Don Concho

I would like to tell you about a very good friend. His name is Concepción Cisneros Rangel (cohn-sep-see-OHN, sees-NEY-rohs, RAHN-hell) but everyone calls him Don Concho (Dohn COHN-choh). The name "Concho" is a hypocoristic or "pet name" for the name Concepción which can be either a man's name or a woman's name in Mexico. A woman by the name of Concepción would be called "Conchita". His parents gave him the name Concepción when he was born on December 8th, 1929 because December 8th is the feast of the Immaculate Conception. Concho is our neighborhood's "velador" or watchman. He could be compared to what they call a "superintendent" or "doorman" in the apartment buildings of New York. He watches over us and our homes from about 9:30 in the morning to about 8:pm, six days a week. When we arrive or depart he opens and closes our gates for us. He takes deliveries for us, waters our flowers for us, shoos away people who don't belong, and keeps us informed as to what is happening in general in our little community. Each of the neighbors share the cost of his salary which amounts to about eighty dollars per week plus lunch and soft drinks. I am really lucky because I live in the middle of the block and I have a nice shade tree at the edge of the property and Don Concho has made that his duty station.

My friend is an amazing fellow. He is seventy-eight years old and as spry as a seventeen year old. He has been at this job for the past thirteen years and has hardly missed a day with the few exceptions that he has been to the doctor. He is so healthy that he doesn't see a doctor very much and more often than not he uses herbal medicine to cure whatever ails him. He comes from a nearby community called Lo de Juárez which is part of the Municipality of Irapuato (State of Guanajuato) and is home to about 3,949 inhabitants. It was formally a large estate or "rancho" that was later turned into an "ejido" or collective farm. Don Concho had a wife named Josefa Villanueva but she died after a long illness about twenty years ago. He has three married daughters who live in Lo de Juárez and they fuss over him just as much if not more than my neighbors and I. His daughters names are Antonia, Fernanda, and Manuela and they each have several children and many of their children have children so Don Concho is the family patriarch. I appreciate this man so much that I just had to write about him. He is my councilor on everything from herbal medicine to weather, religion, food, fiestas, politics, and everything else imaginable. He reads the paper every morning while things are still quiet and he always knows what's going on. Even the little kids sense that he is special and they always greet him with affection and respect. I have never seen him angry and he continually strives to keep peace in his heart. You will always find him at the seven o'clock Sunday morning mass where he takes communion and I am sure that he prays for everyone that he knows and also many others whom he doesn't even know. Who says that angels don't walk among us? I thank God for Don Concho. I hope he lives to be at least one hundred years.

Green toothpaste anyone?

I have had a number of conversations with people regarding problems with teeth and dental hygiene in general in Mexico. Many people here have very bad teeth and it is not the fault of Mexican dentists who as a group, are in my opinion, excellent. I have had dental care done here with very satisfactory results and at a very reasonable cost. Personally, I think the main problems with teeth are related to poverty, diet, and education. However, there was one particular item that piqued my interest during conversations with several different people. Older folks who come from small villages or "ranchos" as they are known around here talk of a plant that their mothers taught them to identify and chew to help them clean their teeth. It was supposed that the chlorophyll in the plant would aid in preventing tooth decay. They call the plant "Siempreviva" which means "always lives" in Spanish. I checked it out and found that it is a common succulent plant indigenous to Mexico and in English it is called "Green Cockscomb" or "Greater Mexican Stonecrop". Its Latin name is Sedum Praealtum. It has no real medicinal value except that of a mild soothing agent for inflamed areas similar to other succulent plants such as "Aloe Vera". Perhaps it would help sooth a toothache but I have found nothing to indicate that it will prevent tooth decay.

