The Great Mexican Adventure

Food eaten:

• Flautas - a huge tortilla rolled and filled with shredded meat, crema (Mexican sour cream), lettuce and other stuff I don't even remember. It was seriously one of the best things ever.
• Grilled Elote - grilled corn on the cob smothered in mayonnaise, crumbled cheese, and chili powder. It was pretty tasty. (Lindy eating elote)

• Eskimo - possibly the best drink ever. It was milk blended with crushed ice and whatever flavor you wanted. The special way they blended it made it super creamy and delicious. They had mango, chocolate, papaya, strawberry, other fruits, vanilla, tres leches, and others. We got the tres leches and Lamoni got strawberry. (Lindy drinking eskimo)

• Gorditas - these were hand-made corn tortillas with chicharron (pork skin) in the masa then fried in oil, opened up like a pita, then stuffed with onion, cilantro and a special salsa. It was so messy but I think I ate like 5.

(A deliciously messy, half-eaten gordita)

• Torta de milanesa, DF style - A torta is a sandwich. We know that right? And milanesa is a thin fried steak. However, this torta was special; it was seriously as big as my head. So this guy sets down the bottom of a regular sized sandwich bun, then piles on milanesa until it's about a foot high (no joke), then puts the top on. It was delicious but I couldn't finish the whole thing. Luckily, Lamoni was there to eat the rest. PS - the DF is Mexico City.
  
• Cemitas - a sandwich with pork, lettuce, chiles, avocado, tomato, and some kind of sauce. Delicious.

(Lindy, Angelica, Don Celerino, & myself enjoying our "Mexican hamburgers")

• Cecina - this was a type of thinly sliced beef that was grilled with a special sauce and served on blue corn tortillas and with a mixture of onion, cilantro, and nopal. They were one of my favorite foods this trip!

(sister-in-law Lulu, Angelica, Lindy, me, & Lamoni eating cecina. Brother Luis was taking the picture)

• Pipian - a type of mole that is made with pumpkin or squash seeds. We ate this in a market and it was one of my favorite dishes. We talked to the woman who made it. She was an older woman from a small town that still speaks Nahuatl as a first language.
  
• Mole Poblano - one of the most famous dishes in the state of Puebla. I LOVE mole. It was so delicious. I tried 3 different kinds of mole poblano and I loved them all. After all...they do have chocolate in them.
  
• Mole Verde - This dish was made by a mother-in-law of the family and it was very good and very spicy. Lindy was there to help make it and she said it was simple to make. The main ingredients were chile verde, a kind of large bean called aba, and chicken. It was tasty but I would rather have dark rich mole poblano.
  
• Tortas de Camaron - Lindy and I were taught how to make this by a mother-in-law of the family. They were shrimp cakes and boiled nopal (cactus) in a dark chile/mole sauce served with Mexican-style white rice. It was pretty good and I took notes so I will definitely be making that rice and the sauce again. I don't think we have all the ingredients for the shrimp cakes.
  
• Tamales - I had 2 different types of tamales and I am kicking myself for not eating more. The first ones we had were bought in Veracruz. We were swimming in the Rio Bobos and a little girl came with a bucket full of chicken tamales and we each ate two. These tamales were unique because they were wrapped in what looked like banana leaves instead of corn husks. And they were delicious. The second tamale I ate was a mole tamale on a torta. Basically it was an unwrapped tamale with mole poblano in the center and placed on a sandwich bun. It was so tasty but I think next time I just stick with the tamale and get maybe two or three:)
• Chapulines - to be honest I only tried one of these. Here is a picture and you might get an idea as to why.
  
• Aguas - water was a scarcity so when someone asks if you if you would like agua, what they really mean is agua de something. What we call juice, they call agua. And jugo (juice) is just a more concentrated version of the agua. I tried agua de mango, melon (cantaloupe), and watermelon. They were all very delicious and the most common was mango.
  
• Tacos Arabes - This a special dish only found in the small area around the Limon ranch. It is some kind of meat, either lamb or pork, that is roasted on a spit and served on a flour "tortilla." I tried to explain to the Mexicans that it was more like a pita than a tortilla but they would hear none of it. But this dish was obviously influenced by Middle Eastern cuisine.