"If life gives you lemons, make some kind of fruity juice"
--- Conan O'Brien (Television Host & Comedian; 1963 - Present)
This is a continuation of the last blog post because there's just too much to say about Mexican food and drink. This post covers beverages but out of necessity, also discusses food in more detail than the previous post. There's just too much to say about food. The best thing I can recommend is to go and try it out for yourself!
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The Mexican people are very generous. Even when they didn’t have much to give, they always offered more food. We could be served an enormous plate of delicious food and the fact that I could eat it all impressed even me, and then they would always ask if we wanted more.
They wanted to make sure we were fed because we were mere children to them who were doing important and physically demanding work. They expressed it was a privilege and blessing to help missionaries. As such, it was considered impolite to refuse more food because it was taken to mean that you didn’t like the food. We were emotionally obligated to respond, “Un poco más, hermana” (Oon Poh-coh Mahs Ehr-mah-nah) which means, “just a little more, sister” because we didn’t want to eat them out of house and home. Despite asking for only a little more, she'd come back with another loaded plate. Just the same, it was wise to eat as much as you could to get through a hard day of calorie-burning work; you wouldn’t typically eat too much in between lunch appointments unless you found time to cook which we never had or that much food in the fridge.
DRINK
Water is essential, even more so in Mexico. You risked contracting parasites if you consumed tap water. Tap water was only good for washing your hands or the dishes. If you wanted drinking water, you had to stock up. Because water was so important to everything from drinking to cooking, water was stored in large blue containers called “garrafones” (Gah-rrah-fohn-ehs); I think it's a 5-gallon water jug that runs around $10 USD in Utah. Most houses had a metal contraption that allowed the jug to be tipped like a seat on a Ferris wheel without having to support its water weight (See the image to the right). Sometimes special water trucks drove around with faucet attachments that could refill garrafones like a water cooler but most of the time, people had to purchase water from the nearest convenience store. But getting a new garrafón of water required trading in an empty one. The worst part wasn’t paying for water, the worst part was trying to carry the heavy thing home.
Coca-Cola was the go-to drink. Mexican Coca-Cola is purportedly sweeter than American coke because Mexican soda uses cane sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup. Bottles were sold up to three Liters in size which is an absurd amount of sugar. Furthermore, you could find up to five or so different sizes of soda bottles in any store.
Another popular drink was Jamaica (Hah-my-kah) which was water infused with the Hibiscus flower, sort of like an herbal tea, that tasted and looked like watered-down cranberry or grape juice but a little more bitter. If there were lemonade stands in Tamaulipas, I bet they'd sell jamaica instead of lemonade.
They had another fruit called the tamarind which looked like large brown pea pods. They boil and liquefy the fruit into a pulp after they remove the seeds and add sugar to make a drink, and even have a tamarind flavored soda. More commonly still was the use of tamarind to make a leather-like candy to which they could add either sour or spicy elements. If you've ever had fruit leather, it's a similar experience.
I was always a big fan of fruity juices but in Mexico, they called them “Aguas Frescas” (Ah-gwahs Frehs-kahs) or “fresh waters” because they would literally blend fresh fruit with ice, water, and sugar, and sometimes milk. You could find all sorts of refreshing waters from cantaloupe or watermelon water to mango or pineapple or even oatmeal water. Each one was amazing and frothy! They mixed them up in large tubs and spooned them out with ladles. It was the perfect treat to break up a hot sunny day.
Otherwise, when it came to buying juice, the most popular brand was "Jumex" which was cheap and sugary but had a variety of flavors. I'd often buy a handful of flavors that came in cartons of a Liter each and drink them straight from the container (Since we didn't share). To be fair, they weren't anything super special or unique.
NOPALES
One of the common vegetable side dishes was called “nopales” (Noh-pah-lehs) which are the insides of a certain Mexican cactus which is first shaved of its needles and then diced up. When cooked, they looked and tasted similar to green beans. Most fruits and vegetables were so fresh that they smelled like the dirt they grew in. The produce section smelled like a garden and the items were usually larger and cheaper than what I find in my hometown grocery stores.
TORTILLAS
It was common to eat everything with your hands. The families we ate with always made sure we washed our hands before we ate but it wasn’t considered inappropriate to then get your hands messy while eating. It certainly made it simpler to not worry about utensils too because everything was generally finger food. Even stuff like spaghetti could be picked up with a tortilla. You could use a tortilla to rip chicken off the bone if you didn't want to use your bare hands. If you were eating meat, you'd use the tortilla like a glove to keep your fingers clean and you'd pinch and pull the meat apart with the tortilla like a pair of fat tweezers. What you couldn’t pick up you could push onto a spoon with a rolled-up tortilla. Everything was fair game. I never got too good with tortillas because mine usually tore so I usually asked for a fork or spoon but if I had practiced more, I could have gone without utensils altogether.