I then wondered about the name "Siempreviva" and where it came from. It turns out that there is another plant whose Latin name is Sempervivum. The Latin word "Sempervivum" means the same as the Spanish word "Siempreviva" (always lives). It is indigenous to Southern Europe and the Middle East, especially Iran. There are various forms of Sempervivum and one variety even grows in the Swiss Alps. Sempervivum Tectorum is a plant that is well known in both Europe and the United States. It's English name is "Common Houseleek" but most people know it by its nickname "Hen and Chicks". The suffix "Tectorum" is taken from the Latin "tectum", meaning roof. Some say that The Romans planted them on their roofs to guard against lightning. Others say that say that The Romans planted them on their roofs to plug leaks. Maybe that is where the name "Houseleek" came from but don't quote me on that. It is just wild speculation on my part. Both Siempreviva (Sedum Praealtum) and Sempervivum (Sempervivum Tectorum) can often be found in the same nursery or even the same back yard as they have both become popular ornamental plants. They also both belong to the same family, Crassulaceae. They both have an astringent quality and contain the same mild healing agent except that Sempervivum contains about twice as much as Siempreviva. They don't look exactly alike but they do have many similar qualities. Apparently, somewhere down the line Siempreviva adopted the Spanish version of the name of its cousin Sempervivum.

Well, you might ask, why do the people chew Siempreviva if it doesn't actually prevent tooth decay? I imagine that the perception of the effectiveness of chewing the plant to prevent cavities was stronger than the reality. However, the people that I talked to told me that the poor country people always seemed to have better teeth than their wealthier city cousins and why would this be if it wasn't because they chewed Siempreviva? Well, I don't know for sure but I have a hunch that it was because of their diet. The poorer country people didn't have things like sugar, carbonated beverages, or white bread in their diet. This could have a lot to do with preventing tooth decay. When I first heard about this "miracle" plant I thought, "Wow! I could gather up this plant and turn it into green toothpaste and sell it over the Internet and make a fortune". I guess now that idea is out the window. Oh, well, back to the drawing board. By the way…don't forget to brush your teeth.

Climbing Iztaccihuatl

Gary Dennessis a British expatriate living and working in Mexico City and teaching Business English to Mexican students at their place of work. He has been in Mexico since May 2005, and loves the country, the food and the people. He is trying to raise some money for a cause that he believes in called "Wildcoast" which is a US based charity that helps to protect and revitalize coastal areas of the US and Latin America, and the wildlife found there. They have a particularly strong campaign to help sea turtles. Wildcoast protects and preserves coastal ecosystems and wildlife in the Californias and Latin America by building grassroots support, conducting media campaigns and establishing protected areas. To promote the cause and raise some money for them he intends to climb Iztaccihuatl, the third highest mountain peak in Mexico at 17,126 feet. He is looking for someone with experience to make the climb with him. Even if you aren't a climber you may be interested in following his adventures. I am an arm chair mountain climber myself. That is about the only way they are going to get me up a mountain...by carrying me up in my armchair. Here is the link: Climbing Izta 2008

The coming storm…

There is a legend in Mexico and the southwestern United States about a woman weeping for her children. She is called “La Llorona” (lah yoh-ROH-nah) which means "the crying woman" or “the weeper”. She is the ghost of a woman crying for her dead children that she herself drowned. Her appearances sometimes presage death or disasters involving water. When people here in Mexico, especially the older folks, see the growing dark rain clouds on the horizon that signal a big storm is approaching they will nod their heads toward it in warning and say softly, “Ya viene la Llorona” or “Already the weeper is coming”. Lately I have observed some alarming trends that indicate that there is a large storm brewing not only on the Mexican horizon but also on the world horizon and many people are starting to realize it but mostly all we can do as look at each other and nod toward impending gloom and whisper “Here comes the Weeper”. Perhaps we ought to be saying “Here comes the Reaper” instead.

As almost everyone realizes by now we live in a global economy that runs on oil. An optimist will tell you that peak oil production hasn’t yet arrived and that oil production won’t begin to decline for another ten years or so and by then there will be major investments in new technology to avert an energy crisis. A pessimist will tell you that peak oil production is occurring now and civilization as we know it is on the brink of a precipitous decline. I happen to be neither an optimist nor a pessimist. I tend to think of myself (like many people do) as a pragmatic realist. I believe that we are entering the period when oil production is about to decline and other energy producing technologies are not yet developed or deployed to the degree where they can take up the slack. In short, I believe that we are in for some rough times in the near future. The poor will feel it first and indeed they already feel it. To the wealthy it is currently just an annoyance but by and by they will soon realize that human beings are all in this together and even if they do not experience a decline in their lifestyle in regard to food, clothing, and housing they will definitely experience a decline in the general quality of their lives. It will become harder and harder to enjoy life while more and more people around them are desperate and suffering.

