shoestring gringa

I don’t mean the real holiday in Mexico, I mean the real holiday for us.  Oh sure, we spent the 25th most agreeably with friends, and we’ll toast the new year with champagne (well a facsimile thereof), but Monday was the day we finally got to eat roast turkey.  It came to us in its own good time, our turkey, as do so many things in Mexico, but it was worth the wait.

We’re planning to get another one on sale next week when we go shopping in the city.

Happy New Year to all — ¡Próspero Año Nuevo!

In honor of the festive season, here is some info on the world of affordable spirits (drinkable variety)  south of the border.

Table Wines

For the devoted drinker of red wine, the biggest drawback of living in Mexico is that it is not a wine-drinking country.  I really should have moved to the Mediterranean.

Wine is not everywhere in Mexico.  It’s rarely to be found in little corner tienditas or even midsize markets, and many liquor stores don’t bother with it either.  The best source for wine is the really large supermarkets like Soriana, Comerical Mexicana, and Walmart, which carry selections of imported wine in a range of prices.  Good buys can be had on bottles from Chile, Argentina and Spain.  (Of course, this being Mexico, you’ll probably never find the same thing twice, so don’t get too attached to anything.)  Our biggest find to date has been five bottles of really decent champenoise from Argentina for ~$2 a bottle at a Walmart closeout.

For everyday use, I’ve found two sources of acceptable plonk in Mexico that I can recommend.  One is the  California label, produced by Valle Redondo in Aguascalientes.  It comes in red and white (both are good) and is sold in 1-liter tetrapaks in the aforementioned large grocery markets.  It can also be found at Sam’s Club in gallon jugs at a comparable price.  The regular red and white are still hanging in there under ~$3 a liter as of this writing.  Valle Redondo also offers tetrapaks of a Cabernet Sauvignon (north of ~$4) which I haven’t tried.

Equally drinkable and even a few pesos cheaper is Don Simón, a Spanish brand, in a choice of red or white in 1-liter tetrapaks.

In the same vein and price range, Costco sells gallon jugs of a brand called F. Chauvenet, made in Baja California where something of a Mexican wine industry is developing.  I haven’t tried the white but the red is acceptable although I prefer the other two.

In the ~$7 range, another Baja winery, L.A. Cetto, makes some really decent white wines, although I don’t care for their reds.

The most widely available Mexican wine is Padre Kino, which I find totally undrinkable.  The red is SWEET (horrors!).  I’ve used the white to cook mussels in with okay results.  It comes in cute reusable carafes and the last time I noticed the price it was over ~$4 a liter.

Sherry

Mexico only produces sweet sherry (vino tipo Jerez) that I know of.  I’ve gotten quite fond of it.  Mexican Jerez is dark and syrupy with distinct raisny overtones.  The two brands I’ve found are Valle Redondo and Tres Coronas.  Both are cheap.  It’s really too sweet for most cooking purposes, so I substitute white wine for that.  For dry or medium sherries, Spanish brands can be had for a price.

Liqueurs

Indigenous varieties of sweet stuff are plentiful.  My favorite is Mexico’s version of Cointreau, Controy, which is fabulous (actually tastes closer to Grand Marnier) and a mere ~$8 a bottle.   Also try Rompope (many different brands available), a delicious eggnog-type liqueur, and Don Pancho, an excellent coffee liqueur a fraction of the price of the famous brand.  In addition to the big national brands, there are many small producers of licores made from locally grown items such as quince (membrillo), almonds, etc., whose products can be found in tourist shops, street markets, and local liquor stores.

Beer

If you’re a beer drinker, this is a good place.  Mexico produces dozens of great beers.  Not the cheapest thrill on the block, but good value.

Hard Stuff

If it’s tequila you’re looking for, we are in Valhalla here.  I personally never got into the tequila mystique, it’s all gasolina to me, so I only buy the cheapest, in big plastic jugs.  Rum (destilado de caña) is similarly available at dirt-cheap prices.  I’ve been experimenting with homemade liqueurs using it as a base.  Several brands of Mexican brandy are produced in varying price ranges and quality.

Other types of hard liquor, such as vodka, bourbon, etc. are mostly imported and therefore relatively costly.

Moonshine

A tradition of self-sufficiency persists in Mexico, as evidenced by a wealth of home- and locally-produced drinkables ranging from Sonoran bacanora (a tequila variant) to fizzing batches of tepache (a kind of pineapple wine) ladled from five-gallon buckets by roadside vendors (highly recommended).

¡Salud y felices fiestas!