Tortillas were served with every meal. There were two kinds of tortillas: Tortillas de Maiz (Mah-ees: Corn tortillas) and Tortillas de Harina (Ah-ree-nah: Flour tortillas). Some tortillas were small, about the size of a CD, used to pick up finger foods or rolled up like bready cigarettes and dipped into things like soups. You could find a Tortillería (Tohr-tee-yeh-ree-ah: tortilla shop) every few blocks and detect the thick smell of dough emanating from it like a homing beacon long before it was in sight. If that didn’t work, the bright yellow and green “Maseca” (mah-seh-kah) paint stuck out like a sore thumb (on most of the tortilla shops, not all). They sold tortillas by their weight in Kilograms which was appropriate since a sizable stack of fresh tortillas could be consumed in a single meal. For every bite of food in a meal, you might expect an equal number of bites of tortillas.
When they didn’t want to buy prepared tortillas, they would make their own, especially if they were flour tortillas. Flour tortillas were a favorite of everyone’s because they had a softer and sweeter taste than the corn tortillas which I think weren’t much tastier than paper. The largest flour tortillas could be as big as a dinner plate. To keep them warm, tortillas were kept wrapped in a clean hand cloth or towel. It was odd to see a meal without tortillas. It wasn’t a meal without them.
Despite the successful tortilla industry, they almost never made burritos. Tacos were the way to go! Not like Taco Bell or Del Taco but authentic homemade tacos. Here in the U.S. the meat is greasy and the shells are dry, in Mexico, the shells are greasy and the meat is dry. They would usually take two small but oily corn tortillas and use them double-ply fashion and fill them with grilled chicken, pulled pork, or diced steak, season it generously with parsley, and then add tomatoes and onion (pico de gallo). You usually needed five or more to fill you up but they were only five to ten pesos each on average (about 25-50 cents each).
If you went to a restaurant, instead of serving a side of tortillas, they served fresh tortilla chips with a dish of salsa as the appetizer. It didn’t matter too much what you ordered, the complimentary chips and salsa came first to hold you over until the main dish came. The chips were so much more flavorful than the bland bags of tortilla chips we buy in mass here because they were often made from potatoes. Now I know you're thinking "well potato chips are a thing" but these were tortilla chips. It's hard to explain other than they were puffy and flavored differently.
SNACKS
Bags of chips were quite common as well. The most popular brand was called "Sabritas" which I think is Mexico's "Lays". It was in Mexico that I fell in love with lime Takis (spicy chips in the shape of a thick stick); basically, anything spicy and lime flavored was my favorite.
One of the business strategies that the companies employed was putting tiny items inside the bags. By far, the most common item was called a "Tazo" which is a round card-like item that was basically used like collector's items as a baseball card would be (They were used for games, but I never saw anyone play with Tazos). In fact, since my time in Mexico, the closest thing to Tazos that I've seen might be "Squid Game" made popular by Netflix in 2021, the objective being to flip over the most tazos by hitting them with another tazo. The Tazos had different images as a means of advertising movies from "Batman vs. Superman" to "Minions" to "Captain America: Civil War". Not only did I buy many bags of chips with tazos inside, but I also found dozens upon dozens lying on the street or in the dirt, many of which I collected.
The popular quick stop for missionaries was the Oxxos, which were essentially gas station convenience stores without the gas station. Apart from being cheap, they had a larger selection than most convenience stores and could be found almost everywhere. On a hot day, I would buy a slushie, a Powerade, or a V-8 bottle of carrot juice. If you were hungry, you could get a hot dog or two for cheap. In addition to the ketchup and mustard, you could dress your hot dog with cabbage, jalapenos, mayo, or lime juice. I usually put the works on mine. You paid the same price. If there weren’t any Oxxos around, there were usually 7-Elevens. They were also useful if you needed to use the restroom (Although in some places in Mexico, they only let customers use the restrooms).
BREAD
No one really used their oven other than as a cupboard. If you wanted baked goods, you had to buy them from a store or from the trunk of a car that played the same obnoxious, “El Panadero con el pan” (Ehl Pah-nah-deh-roh Kohn Ehl Pahn: The baker with the bread) song on an endless loop. Look it up and then imagine having to listen to it a few hundred times. It’s enough to drive you to insanity! The song was sung by musician and actor Germán Valdéz (also known as Tin Tan) in the 1951 black and white film “¡Ay amor... cómo me has puesto!”, or in English, “Oh Darling! Look what you’ve done”). I preferred the baked goods section of the store. I don’t know how sanitary it was but the fresh baked bread and pastries (including entire trays of cakes) were usually left uncovered so the smell of the sweet soft bread products would just lift your spirits. There were countless kinds of baked goods that were sugary and buttery which were referred to as "Pan Dulce" or "Sweet Bread". Mexican baked goods are usually denser and sweeter, more buttery. You could spend quite some time just exploring the different kinds of goodies, most of them selling for cheap. That was the place to be in the store! As missionaries, we weren’t allowed to have an oven because of the potential safety risks but I was just as happy to buy baked goods if only for the smell and the warmth of the bakery.