I am one of those people whom God has blessed with opportunity and the ability to take advantage of it. I am neither poor nor wealthy but I live quite comfortably in a nice house and drive a nice car and although my income is modest it is adequate for my modest lifestyle. However, I look around me and see so many people who are not as fortunate as I am and I realize that things that I consider just a nuisance may have very serious consequences for others. On the 6th of October, 2007, I wrote a blog entitled “Tighten your belt” in which I noted that the world grain supply was at the time fifty-seven days. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) currently predicts that this year supplies will plunge to a fifty-three day equivalent…their lowest level in the forty-seven year period for which data exists. That is pretty scary. It suggests that not only will prices become higher but in some areas commodities will become scarce and that will lead to hoarding. Hoarding always leads to even higher prices and further scarcity. For the world’s lower income people this situation does not look good. We can expect to see more starving babies around the world on the nightly news and perhaps even on our local news if things get real bad.

The quality of life issue was brought home to me as I observe more and more people along the highways in Mexico collecting branches and bits of wood that they tie in bundles to the backs of their bicycles. With the price of food rising higher and higher they can not always afford to by sufficient propane gas for cooking. I just had a 30 kilo tank of propane filled last week. It cost me 296.35 pesos which is about $28.67 U.S. for 66 pounds (just under 44 cents per pound). This is not a bad price for propane as long as you have the money to pay for it. If you don’t have the money because of rising food prices what do you do? You either eat food that doesn’t need to be cooked or you get on your bike and go looking for an alternative fuel. One can see that this opens up a whole new spectrum of health and safety issues. Mexico's government is concerned about the impact of soaring food bills. Overall consumer price inflation was 4.95% over the past year, but food price inflation was far higher at 8%. The price for certain items such as cooking oil have risen even higher. About two weeks ago the Mexican government capped prices on foods including cooking oil, beans and other basic food items at least until the end of 2008. It also announced monthly cash payments of 120 pesos ($11.55 U.S.) for the poorest citizens, about 26 million people. This is a start but I’m afraid that it won’t be enough.

What about life in the United States? The people must be facing the same pressures, especially the working poor with families who live paycheck to paycheck and can’t seem to make ends meet. What will happen to them when winter comes? I read somewhere once that the average American is only nine missed meals away from acts of desperation. I hope it doesn’t come to that or else these will be desperate times indeed. As for the rest of the world, what does the crystal ball say? Well, with the world demand for grain growing at 1.2% a year and world grain yield increases growing at only 1.1% a year you really don’t need a crystal ball to make a projection. On top of that the Midwest grain forecasts have been lowered considerable by the recent flooding, we are just entering the hurricane season, and Iran is threatening to close the Straits of Hormuz. To grow more food we need more oil to fuel the tractors and transport vehicles and to make fertilizer. Well…you get the picture. I didn’t want to sound pessimistic but I guess I do. I just hope and pray that the optimists are right this time around. Otherwise Santa Claus is going to be in for some really tough sledding this year.

The White Umbrella

As I reflect upon my time spent living and working in México I get the feeling that history is once again repeating itself or as Yogi Berra of the New York Yankees baseball team once said, "It's like déjà vu all over again". During the past ten years I have witnessed an acceleration of events, almost as if we are being drawn towards the center of a maelstrom. Change is in the air and change is everywhere and as we approach the Mexican bicentennial celebration there is a lot of “fixing up” and “painting over” going on. I guess this isn’t unusual when you look back to the 1976 bicentennial celebration in the United States and consider how much money was spent in order to tidy things up a bit. I remember 1976 just like it was yesterday. The first commercial Concorde flight took off, Apple Computer Company was formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the Viking One Lander successfully landed on Mars, Chairman Mao Zedong of the People's Republic of China died, Jimmy Carter won the U.S. presidential campaign, and the name "Microsoft" was first registered by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. However, since the median age of the population in the U.S. is currently 35 years that means that in 1976 almost half of the people in the U.S weren’t even born yet. On top of that, the median age for the Mexican population is only 25 years so it is probably safe to say that the majority of people here have never witnessed a national event of this magnitude and really have no idea what to expect. Prior to any great national event there seems to be a great urge to “do something” and as the event draws near this feeling is whipped up into a frenzy of activity just like we see now with the upcoming Beijing Olympics. In order to imagine this feeling all you have to do (you older folks that is) is picture the Statue of Liberty completely enclosed in scaffolding. Do you remember the excitement?