When we were rebuilding this house last year (and freezing our butts off in a dismal, damp-walled rental), a big preoccupation was how to heat the place in the winter.   After some research, we decided to build a rocket stove in the living room and a corner fireplace in one of the bedrooms.  Now we’re living with these decisions, and the results are decidedly mixed.

The Rocket Stove

I found out about this concept looking around on the internet, and being a big fan of all things innovative and sustainable, promoted it enthusiastically to the Mexigringo, who I must say looked on it with a rather jaundiced eye from the first.  But I persisted.  It promised one-third the fuel consumption of a conventional wood-stove, clean and thorough wood consumption, a warm, comfy, and architecturally appealing adobe bench to read and snooze on, plus, cheap and easy assembly!  What more could you ask?

It really did seem like a great solution.  We wanted something efficient because of our large space and high ceilings.  Wood is available but not plentiful here, so the promise of low fuel consumption appealed.  The back of the how-to-do-it book asserted that it could be thrown together in a weekend by anyone with minimal building experience.  And, we already had a huge pile of adobe construction rubble on site which could be recycled into the bench.

So we built it and now it’s winter and we’re using it.  And have somewhat sadly concluded that doing this in Mexico was way more trouble than it was worth.

For starters, the materials, so easily obtainable and often free in the states, ranged from difficult to impossible to find here and involved literally weeks of searching hither and yon.  They were also expensive.  Nothing goes to waste in Mexico:  An old barrel is not a throwaway item but a valuable asset to be parted with only in exchange for cash.  The only freebies were the dirt and sand, which are plentiful locally.  There were no “cheapies.”

The stove took us WAY longer than a weekend to build, more like three weeks all told, and that’s not counting the bench, which we finished months later.  The book’s breezy assertion that any idiot could do this left us feeling like, well, lower than idiots.  In practice, the how-to instructions often proved vague, contradictory or open to various interpretations, leading to much lost time and interpersonal strain among the construction crew.   At some point we realized that no information was given on how to finish the surface of the bench — that was in another book.  One of our cats decided the unfinished bench was a giant kitty box, and we had to cover it over with tarps and weights.  It was not an easy journey, any of it.

Upon using the stove, it appears to be mostly suitable for colder climates than ours.  It’s meant to be fired up on a daily basis, which warms the adobe bench, which then radiates a steady warmth.  So far this year (which does seem unusually mild) we’ve yet to use it two days running, as we’ve been having chilly days alternating with warm days.  So we haven’t been able to benefit from heated bench effect.

Lastly, the stove is temperamental (as the book more than adequately warns).  It has lots of personality, and a bit of a personality disorder — if not given abundant attention, it tends to pout and smoke.   If YOU are temperamental too, then this is perhaps not the best stove for you.  On the other hand, if you’re what they call process-oriented — but really REALLY process-oriented — it may be just the thing.

To the stove’s credit, it does take off the chill in a hurry once we light it up.  This in a 12 x 30 ft. room with 14 ft.  ceilings and tons of windows.  Who knows what wonders it might perform in a smaller space?

To sum up, if we had it to do over again, we wouldn’t, not here anyway.  But if I ever found myself mysteriously transplanted to the back woods of Oregon, I’d totally try it again, hopefully with the help of lots of knowledgeable mountain-man types.  Ironically, these heating stoves are a spinoff of a successful cooking stove developed for use in Third World countries with wood depletion problems.   The heater version, however, appears more doable back in The Land of the Affluent.

If you’re interested in learning more about rocket stoves, see the book Rocket Mass Heaters by Ianto Evans and Leslie Jackson, or their website here.

And stay tuned for part 2 of this tale, which has a happier ending…

Most everybody we know belongs to one or the other of these consumer emporia, not because their prices are so great, but because they carry certain items that just can’t be found elsewhere.  The items on our usual list are few but critical:  Kitty litter, olive oil, Parmesan cheese, cod liver oil caps, paper towels.  Sometimes we’ll splurge on giant jars of marinated artichoke hearts, jamon serrano (similar to prosciutto), or the occasional find in the liquor department.

We’ve been bouncing back and forth between the two, being too cheap to join both at $40 a year (that was a year ago, who knows what it might be by now with inflation raging).

We started out at Sam’s, because when we first moved we had a card from the states that worked in Mexico too.  Then last year we were lured to Costco by their fabulous, irresistible deal on jamon serrano.  Sam’s was selling single packets for about ~$12 US, and we discovered Costco had boxes of 10 packets for less than ~$25!  So, no contest, we migrated to Costco.  They also have both 5-liter jugs of regular olive oil, and 2-liter jugs of extra-virgin, whereas Sam’s had only 3-liter jugs of extra-virgin, which I would (extravagantly) use for frying and everything.

