Mermelada de Naranja Agria

I made Sour Orange Marmelade. I had heard of it before but finally had the opportunity to taste it on Christmas Day at brunch en la casa de amigos. Amiga Cook thoughtfully posted the recipe on her blog http://theresacooks.blogspot.com/

As some of you already know we have a sour orange tree right outside our back door. We love the sour orange juice for a load of different things; naranjada, marinade, soup flavoring, to flavor a glass of tea, margaritas, etc. Still with as many of the oranges as we've used, squeezed and frozen, given away, etc the tree is still quite full; although now esposo must use the escalera(ladder) to scale said prickly tree. ¿Did you know that the sour orange trees has life threatening thorns? Anyway, so what we need are just a few more things to do with the oranges. Amiga Cook comes to the rescue!

If you check out her recipe it calls for 6 oranges; I thought heck I'll just make a double batch and gift out some it! Well, after prepping the 7th orange I decided a single batch would have to suffice. Good Grief what tedium. Sour Oranges have an incredible amout of seeds; And my fingers were ablaze from the citric acid.

So after cleaning, slicing, seeding, cooking, cooking, cooking we have mermelada de naranjada agria. It's not quite as tasty as Amiga Cook, but for a first batch it's not bad. It's quite sweet enough, but there is a slight bitterness from the peel, but how the heck do you eliminate that? Mermelada is essentially orange peel.

And now I see Amiga Cook has thoughtfully provided recipe for English Muffin Bread double yum!

I can't believe I woke up hungry this morning

I can't believe I woke up hungry this morning, It has been non-stop eating for about 2 weeks now. We've been having such a great holiday; invited to so many places to share beautiful meals and visiting with all our new friends. Phone calls, emails, and ecards from all our old friends, and family. But I'm ready to get back to normal.

Merida by far has got to be one of the noisiest cities we've ever been in. It is everyday kindof noisy, but when you toss in a Holiday, and there are ALOT of Holidays here, well it just gets downright deafening. Music is loud, laughing and talking is loud, cars and buses are loud, and the firecrackers, or mortars as we call them are loud. It's not even usually the pretty starburst fireworks, but just plain old cherrybomb type things. Just for the noise. On our street, which is a more traditional older neighborhood the older women, in their 60-70's pull their chairs out to the sidewalk, which is typical, but then they sit there and light and toss these mortars into the street all the while maintaining their regular line of conversation. Oh, and don't even get me started on the Parades, yipes!

Well anyway, back to my title; we have been eating and enjoying the most incredible array of food, and we have been doing it with gusto, because of course the more you eat the more you show your appreciation - right? Anyway, I am stuffed, but I woke up hungry this morning!

Art in Merida

Merida is full of Art. There are Art Museums, and Street Art, and Artists displaying their wares in the Parks.

And then there is art in the most unexpected of places.

Yesterday was a full day. There was lots of stuff going on...On the way from one something to another something with friend Faye we passed this - trust me it was way more impressive in person that this picture, but the picture is the best I can give you.

Garden Groups events

We've had two really great Garden Group events lately, both of which have been well documented by Jane and John. You can read about these events as well as about Jane and John's other adventures on one of their 3 blogs. This one has the Garden Group events - http://bicycleyucatan.wordpress.com/

The other two can be linked from there.

Jane and John are my heroes, they have such an amazing relationship and life - we can all aspire to be so, well just so!

Sleigh Ride and Posada

We had a full evening planned for Friday, Decmber 14. The second annual IWC Sleigh Ride; I'm not sure who dreamed this up as a fund raiser for the Club, but they book a Turi-Bus and we ride around for 2 hours singing, drinking, whooping, and hollering at everyone on the street, oh and we view the christmas light displays around town. It's really a great fun time. Just have a look

Oh and at one point the buses pulled over and people started pouring out of the buses, come to find out it was a beer break, and there was an OXXO just around the corner. So a few minutes, beer, chips, etc and we were back on the road again.


Oh, then the bus we were on broke down on the way back to the park, so we got off hung around on the street until the other bus came and got us and finished our transport for the evening.

All in good fun!

Also for this evening we had a Posada. This is a very traditional Mexican event, religious in nature, but also very community oriented. Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of this, but it was held at Dulce and Richard's house. Dulce is a powerhouse woman with endless energy and enthusiasm. She arranged with neighbors, prepared food, ponche, pinatas, rental chairs for the crowd...

Anyway, the organizer arranges for the Posada to visit and be welcomed at homes in the neighborhood - the Posada is a re-creation of Maria y Josef searching for lodging, it is done in song with Maria y Josef singing and asking for lodging and then when the doors of the house are opened the inhabitants sing back a greeting and welcome. This happens in many of the smaller more traditional neighborhoods. The Posada, is about 10-12 people, the singing is loud and sing song, there are palm bearers, etc.