I have a modest library of books about Mexican history and from what I glean from them the 1910 Mexican centennial was no exception. One of my favorite books is titled “A White Umbrella in Mexico”. It was written by a very talented and able individual named Francis Hopkinson Smith and “F. Hopkinson Smith”, as he was known professionally, came from a remarkable family. He was named after his great grandfather, Hopkinson Smith, who was a musical composer, writer, politician, and one of the signers of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Although the great grandson Francis Hopkinson Smith came from good stock his father was a scholar not particularly wealthy and Francis could not go to college because of financial difficulties so he rolled up his sleeves and went to work instead for his older brother. Eventually Francis struck out on his own and he and a partner achieved great success in constructing the foundations for light houses, breakwaters, sea walls, and other difficult projects including the foundation for the pedestal upon which rests the aforementioned Statue of Liberty.

Francis took up painting as a hobby and became a very accomplished self taught painter of watercolors. He also discovered a talent for writing and public speaking. As he began to enjoy modest success in his construction engineering career he began to travel to other countries. In 1888 after already having learned to speak Spanish from his travels to Cuba and Spain, he came to Mexico to observe and to paint. One of his many books, “A White Umbrella in Mexico” is a fascinating story of that journey and just like his fabulous watercolors it is like a “snapshot” in time. One of the interesting things that Francis mentions in his book is that he wanted to see Mexico before the man with the brush and the bucket of whitewash arrived. It was during the time during the “porfiriato” leading up to the Mexican centennial and the President/Dictator of Mexico Porfirio Díaz and his band of “Cientificos” and “Wizards of Progress” were trying to convince the industrialized world that Mexico was a good place to invest money. Many old churches, municipal buildings, and other significant places of interest were being gutted, remodeled, and painted over with whitewash.

Whitewash, or “limewash”, as it is also known, is called “lechada de cal” in Spanish. It is nothing more than slaked lime (calcium hydroxide) and water. Other ingredients such as chalk, water glass (sodium silicate), glue, tallow, egg white, cement, salt, soap, milk, flour, earth, and pig's blood are sometimes added. It is a very old method for painting structures and it goes back thousands of years. It is cheap, easy to prepare, and easy to apply. For certain types of porous materials such as adobe and hand made brick, it works much better than modern paint. Whitewash breathes and lets moisture out of the adobe and brick while modern paint traps the moisture in. Whitewash is also a natural fungicide and anti bacterial agent and most creepy crawly type insects hate it. In Mexico whitewash was often made with slaked lime and the juice of the Nopal (prickly pear) cactus which is more of a mucilage than a juice. This made the whitewash hard and shiny and water resistant and less likely to wash off in heavy rains. The problem with whitewash is that it hides the natural patina of buildings and destroys the quaint old character that appeals to tourists. William Dean Howells wrote in 1913: “The universal use of limewash (whitewash) gives a uniform tint to the monuments, blunts the lines of the architecture, effaces the ornamentation, and forbids you to read their age…you cannot know the wall of a century ago from the wall of yesterday”. This is exactly what F. Hopkinson Smith was trying to avoid. He wanted to capture the beauty of Mexico before it was covered over with whitewash.

Almost every time I go to the historical cities of Guanajuato, Dolores Hidalgo, and San Miguel de Allende in the “Cuna de Independencia” (Cradle of Independence) I see evidence that the “man with the bucket of whitewash” has risen from his slumbers and is working his vengeance on anything and everything that looks “old”. Of course, there is a difference of opinion between native Mexican residents and many of the interlopers who come here from other lands. The Mexican people are proud of their heritage and want to show it off in the best possible light and to them that means the clean and shiny look that the paint that is now used instead of whitewash gives their village or town. Sadly enough, the modern paints are going to do more harm than good. The oldest buildings will deteriorate much faster under paint than they would under whitewash and besides, with whitewash there are no V.O.C.’s (Volatile Organic Compounds) to deal with. White wash is a natural product. In any case, I don’t think Mexico will ever be the same again and I am so thankful to have had the chance to see it before the man with the bucket of whitewash returned. I tip my hat to Francis Hopkinson Smith. The likes of him will probably never come again either. I just wish that I could paint and write half as well as he did.

