The new Chivas stadium: high expectations, no planning

Wednesday night we braved the drizzling rain and general clusterf*ck of people and traffic to see the finals of the Copa Libertadores in the new Chivas stadium. Short summary: the new stadium was amazing and designed for great views, but zero infrastructure was planned around it.

It took us over two hours to drive less than 10 miles, and once we managed to get to the periferico, the entire highway was collapsed. It was a free-for-all. Chain-link fences on the periferico were pushed down, and the way people were driving should have been filmed for a National Geographic program called "human nature: survival of the fittest."

We made it to our seats by minute 9 of the game. Adolfo Bautista (el Bofo) scored a nice goal at the last minute of the first half, then the Chivas were obliterated by two goals and lost.

A photo recap of the journey:

The collapsed periferico.

Me hanging out of the window, now stopped on the one lane entrance down to the stadium.

The stadium, at last! Thousands of fans dressed in their red and white best.

 

 It would make for a good Where's Waldo setting.

The halftime show had fireworks bursting from the spaceship. Pretty impressive.

A happy Chiva, in the end.

Click here to view the full set on Flickr of my Chivas game night photos.

My new molcajete

I just picked up this molcajete at the San Juan de Dios market. The molcajete is an essential part of the Mexican kitchen, primarily used to make salsas. It's the Mexican version of a mortar and pestle, made of porous volcanic rock.

It's great for just about anything you want to smash: garlic, whole cloves, chiles, guacamole. It's also the name of a dish served in a molcajete: grilled meat or shrimp with nopales, onion, cheese and salsa, fired up in a hot oven and served with hot tortillas.

The molcajete is going to be dusty right after picking one up at a market, and will need to be cured before use. To cure a molcajete, rinse it a few times then throw in a handful of uncooked rice. Grind the rice to a powder, dump out, and repeat until the rice looks white and clean.

Alternative methods to cure a molcajete:

• Do the same as above, but with rock salt instead of rice.
• Boil the molcajete in water (no soap) for 30 minutes.
• Grind a whole head of garlic in the molcajete, spread the garlic paste on the sides and leave overnight. Rinse off the next day.
• Do the above (garlic), but instead of leaving overnight, bake the molcajete with paste in the oven for 30 minutes. You can also add onion and a bit of cooking oil to the paste before baking.

The molcajete seasons over time just like a cast iron frying pan.

The castillo: awesome spinning tower of fireworks

I was raised in a culture that obligates padded jungle gyms, seat belts and crosswalk ladies. If I were raised in Mexico, I probably would have gotten to do fun things like ride around in the bed of a pickup truck, or better yet, experience the awesomeness that is the castillo.

The castillo is a tall, wobbly wooden structure affixed with fireworks that spin and spew sparks and colors in stages from bottom to top. It's a really impressive show to see, even if you are a gringo (and can put aside your inborn fear for everyone's lives).

We saw a castillo last night in front a the church that was celebrating its 35th anniversary. Below are my photos, although the spectarcularness is hard to capture on film at night.

To the left is the castillo at dusk, pre-ignition.

It is set up in the middle of electric lines. No one seems too worried.








Blast off!




























The castillo rains sparks all over the cheering crowd.







Kids run under the sparks, trying to get rained on.

This kid tries to get a better view by climbing the ladder on a truck (labeled "Hazardous Materials").

The grand finale! The corona (the top part) ignites in a glorious plume, and suddenly...


...the corona detaches completely and shoots straight up into the sky!




It extinguishes mid-air and lands near a car on the side street.



To witness a castillo, pay attention to when your local churches hold their fiestas patronales, or any other town festivals. You'll probably find lots of castillos during the Christmas season too.

Agua de capulin (Mexican black cherry)

Not much time ever goes by before I encounter a fruit I've never laid eyes on. This time it was the capulin, which according to one translation is the "Mexican black cherry"; another said it's capulin in English too.

I'm not sure how common capulines are because Gustavo had never tried them either. A lady in the street sold them to us along with some mangoes. She instructed us to make agua de capulin by mashing them up with our hands.

