shoestring gringa

One adaptation I have not been able to make since living in Mexico is the midday dinner hour.  People eat their main meal around noon here.  I’ve tried to make the switch several times, but have never made it stick.

It’s ironic, because for years I yearned to be able to dine at midday.  It seemed (it still seems) so much healthier to consume your biggest meal when you have some chance of burning it off, rather than a couple hours before falling into bed.

But I just haven’t been able to do it.

Well, that’s not totally true.  It’s no problem if I’m not doing the cooking.  When the Mexigringo was fixing up our casita in Yucatan, we ate every day at a cocina economica around 2 p.m., and had either nothing or takeout pizza in the evening, having no cooking facilities where we were staying.  I lost 14 pounds in six weeks.  I was overjoyed to say the least.

Eating at midday is fine.  Cooking at midday is the problem.  In order to serve dinner by 2 p.m., I need to start preparations at noon, and that’s assuming I’ve managed to take out some meat to defrost at the crack of dawn, an hour at which the only foodstuffs I care to contemplate are coffee and bread.  It’s really hard for me to work up the necessary enthusiasm so early in the day.  Conditioned by years of minimal lunches while working, and having breakfasted at 8 or 9, not 5 a.m., motivation is severely lacking.  Also, being vegetarian by inclination (though no longer in practice being married to the Mexican carnivore), dealing with raw meat that early in the day grosses me out entirely.

I’ve also found that eating at midday trashes my productivity, if trying to accomplish anything other than cooking and housework.  When I was painting, I worked best painting steadily from breakfast until 5 or 6 p.m., with a couple of quick dashes to the kitchen for some fruit or chocolate.  Having to drop everything between noon and 3 is fatal, and chances of returning to work afterward are slim at best.  After eating a big meal in the middle of the day, what I most want is a siesta, preferably in a hammock.  Failing that, I crave the forbidden pleasure of strong coffee to carry on.

And then, we’ve found that half the time we get hungry again in the evening, having given the old stomach a workout at noon.  It’s the road to ruin for sure.

And so we continue to dine at 6 or 7, four years on.  It’s hardly ideal.  Our health probably suffers.  And, worse, people who are going to drop in tend to do so around 5 p.m.  Fortunately for us, this doesn’t happen very often, but even so.  Every so often — usually after an unexpected run of these ill-timed social calls — I resolve to mend my ways, and get with the local program.   But it never lasts.  And in the end, I’ve decided that maybe some things are just not worth changing.  I’m never going to be at ease pounding cutlets at noon, or walking on cobblestone streets in three-inch heels.  And you know, it’s ok.  So be it.