The looming candle crisis…

I learned recently that there is a shortage of paraffin wax for candle making in Mexico. Apparently several major international producers of paraffin wax for candles have gone out of the candle wax business. No doubt this has something to do with the global oil situation in general. This shortage couldn’t come at a worse time because this is the candle making season in Mexico in anticipation for the increase in demand for candles for the Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) observances in early November and the Adviento (Advent) and Posada (Pilgrimage) season leading up to Navidad (Christmas). This is definitely not good news in Mexico and is akin to adding insult to injury to many poor Mexican families. Life is tough enough with the rise in food prices and essential items like gas for cooking and fuel for cars and trucks. Now there may not be enough affordable good quality candles. What next? The end of this year already looks to be pretty dark and gloomy in my crystal ball.

My wife Gina tells me that some of the poorer country people still use tallow candles. Tallow is rendered from beef fat and is called “sebo” in Spanish. They obtain beef fat from the butcher and put it in a big pot with water and cook it over a fire until all of the tallow is rendered out and floats to the top. Then they let it cool until they can skim off the tallow. Then they melt the tallow and repeatedly dip strings into it to build up layers of tallow until they have candles. This is the same way that the early settlers made tallow candles. They aren’t very good for lighting. They are too soft, messy, smelly, and smoky. Gina told me that she thinks that some of the cheap paraffin candles on the market must have tallow in them because they are so smoky. I looked in to that, however, and I think that tallow and paraffin do not readily mix and the smoke is probably due to cheap paraffin called semi-refined paraffin. I also learned that many candles now come from Russia, India, and China and have certain percentages of low cost filler substances in them to make them cheaper and they are somewhat smoky.

About sixty percent of the world’s production of paraffin goes into candle making and over the last year the price of paraffin has almost doubled. For many of the world’s poor, this is a definite adverse quality of life issue. In many underdeveloped countries the electricity supply is subject to frequent outages and people depend upon candles more than on flashlights for emergency lighting. It is also a health issue. The homes can be very small and yet contain a multitude of people and there are probably some negative health issues from breathing the smoke of inferior candles. There are some alternatives of course but they are all expensive. First of all there are beeswax candles, the majority of which are seventy percent beeswax and thirty percent paraffin. Not much help there especially with a bee shortage on top of a paraffin shortage. Wax from soybeans is a good alternative but because the price of soybeans is being elevated by the biodiesel industry there is no help there either. There are other waxes derived from vegetables and some waxes derived from coal but they are either too expensive, inappropriate, or unavailable in sufficient quantities at the present time.

I learned that the word “paraffin” was coined by German chemist Karl von Reichenbach (1788-1869) from the Latin words “parum” (not very, too little) and “affinis” (associated with) because paraffin is chemically not closely related to other substances. Later on this led to some confusion. Paraffin wax is different than “illuminating paraffin” or “paraffin oil”. Both substances belong to the family of chemicals called “alkanes” and are made up of long strings of carbon and hydrogen molecules. Their physical properties are much different from one another and in North America illuminating paraffin is called “kerosene” and is used as a liquid fuel. In Great Britain and in many former British colonies kerosene is called paraffin and if you mean wax then you must say “paraffin wax”. This leads to another environmental issue. In many areas of Africa and in parts of Asia the people use kerosene which they call “illuminating paraffin” for heating, lighting and cooking. Because kerosene was relatively cheap it was the only alternative to cutting down all the trees for fuel. With the rising price of petroleum products in general the price of kerosene has risen beyond the reach of many poor people and out of desperation they have returned to burning wood. This can only lead to further ecological problems.

The current world energy shortage may be just a nuisance to some people. They have access to multiple sources of energy and probably always will. They may have to pay more for it but they won’t do without. There are other people to whom the energy shortage may soon become a matter of life and death. I am hoping and praying that this crisis gets resolved sooner rather than later. After all, we are all God’s children, the rich and the poor alike, and everyone should have access to a bit of light to hold off the darkness and the things that go “bump” in the night.

For those of us who care about all of the brethren I repeat the words of Mathew 5:16, "Let your light shine before men, that they may see your fine works and give glory to your Father who is in the heaven:"

This little light o' mine, I'm goin' let it shine,
This little light o' mine, I'm goin' let it shine,
This little light o' mine, I'm goin' let it shine,
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

Is nothing sacred?

