels. Foods also are packaged differently here. For example, we bought a box of crackers (essentially Saltines) and instead of finding long sleeves of crackers inside, they are wrapped in packs of six. We have a box of 45 wrapped packets of crackers. Seems excessive. Lots of American candy bars and cookies seemed to be packaged this way as well.

Mexican grocers don't carry much wheat flour, but they do have a lot of corn flour. And I still have yet to find active yeast. I guess I'll be ordering that online (I love homemade pizza dough, pitas and pretzels). They also seem to like marshmallows here, as almost half an aisle is nothing but them. And the 'mallows come in the typical small size, the larger size that you'd use for grilling s'mores, and then a super jumbo size that are larger than my fist. The other half of that aisle is usually gelatin and various Jello mixes.

They don't sell cases of pop cans here, not even at the Costco. But they do sell bottled pop in 1, 1.5, 2 and 3 liter bottles. And they lover their juices here. The big brand is JuMex.

The butcher has every cut of beef imaginable, and some of the unimaginable, too. We can usually fine chicken breast and some pork (though I haven't found pork chops yet), but no turkey. I've found sliced turkey breast for sandwiches and turkey dogs, but that is it. I wonder if they import some for Thanksgiving, or if we will be eating Thanksgiving tacos this year.

In the dairy section, the only familiar brand of cheese I've seen is Sargento, which also happens to be my favorite, so that works well. But they also have a pretty good selection of local cheeses, and the Manchego here is really all I need in life. They have a much smaller yogurt selection than I'm used to, which is a shame because I don't drink milk opting for yogurt instead. It is much runnier here, and all of the varieties seem to be plain, with bits of fruit added. In reality, this is probably because it is more natural than the artificial flavors and thickening agents in my Dannon Light and Fits, but this stuff will take a little getting used to. Or I'll start drinking milk.

With my cart full, and I detoured to look at some DVDs, because I was delaying the part I was dreading the most - check out. Finally, I would have to interact with a person. As different as many of the products might be, in the end, it still is all food, and that is something I'm comfortable with. Even if I couldn't fine any thyme (very limited on spices; probably have to drive to Nogales to get that kind of stuff, or order online). And I knew at the minimum they would ask if I wanted plastic bags or the cardboard boxes. Neither of which I know the Spanish for. I wasn't thinking this far in advance when I started the car. I was just worried about getting to the grocer instead of ending up in Mazaltan or some other place I'm not supposed to drive to.

The cashier said something, and in the only word I picked up on was "Americano." Not what I was expecting. I was hoping I would hear the word "plastico" in there somewhere so I could repeat that phrase. So I just said "Por Favor" and he looked at me, and started scanning my stuff. Problem temporarily averted, I assumed.

Then the bagger/boxer said something to the scanner, and he said something back, and I saw a plastic bag in his hand, pointed at it and said "Si, bola plastico." (I had bought some trash bags, and thought the word on there was bola. It's bolsa, but close enough for an obvious non-Spanish speaker, right?). But I got plastic bags in the end, and tipped the bagger. (Thanks for the heads-up on that, Bryn).

Mission completed. And I got home, unloaded, and had a beer.