GAS & SHOPPING
Still, gas was a must. Gas trucks made the rounds daily (At least in Rio Bravo). Loud roof megaphone speakers on a repeating recording let you know they were coming from a mile away, “El Gaaaaaassssss”! It was quite deafening, especially since the truck would move at about half a mile per hour, prolonging the pain. The gas man would dash out of his truck, lug a long hose, and pump gas into people’s gas tanks which were used for cooking or heating water (usually shower water). Stovetops were used for most cooking so they always need gas even if they never used the furnace. Most meals were prepared fresh whereas I grew up accustomed to microwavable frozen foods or take-out. We didn’t always have a microwave, and almost never had a toaster. If we wanted a warm meal, we'd either have to cook something up on an electric skillet or go somewhere and buy it.
The major grocery stores were the Sorianas, like our Walmarts but orange instead of blue, and the smaller Bodega Aurreras which were green; there was also a franchise called "H.E.B." that is also big in Texas but we didn't go there as often.
DAIRY
They were like most any other grocery stores with few differences. Instead of coming in plastic jugs, milk didn’t need refrigeration before opening and came in cardboard cartons on the shelf. Yogurt still had to be kept in the cold section, but they were less viscous and came in plastic bottles so as to be drinkable straight from the bottle (At least the LALA brand was), kinda like a silky smoothie. It was honestly as delicious as it was ingenious. Reynosa had a single Walmart but it burned down in early 2016. Specks of ash could be found on the other side of the city. You can speculate what the cause was of the fire; I remember shopping there a handful of times before it burned down.
Cheeses were made fresh. Where in most of the United States, you buy blocks or slices of cheese, there the cheeses were moist and crumbly called "Queso Fresco"; we also have those here but you have to know where to look. The most common kind of cheese was cortija cheese. At first, I thought it was gross, but it was probably healthier and truer cheese than the processed plastic stuff we eat. Instead of shredded cheese, it was crumbled cheese bits, almost like moist blue cheese or cottage cheese in texture. As far as taste goes, it was cheese, like if you went straight from milk to cheese and didn't add any other flavors.
QUICK FAVORITES
They had tortas which are like our sub sandwiches but usually shorter, toasted, and filled with avocado and refried beans in addition to the chicken or pork meat, lettuce, tomatoes, and onions. The best ones were called “Tortas de Milanesa” (Tohr-tahs Deh Mee-lah-neh-sah) which is basically country-fried pork fillets; Milanesa means "cutlet". They usually substituted lettuce with cabbage in many foods like tacos. In basically any other countries besides Mexico, "Tortas" are cakes, like desserts so don't mix those up
The typical bread for a Mexican torta is called "Pan Telera" which has a flat oval shape. The inside is soft but the outside is firm.
Another simple favorite Mexican dish of mine was called “flautas” which literally means “flutes” what we would call taquitos which were just harden rolled tortillas stuffed with plain pulled chicken. They were almost always served with crema on top or some kind of guacamole sauce. Again, I could eat like 8 before I started to get full but they were cheap and easy to make.
It was almost unheard of to get boneless meat. Everything was kept on the bone, and it was not KFC. I remember getting Mexican Chinese food on a few occasions, because I loved Chinese food before the mission, and biting into the beef and broccoli, and feeling a hard crunch of bones here and there. I tried the fried shrimp just to discover that the shrimp still had their shells on them under the breading. Overall, the Chinese food was super salty and tasted like pure soy sauce. I learned my lesson quickly to stop telling people that my favorite food was Chinese food. American Chinese food is to die for but Mexican Chinese food might have killed me. I don’t know if it’s like that everywhere or just from the restaurant in Rio Bravo. You'll excuse me if I don't know if there are multiple Chinese restaurants in Rio Bravo because they were all further in town whereas I was on the far West.
Seriously, there was always something wonderful about all the food to be found. Even the mayonnaise tasted better because they made it with lime juice! They put lime on everything. I mean everything! There were multiple occasions when I would slather a layer of lime mayo on a tortilla, fold it up, and eat it with soup or by itself like you would peanut butter on bread. That's how good the mayo with lime was! It wasn't until after my mission that I started looking around for imported Mexican food and ingredients that I noticed that they actually sell this in Utah! Most people probably don't think it's a big deal but I think it's a step up from the normal mayo.
You can try as hard as you want, but it's hard to replicate Mexican food and do it justice. And those who do it justice don’t get nearly as much credit or business as they deserve.
There are many more things that I could include in this blog post such as Tamales, huevos con chorizo, churros, picadillo (which was another super common meal), pozole, elote, chilaquiles, carne, y pollo asado, stuffed peppers, guacamole, and so forth but there simply isn't time. Still, I love all of these. Authentic Mexican food is to die for!
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