Poor Mexico! The longer that I live here the more I learn about things that were discovered here but were usurped by others for power, glory, and most of all, profit. Chocolate, which originated in Mexico, is a good example. Today I learned with some chagrin that Mars, Incorporated, the world’s largest maker of chocolate, has embarked on a program to decode the cocoa genome. This is part of a five-year, ten million dollar project to be undertaken with the US Department of Agriculture and IBM. The genome is the hereditary information of an organism encoded in its DNA. By analyzing the approximate 400 million base pairs in the DNA that make up the hereditary information in the seed of a cacao tree, Mars hopes to track down the cocoa flavor genes. I cannot believe that their main motive is not to find a way to scientifically manipulate the taste or even worse...make artificial chocolate! I imagine that in this world of corporate behemoths being the biggest chocolate manufacturer in the world isn’t good enough. They want to find out how to get us to eat even more of their chocolate in order to guarantee that they stay ahead of their biggest rivals, Hershey and Barry Callebaut. What is even more interesting is that the three dominant producers of the cocoa beans from which chocolate is made are Barry Callebaut, Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland Company. Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland Company also dominate the corn growing industry and corn (maize) is another foodstuff that originated in Mexico. Most of the cocoa beans, about seventy percent of the world’s supply, now come from small farmers in Africa who toil under harsh conditions and reap very little recompense for their efforts. The word "chocolate" comes from the Aztecs of Mexico, and is derived from the Nahuatl word xocolatl which is a combination of the words, xocolli, meaning "bitter", and atl, which is "water". The ‘cocoa beans”, or seeds of the cacao tree, have an intense bitter taste, and must be fermented to develop the flavor. In the land of the Aztecs (and Mayans) chocolate was consumed in a bitter, spicy drink containing maize and flavored with vanilla, chili pepper, and achiote (annatto). Oh, by the way, the vanilla bean is another thing that originated in Mexico. The Aztecs called the bean tlilxochitl, or "black flower", after the mature bean, which shrivels and turns black shortly after it is picked. Today, the majority of the world's vanilla is produced by other poor people in a small region of Madagascar, an island in the Indian Ocean. Of course, Mars says that their main focus in spending all that time and money on the cocoa genome project is to help the poor African farmers increase their yields. Hmmmm…yeah, right! I just hope that the results of this effort also help the poor African farmers to increase the size of their pocketbooks. Until that happens I can just picture Xochiquetzal, the Aztec goddess of both fertility and “xocolatl” weeping bitter tears into her chocolate.

Chongos Zamoranos

There is a city in the State of Michoacán named Zamora where they make a wonderful traditional desert dish called “chongos zamoranos”. The word “chongos” means “curds” and chongos zamoranos is a sort of sweet cottage cheese. It is made from milk and cinnamon and sugar and it is very well known in Mexico. It was supposedly invented by a nun in a convent who needed to salvage some milk that had gone sour and had begun to separate into curds and whey. I noticed that there are all kinds of recipes for chongos zamoranos on the Internet and most of them use rennet which is called “cuajo” (KWAA-hoh) in Spanish and comes from the fourth stomach of an unweaned calf (yuck!). Some of these recipes are quite complicated and can take hours and hours to prepare. My “suegra” (SWAY-gruh) or “mother-in-law” Carmelita makes a very tasty chongos zamoranos that is easy to prepare, and does not use rennet. I will share her recipe with you. She won’t mind. If you were here she would make some for you herself.

You start out with three liters of whole milk. You can use whole milk that you buy in cartons at the “sooper” (supermarket) or you can use “leche bronca de vaca” which is the fresh whole unpasteurized and unhomogenized milk that the man who removed it from the cow brings to your door before it even cools. That is what Carmelita uses and it makes the best chongos. Also, whether or not you are a nun you can use milk that has turned sour and has already begun to separate. If you use fresh milk you must add one quarter teaspoon of baking soda to the milk and you better not forget to do this. The next step is to heat the milk (fresh or sour) almost to boiling for about a half an hour while stirring constantly so that it doesn’t burn, and it will separate. After it has separated draw off about one half cup of the whey (called “suera” in Spanish) and discard. Add two sticks of cinnamon (“canela” in Spanish) and about a cup of natural sugar (partially refined sugar). Heat and stir for another half hour and add more sugar to taste…up to about a half cup. Keep on heating and moving the chongos around until the curds are nice and firm. It shouldn't take more than about fifteen minutes. By now the curds should be a nice beige color and the remaining whey should be a very light colored syrup. Turn off the heat, remove the spent cinnamon sticks, and let the chongos cool to room temperature. That is the best time to eat it when it will be at its flavorful best. That’s all there is to it. The stirring part is a little tiresome but believe me it is well worth the effort.