Capulines are the size of small grapes, and have a large pit and not too much flesh. We did as we were told, and squished the capulines in a glass bowl until the pits were mostly separated from the fruit. Then we strained the fruit, pushing as much juice through as possible. The result was a thick capulin concentrate to which we added sugar and water to fill the pitcher.

The result: a pretty refreshing agua fresca, but a less than appetizing color. I think I might name it the "Mexican brown cherry." (I'm not fond of agua de tamarindo for the same reason.) The flavor was agradable but nothing to write home about. For one, it didn't taste anything like cherry. The capulin has a very earthy flavor, and the only other fruit it reminded me of was mulberries.

So, an interesting culinary experience--it's always fun to try out new flavors. But not sure I'll become a capulin fan.

Solutions for the summer heat

The heat isn't too bad now because of the rain. But a few months ago it was more than insufferable. In the middle of the heat wave up to July, our house would heat up during the day and by dusk was at least 10 degrees hotter inside than outside.

Our first summer investment was an oscillating fan. Then when that didn't cut it, our second investment was a bad of ice we'd grab from the 7-Eleven and place on a giant plate in front of the fan. (Gustavo likes to call this "Mexican technology.") If the room got any cooler with the ice, I didn't notice.

The third investment was two plastic garden chairs for our front yard. That worked much better than a fan and a bag of ice. Add a couple of beers from the corner store and it was almost as good as air conditioning.

The fourth and current investment is a more permanent solution. Not an air conditioner, but a solid wood bench. We might save up for air conditioning for next year, but for now, this is the spot.

Last chance to see Orozco exhibition at the Instituto Cultural Cabañas

I just went to see the amazing Jose Clemente Orozco collection at the Instituto Cultural Cabañas, where more than 400 of his works have been exhibited since March. If you haven't been yet, don't miss it!

For anyone like me who only knew Orozco by his murals in the Hospicio Cabañas and the Palacio de Gobierno in Guadalajara, this exhibition shows you Orozco from every angle: from his "House of tears" watercolors of prostituting women to his sketches of the Mexican revolution to the estudios for practically every mural he has painted.

His unique sense of color (dark, bold, reds and grays) and of the human form is what impressed me most. I took some illegal photos (without flash, of course) to catch a few different areas of his work shown. To read about Orozco and the exhibit in Spanish with English translation, click here for a PDF of the catalog.

Here are some illegal and not especially color-accurate takes from the exhibit José Clemente Orozco, Pintura y Verdad (click to enlarge):


Orozco was a political cartoonist for the magazine El Hijo de Ahuizote and La Vanguardia. An example of one of his cartoon spreads.

Los Muertos.










Estudio for El franciscano, a mural in the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria in Mexico City.









This is from the "House of Tears" series of watercolors. Not sure of title.








From a series of portraits in oil.










To read more about Orozco in English, click here for a good article published on Mexconnect.

Old stuff made new

I was watching Law & Order SVU* last night when something struck me, apart from it being a rerun about endangered monkey smugglers on the same day that a man was arrested in Mexico for smuggling endangered monkeys. The detectives were investigating a tip, talking to a potential lead (you know, the guy who says, "Nope, never seen her. But you know, I did happen to see a guy tossing something in the trash can around 12:00...").

Anyway, the potential lead was a meat distributor who mentioned that he used to be a repairman, but he went out of business because no one repairs things any more. People just buy new stuff. We've all become more recycle-conscious in recent years, but that doesn't mean that if our 3-year-old oscillating fan loses a screw or begins to whir we don't put it on the curb.

In the gringo mindset everything is disposable, but not in Mexico. There are repair shops for everything here. Gustavo took an old typewriter he uses to fill out facturas to a typewriter repair shop. That's right, an entire shop that not only exists, but somehow stays afloat, repairing a virtually defunct machine.

Just tonight, Gustavo pulled out and connected two speakers. One works, one doesn't. The solution? We'll get it repaired. It'll probably just cost a few bucks. No great revelation for anyone who remembers specialized repair shops in the U.S., but it's certainly a new way to think of stuff for a generation who relies on the Genius Bar and Craigslist to solve all tech problems.


*Reruns every night at 7, and new ones Tuesday at 9, on Universal.