Sordid Exuberance

[ted]

Oaxaca city has been an exercise in culinary decadence. The markets are fantastic, the street vendors delicious and my Spanish is sufficient to interact with anyone. I spend half of every day wandering through the markets and indulging.

I have eaten chapolinas, dried grasshoppers seasoned with chili and salt, maize con cacao, a sweetened corn drink with cocoa butter fat in it, tamales, corn meal mixed with beans or chilis or meat and cooked inside corn husks or banana leaves, aguas frescas, sweetened drinks with fruits or even squash and tuber flavors.

Endless varieties of fruit: tunitas, tiny cactus fruits with brilliantly purple sweet flesh, guyabas, creamy, sweet guavas, guanabana, sugary melons that taste something like tutti-fruity bubble gum, zapotles, little brown fruits that ripen to taste like maple syrup, and many others I do not even know the names of.

The choices in ice cream are bizarre and staggering. Burnt milk. Cheese. Nut. Tequila. Mango with chili. rice. Tamarind. Many more. The markets are endless displays of fresh fruit, vegetables, snacks, tortillas, shoes, flowers, meat, clothes, porno comics, hardware, blenders, tequila, ice cream, repeat.

I sample mezcals - similar to tequila but made not just from the giant blue Agave but the local Maguey cactus as well. I find one that is both cheap ($8 US), smooth, smoky, and rich. I finally sample pulque, a strange drink that derives from the tequila making process and often serves as a beer substitute. It is milky-white, frothy, foamy, bubbly, mildy sweet, yet sour and somewhere between lemonade and tequila. I estimate it to be no more than 3% alcohol and consider it to be a fine beer substitute as most beer in Mexico is both pricey and vile. I drink cups of the cactus-beer as we wander through the market.

The ramshackle tarp-tents are low and shade us from the brutal midday heat (April is the hottest month as the summer rains have not yet started). The tallest people around, we duck under racks of tapes, shirts, religious propaganda. We lose ourselves in the endless areas of vendors and makeshift kitchens, comedors, where you can stop and eat amongst the cluster fuck madness. I love it. I breathe in smells of people, fruit, tlayudas - giant stuffed and grilled tortillas that seem to be the local specialty. It smells of people, then overripe mangos, then sewage. I am buying things I don't recognize: plant, animal, I can't always tell. I put things in my mouth. Everything is delightful. I am in a different reality, entirely unrelated to my pulque and mezcal intake. I am like a child whose only means to investigate and discover the essences of objects around me is to pick them up and put them in my mouth.

I am going to miss the reliable supply of cheap, easy, fast and delicious tacos and tamales.

[QuantumBalance]