There are several brands of canned chongos. You can see some illustrations below. I have never tried them because I shudder to think about what Carmelita would do to me if she caught me eating canned chongos. I am not sure but I think it may be a cardinal sin. However, if you really want to know what chongos zamoranos is all about I think in all fairness I should direct you to the City of Zamora, Michoacán because after all…that is their claim to fame.

Cebadina revisited...

Not long ago I posted an item named “The Quest for Cebadina” and I thought that I had put that puppy to bed but I have stumbled across several points that I missed on the first go-around so I am making this addendum in order to “hoe to the end of the row” before quitting the field.

The first item that I would like to mention regarding cebadina is “tamarindo” (tamarind). I have encountered a number of variations on the definition of Cebadina. Some of them say that Cebadina is a combination of barley water, jamaica (red hibiscus), tamarind, and pineapple to which is added a small amount of bicarbonate of soda to make it fizz. Other definitions don’t mention barley but mention pineapple vinegar. All of them, however, mention both jamaica and tamarind. The other day I was researching a Mexican product called “Sal de Uvas Picot” and noted that it used tartaric acid to react with bicarbonate of soda in order to effervesce. I also noted that tartaric acid was one of the first chemicals to be used in making baking powder. There are only a few natural major sources for tartaric acid other than grapes but it just so happens that one of those sources is tamarind. The tartaric acid is what gives tamarind the “tart” taste that makes it a favorite for use in various types of sauces including, believe it or not, Worcestershire Sauce. If cebadina contained a sufficient amount of tamarind there would be no need to add vinegar in order to have a reaction with bicarbonate of soda. The tamarind and the bicarbonate of soda should be enough to make the cebadina fizz. Since I will probably never be sure exactly what is or what was in cebadina I can only speculate that once upon a time there was a theoretical traditional drink called cebadina that contained barley water as a base, jamaica for color, tamarind for acid, pineapple to counteract the tartness of the tamarind, and bicarbonate of soda to react with the tartaric acid of the tamarind and make the whole concoction fizz.

I also came across an item regarding Bromo Seltzer, which effervesces similar to Sal de Uvas Picot with the exception that it uses citric acid to react with the bicarbonate of soda instead of tartaric acid and also contains an analgesic. Bromo Seltzer was originally manufactured by the Emerson Company and in the late 1950’s as part of Warner Lambert Pharmaceuticals they came out with a product for kids named “Fizzies”. I remember Fizzies quite well. They were tablets containing bicarbonate of soda, citric acid, a coloring agent, a flavoring agent, and a sweetener. When you dropped a Fizzies tablet in water it would effervesce and you could instantly turn a glass of water into a glass of bubbling soda pop…in theory that is. What I remember about Fizzies is that they were a lot of fun to fool around with but they didn’t taste very good. You could still taste the bicarbonate of soda. That is the same problem that I experienced with cebadina and, now that I think of it…cebadina does taste a lot like Fizzies! They were both popular drinks during the same era and the attractions for both of them were the novelty and the bubbles. Fizzies came in several different fruit flavors, such as orange and grape, along with traditional soda flavors such as root beer and were usually sold in packets of eight tablets that cost around 20 cents. Unfortunately for millions of Fizzies fans, the last packet of Fizzies came off the line in 1969. The chemists at Emerson Drug Company had used a form of artificial sweetener called cyclamates. Cyclamates were the only artificial sweeteners at that time capable of forming a stable bond with the other chemicals used to create Fizzies. Tests performed on rats during the 1960’s established a link between cyclamates and certain cancers, which led to a permanent ban on cyclamates in the United States. For a time Fizzies were sold unsweetened with instructions to add one spoonful of sugar to the glass of water with every Fizzies tablet but that turned out to be very impractical and Fizzies eventually fizzled out. Why didn’t they put the sugar right into the tablet? It turns out that to sweeten a glass of water with a tablet containing sugar as well as the ingredients to color it, flavor it, and make it fizz would require too big a tablet. A more intense sweetener was needed. After the introduction of NutraSweet to the sweeteners market, the Fizzies brand was resurrected in the mid-1990’s by Premiere Innovations, Inc. It wasn’t available for long though and the company just disappeared. Fizzies are now back on the market again since 2006 and are available in seven flavors…sour apple, lemon-lime, root beer, cherry, orange, blue razz and fruit punch. They are manufactured by Amerilab Technologies in Plymouth, Minnesota (www.fizzies.com/). In their present form, they are sweetened with a mixture of sorbitol, acesulfame potassium and sucralose. The scary part is that they now cost about four dollars for a packet of eight tablets as opposed to twenty cents per packet when they first came out in 1957. Back then gasoline was about twenty cents per gallon and now gasoline is around four dollars per gallon. Hmmm…do you see where this could be going? Conspiracy theory anyone?