So when the Posada had made its way around the neighborhood and got back to Dulce's there was food, more ponche, pinatas, visiting, etc.

It was a really fun evening, I hope to snag a few photos of the event and set them in for you to see.

What a Day!

Friday was one of those crazy days where things just happen; it was a full fun day.
We started out by walking up to our local wood store. Merida is great in that everything has its own store. you need wood, go to a wood store, need hinges? go to the hinge store...
Anyway, we have the cement parts of the pergola finished and now need the wood parts that will create the top. On our way to the wood store we went by several friends houses and felt the urge/need/desire to stop in just to say Hi!, but didn't. On a mission!
The folks at the wood store were very helpful, but our desire for a 3.5 meter long piece of puc té, which is a very hard wood could not be filled there. I did ask the man if he knew of another store where I might find such a long piece of wood and he was very kind and gave us a name and address.
So back to the house for the car. - We found the store with little difficulty, and they do indeed carry and cut very long pieces of wood, for a price. WOW, the 2 side beams we need are going to be 418pesos each, and for the 20 smaller cross pieces that will create an open top they want 148pesos each. Yipes, quite a bit more than we imagined, so we said no thanks - for now!
We'll re-assess our options.
Well once you drag out the car you take advantage and run errands so we decided to haul off to Aurora Bodega, a Wal-mart type grocery/department store. And since we were heading so close to friend Janice's house, which happens to be next to the Vets office and since we need cat food, you see where I'm going with all this right, we just went and went, and stopped, and visited, and bought.
The Vet didn't have the cat food we need, but as is often the case here, they can get it, and bring it to the house. What a deal, so we told em what we want, where we live, and that it has to be before 6pm as we have other engagements this evening. Then a quick visit with friend Janice who has just recently moved into her newly remodeled house. So cute, she has a wonderful eye for colors. Then off to Bodega for some groceries. We got home about 2 and barely had time to have a sandwich and rest before our evening activities. Oh, the Vet people showed up with a bag of cat food twice the size we wanted. We don't buy anything in bulk here just because things spoil so quickly with the heat and humidity. So they'll bring a smaller bag tomorrow.

Construction Zone

Once again we are under construction. About a week before dreaded Dengue set in we had contracted with an albanil (mason) to do some work for us. We had 3 projects; 2 small, 1 a little bigger. The 2 small are to install a hamaquera (hammock hook) on the terrazza; now why we didn't think to do this during the remodel I can't figure out. And to finish a cinderblock wall.

Way back when we started our remodel project our neighbor decided to increase the height of the wall between our two houses. I'm sure he put a lovely finish on his side, but on ours it was ugly cinder block.

The bigger project is to build the pergola in the garden. We had laid out the corner markers months ago; after much thought it was decided that the corners would align to the 4 compass points. So timing is everything since we had to be at home anyway....

The pergola is nearly complete, the base is raised and back-filled, the columns are up, just need things to set up so that the cement flooring can be poured. It's really cool now to walk out and see through the foliage a column, makes you head in that direction to discover what is there.

Can't wait to be able to sit in my pergola in the morning sun and enjoy my coffee with the birds and beasties.

I've been tagged

There are a few rules one must follow to play the game. When tagged, you must link to the person who tagged you. Then post the rules before your list, and list eight random things about yourself. At the end of the post, you must tag and link to eight other people.

I'm afraid I'll have to treat this as I do chain emails, and just ignore and delete.

Now normally I love a good game, but this just seems tedious.

Sorry to all you Taggers out there!

I have Dengue

Yep - I have Dengue. Last Sunday evening while enjoying a lovely afternoon and dinner with friends I started feeling a bit off. Didn't really think it could be the beer I had, but you never know!

We came home early, I was running a 102f temperature and was having serious bone and joint pain, and horrific muscle spasms. By about 9:30 pm my fever was up and combined with the pain I was delirious. Tom got me to Clinica Merida where they administed lots of pain releivers, muscle relaxers, intravenous fluids, and cold compresses to lower the fever.

I was in Urgencia (ER) for 15 hours.

Tom and Lida maintained vigil, ensuring all was ok, and that I got everything I needed

It's been really rough. I'm feeling a bit better. Maintaining a 100f temperature. I have all the other standard Dengue stuff, eye pain and sensitivity, which is really rough cause I can't even sit and read a book. I am unable yet to eat, but am consuming copious quantities of Gatorade and water. I have a red flush over almost all of my body, and am covered by tiny little rash bumps that cause me to apply Caladryl like body lotion.

We've sprayed the house with enough toxin to kill off the mosquitos, plus just about anything else. We keep each room locked down so that we minimize the possibility of spreading this any further. And I haven't left the house since I got home from hospital - which is driving me a bit crazy because Dec 4 was release date for Pirates of the Caribbean, At World's End!

Now to top it off esposo comes down with symptoms on Wednesday.