foooood

Overall, I'm a pretty big fan of food. I like eating it, growing it, smelling it, and cooking it. HOWEVER, I have finally come to experience some of the more.... interesting food choices of Mexico. 

Weird food #1--->  I don't like my food too spicy, but I like it to the point where you if you wait too long between bites, your mouth starts to feel fire-y, so you have to keep eating so your mouth is hot, but not too hot. So far, pretty much all salsa I've tried in Mexico has been too hot for me to want to put it on my food, and if I did it anyways, I didn't enjoy it. But, I don't like how limited my food choices have been because of food being hot, so I've been trying to adjust my taste buds to like spicy food and be able to tolerate it by eating hotter things, more frequently. Well, my host parents like to snack on these lovely (looking) little green chiles with dinner every night. 

So, one night I asked if they were hot, and my parents answered yes. I decided that I was gonna be tough and eat something even the Mexicans thought was hot, and I was gonna deal with it, no problem. ha. Dang that pride gets ya. I asked if I could have one. They looked at me slightly concerned, but said yes. I grabbed one and popped it into my mouth. To say it exploded with fire, would be putting it mildly (pun intended). I started coughing and drinking lemonade (not the best choice) and my host parents started laughing. There was bread right in front of me, but unfortunately I was already way too full to be able to eat it. Even drinking milk made my stomach want to explode. You could say that my mouth was burning for the rest of the night, past the time that I finally went to sleep. Mexicans are crazy! Needless to say, I don't think I'll be eating one of those again. What kind of pepper was it you ask? A Serrano pepper, which is ranked somewhere between a jalapeno and a habanero just in case you were wondering.

Weird food #2---> It was a seemingly normal Friday night (9/7/12). The family was going out for dinner and I was excited! My family doesn't really eat dinner the way most people do.... So far it seems like we either get tacos or dinner is bread with coffee (chocolate milk or coca). This happens frequent enough that I even get really excited about tacos because it's a real meal. Anyways, so we went out for dinner. My host mom asked me what I wanted. I said pollo y queso (chicken and cheese) empanadas. Sounds pretty good right? She writes down the order. The waitress comes back. They talk. It sounds like they're out of something, but I'm really not sure. Oh! Also, when I say "going out for dinner", I mean we drove to a street, and walked past a fryer into a section of someones house. Anyways, I get my food. It's deep fried goodness. I have some chicken, have some cheese, have something else. I wasn't quite sure what it was, but I saw a bunch of veggies in a bowl on the counter so I thought it might an egg roll type thing. The texture was a little weird, but it didn't taste too bad so I just kept eating it like nothing was out of the ordinary. The next morning, my host mom asks me how I liked my food the night before. We talk about it and I say it was pretty good. She then goes on to tell me that that weird one that I ate just happened to be pig brain. My reaction: "PIG BRAIN?!?" She didn't tell me at the time, because she knew if I knew what it was I wouldn't eat it. Well played mom....

Weird food #3---> After church one Sunday, the Sunday after I ate pig brain to be exact (9/9/12) I went back up to my family's land with them. On the way back home, we stopped on the side of the road and got a drink. They started talking in Spanish and I heard the word alcohol, and then they handed me a white milky substance. My family knows my standards so I trusted my mom not to give me something alcoholic, but when I tasted it, it was so nasty I had to wonder, so I asked just to be safe. It wasn't alcoholic, just fermented fruit. Lovely. They added strawberry soda to it, which made it a little better, but it was still pretty gross. Then I saw something on a table across the way and asked what it was. Worms. Of course. And after I asked, they naturally told me I had to try it. With a bunch of Mexicans watching, I ate my first worm.... and wasn't a fan. It didn't taste too bad... it was the earthy aftertaste that was so gross. It's hollow when you eat which is a little weird. They toast them and add salt. It's kind of like a chip I guess.... That's how they described it. It's really lovely.

What it looks like cooked................................. and not so cooked.

Random side note: my family got a "new" car! I miss the really nice one that they sold... but, c'est la vie. you can't win them all. This is much more mexican!