In any case, I am finally ready to say goodbye to Cebadina. Our relationship is now officially over. It was fun while it lasted but duty calls and I must seek out other dusty corners in the attic of History to see what I can scrounge up. I am sorry Cebadina. It is time for both of us to move on.

To Hell with the fridge!

Whenever we have some food leftover after cooking and eating, my wife Gina never puts it into the refrigerator until is completely cool. This drives me crazy. I tell her that she should put the food into the refrigerator right away and let it cool there to avoid giving bacteria a chance to grow. She tells me that her mother Carmelita always told her that she should never, ever put warm things into the refrigerator. I asked Carmelita about this and she told me that her mother taught her the same thing. This is incredible because almost fifty years ago in another country and two thousand miles from Irapuato where I now live my mother and I had the same discussion. The reason that the matter came up was on account of chocolate pudding. In those days we made chocolate pudding on the stove. We put some milk in a pan and then added the chocolate pudding mix. Royal Pudding & Pie Filling was our favorite brand. Most American style puddings used some kind of thickener in the form of a starch. The first pudding thickener was Alfred Bird’s cornflour-based custard powder. Traditional English custards used eggs but Alfred’s wife Elizabeth was allergic to eggs so he developed the custard powder just for her. He was also one of the first developers of baking powder because Elizabeth was allergic to yeast. Alfred Bird must have been a really nice man and his wife must have been a very lucky woman to have such a smart cookie around. Later puddings used arrowroot, tapioca (cassava root), or potato starch, etc. In any case, with starch you had to be careful to avoid heating the pudding too much. When the pudding first started to bubble is when you were supposed to remove it from the heat. Royal Pudding used arrowroot which is very sensitive to excessive heat. I can still remember the Royal Pudding jingle:

"Royal Pudding,
It’s the finest one.
When you see the very first bubble,
It’s done, done, done."

The thing is that I really liked the thick skin that formed on top of the pudding when it cooled. To make a really good thick skin you needed to chill the pudding thoroughly and quickly. My mother would never let me put the pudding into the refrigerator to let it cool so I only ate pudding in the winter time when it was cold in Chicago. I would stir the package into the pan of milk heating on the stove and then watch for the first bubble. Then I would pour the heavenly smelling mixture into a glass bowl and set it out on the back porch to cool. Oh, how I loved that pudding! My sister Suzy didn’t like the pudding skin and so I always tried to be nice to her so I could have hers too. I know that I am not alone in this. I suspect that there are a lot of secret pudding skin lovers out there who just won’t admit it.

Anyway, back to my Ma. She overheard me asking my Dad why she was so adamant about not putting warm things in the refrigerator. He started to tell me that he thought it came from a World War II effort to save energy. My Ma interrupted and told us that this practice pre-dated the war and that her mother taught her to never, ever put warm things in the refrigerator. Finally I asked my Aunt Loretta about because she was a few years older than Ma. Aunt Loretta just laughed and said it was because in those days they had an ice box instead of a refrigerator and if you put warm things in the ice box it would melt the ice. I tried to talk to Ma about this but she would have none of it. Her mother told her not to do it and that was that. Same thing with Gina and Carmelita. If Abuelita (grandma) told them not to do it then that is the law. You know what? I decided that when the women are not around I am going to put warm things in the refrigerator anyhow…and to Hell with it!