However, we’re thinking of migrating back when our card expires, because of the kitty litter problem.  The Costco product is perfumed to the point of inducing nausea, and we’re about ready to renounce our jamon serrano habit to see the last of it.   Another thing I won’t miss is Costco’s wasteful, annoying, mile-long paper towels.

But we will miss the artichoke hearts.  And the 5-liter olive oil.  Maybe we should live dangerously for once and just cough up for membership in both.  The way things are going in the global economy, who knows if they’ll even be around this time next year?

Deciding what to bring and what to leave behind before moving to Mexico was an agonizing process and we certainly didn’t get it right every time.  With the benefit of hindsight, I offer this thought — when in doubt, bring it!  You can always give it away later.  Someone will want, use, and cherish it when you no longer do.

Here are a few items that turned out, sometimes surprisingly, to be a Really Good Idea to bring along.

• Bread machine.  Now defunct, unfortunately, but great while it lasted.  Its importance would depend on what’s available locally, of course.  Where good bakeries were abundant, I still used it occasionally for making whole grain breads which are not so common in Mexico.  In our current remote location, making our own bread is the only option.  Bread machines help with two seasonal problems in breadmaking:  having to light the oven in hot weather, and finding a place for the dough to rise when it’s cold.
• Sheepskin-lined boots.  It may sound incongruous, but I’ve used mine in every place I’ve lived in Mexico except Yucatan.  Unless you are going to the torrid tropics, where maybe you won’t need them, they well might end up be your most prized possession.  Houses in Mexico are of masonry construction, and masonry buildings can be chilly, very chilly, even when it’s a balmy 80 degrees F outside.  Remember that central heating is practically unheard of in Mexico, and most people don’t use space heating either.  Many people warm up by simply going outside and sitting in the sun during the chilly hours.  If you have things to do inside the house, better bring clothes.
• Tools.  All of them.  From chain saws to seam rippers.  You’ll never regret it.
• Hair dryer.  I hate using hair dryers because of the noise they make.  But in winter I use one when it’s just too cold to let my hair air-dry.
• Vacuum cleaner.  I was ready to gleefully leave ours behind (ditto noise objection and also we were not going to have carpets) but the Mexigringo wouldn’t hear of it.  He loves his vacuum.  And it has proved to be infinitely useful in the eternal battle against dust/dirt/cobwebs, as well as for post-DIY cleanups.  Not to mention ash and soot control now we are using a wood-burning fireplace and heating stove.  A canister or shop vac model would be more practical than our upright.
• Pressure cooker.  We didn’t actually bring one but bought it here.  Which was a real hassle finding a stainless steel (as opposed to aluminum) one although we finally located a Spanish-made model for about ~$50 US.  This being Mexico and all, you may find yourself cooking beans a lot, and the pressure cooker significantly reduces time and gas usage.  It’s also dandy for getting tough cuts of meat tender fairly quickly.
• Camp stove with gas cartridges.  This has saved the day many times.  Great for making coffee etc. in semi-camping living conditions, if you’re anticipating any of those.  And an ongoing Good Thing every time the propane tank runs out in mid-dinner preparation.  (Better mid-dinner than mid-shower!)  After you get your two-tank propane setup so you never run out of gas, there’s always camping.
• Coleman lantern with fuel cartridges, flashlights, and LED headlamp.  For power failures.
• Porta-Potty.  We were really happy to have this when working long days on our house with the nearest public bathroom six blocks away.
• Over-the-door towel rack.  Sometimes it’s the little things that mean the most.  This $14 Target item has been our faithful friend through many a hardwareless bathroom.  When there’s no door it will fit on, it will hang happily over the shower curtain rod.   One of those over-the-showerhead hanging soap/shampoo racks is a useful companion piece.
• Stuff-holders, i.e. any item that can hold a bunch of other items.  Our most beloved stuff-holder is a hand-me-down kitchen counter/table from Target with decorative metal trim around the sides off of which pots can be hung with S-hooks.  Other examples include a wine rack with small drawer (full of keys) which holds the water dispenser, a futon platform with 14 drawers underneath, all manner of little rolling wire carts, hanging fruit baskets and pot racks, and bookcases.  Mexican houses are devoid of built-in storage features of any kind, and if like most gringos you are overburdened with stuff, you will be needing a place to put it all.
• Expanding curtain rods and assorted lengths of cloth.  Instant curtains!  Can also be used in doorways.
• Jar of white tempera paint and brush.  Makes quick, cheap frosted glass equivalent.  You can paint windowpanes with this to have privacy while still letting in light.  Good solution for bathrooms and anyplace you might not want a curtain.
• Old-style phone, i.e. non-electronic model.  It will work during power failures.