Mixed Grill

Being the meat lover that I am, this mixed grill plate was delicious. It is at the nuevo Los Faroles restaurant on Ancha de San Antonio. The viejo Los Faroles has long been one of our favorite night-time taco places and I first wrote about them about two years ago here.

They use to serve only tacos, stuffed baked potatoes and sometimes beans. The place was so tiny, only 5 or 6 tables and a few chairs at the bar but if all the seats were full, no one could move. Now they have taken over a open area behind the old restaurant that was a part of the Aristos Hotel grounds. All new furniture, new kitchen, dance floor, bar, a new menu and that new menu includes this mixed grill plate for two. We ordered two mixed grill plates for the six of us and had some meat to take home. The plate includes ribs, arrachera, pork, chicken, chorizo and grilled onions and nopales. Can you believe that the cost including drinks and tip was about 110 pesos a person.

There are other things on the menu but one of our group had eaten there last week and once they told us about the Mixed Grill Plate, I quit reading the menu. So........you know what that means, we have to go back very soon.

Exploring Again

I'm walking, walking, walking although somewhat fearfully and carefully watching where I'm walking but it is wonderful to be out and on my own.

Today I didn't have a destination, I just headed toward Ancha de San Antonio and I took a camera with me. Just the little Canon G9. I've walked this path so many times with a camera and although I was looking for something that would catch my eye, nothing did. I went to Armida Furniture Store and wandered around, another store across the street, crossed the street again and went into the Instituto.

I don't know why the Instituto always gets me to use the camera but it does. It is an old colonial building. Now it has been partitioned into several venues but the main courtyard remains intact. There are some galleries and cafes under the old porticos. I've photographed these chairs and tables at this cafe with the Canon 5D, the Holga and now with the G9. Anytime I go in with a camera these curvy modern chairs and metal tables just intrigue me. They did again today. I love the way the circles and semi-circles repeat across the image and somehow these colors feel good to me.

By-the-way, there is a new cafe, Mi Casa, opening in March in the old restaurant space on the back patio facing the Parroquia. At least there is a sign in the front announcing the opening in March and there is furniture in the space but you never know for sure until it actually happens.

Seeing The Light

This book, Traveling Light, Chasing an Illuminated Life by Deborah DeWit Marchant was given to me by a blogging buddy. It is a tiny book, 6 x 8 inches, 83 pages, about 45 photographs. It has been on my Amazon wish list for quite a while and I don't know why I haven't included it with another order.

In a way it reminds me of Daybook: The Journal of an Artist by Anne Truitt because it is written by the artist about her struggles to find and make art. Marchant's writing is so intimate and beautiful about how the light of the natural world affected her so deeply that she struggled to capture these feelings on film but the camera couldn't capture her quivering heart or the damp warm wind. But she did learn how to see the most delicate light and capture that for us to enjoy.

What was ending up on my film? Misty dawns and vacant windows, lone boats and dapples of light on a wall, a reflection in the water, an abandoned building, empty roads. These weren't universal symbols, nor images of expansiveness. They were pictures of a solitary view of the universe........Was it me that I had captured?

The images are not the Grand Landscape. And certainly many other photographers photograph the same types of things that Marchant is photographing but she sees the light in a very special way. These images are beautiful in their simplicity with a palette subdued with mist or dawn and in many of the images with a horizon line that almost disappears.

Some might call the book sentimental but I call it beautiful and inspiring. This is a book that will stay by my bed to be read and looked at many times.

The Week That Was

I'm not sure what the biggest event of the week was.....the eclipse or getting the cast off my ankle. But the eclipse was amazing from the terrace. We watched the moon come up over the hillside and then slowly a little black fuzz appeared on the edge. At the full eclipse the moon was a glowing red-ish/orange-ish ball in the sky. I know that you have seen a dozen of my images with the moon over San Miguel de Allende but I just can't resist making them or putting them on the blog.

Now that the cast is off my leg and I'm not shuffling around on crutches, I'm back in the kitchen and it feels good. One night I made meatballs and spaghetti with a salad. Another night was grilled chicken breast and a pasta vegetable salad. I love a pasta vegetable salad with lots of veggies. I had green peas, broccoli, zucchini, orange bell pepper, carrots and tomatoes. Dress the salad with a nice vinaigrette and I could consider being a vegetarian (at least for that meal). Last night was comfort food from our childhood. Thin pork chops lightly breaded and sauteed (actually fried but sauteed sounds more contemporary) rice, cream gravy and a big crispy salad.

Some of my reader's mouth will be watering....fried porkchops and cream gravy while the younger ones will be in horror of knowing anyone who will eat fried porkchops and cream gravy. I think cream gravy might disappear only to be resurrected in 10 or 15 years by some hotshot chef. Oh well, all I know is....cream gravy is damn good. I'm not talking about the glutenous mess that you sometimes get on chicken fried steak in Texas. I'm talking about a skillet full of homemade cream gravy made with the little bits from the pan where you "sauteed" the porkchops or steak. Add a bit of flour for a roux and then the milk and seasonings. Mmm....delicious!
Yesterday we worked in the "garden." Actually on one of the terraces and in the patio. The terrace over the living area is looking good. The geraniums in the pots on top of the railing around the back side of the terrace are trailing over the pots and looking gorgeous. But there were things to cut back and move around. I have several empty pots up there and need a few more herbs and some other plants. But the patio garden......oh my. It took the brunt of the hailstorm we had back before Christmas. The hail shredded so many leaves of the plants in the bed around the little pond. That bed looked terrible but I didn't want to cut the plants back until I was sure that we were past another cold spell. Since December I had been hiding the shredded plants by filling in with some pots of white poinsettias. So yesterday we took out the pots of poinsettias and cut back the plants. I hope that the warm weather will quickly bring the plants back around because the bed looks so bare. I still need to fill in with some ferns and something blooming...maybe some geraniums or begonias.

And that was the week that was. Now on to the week ahead.

New Restaurant in Colonia

Just down the street from us at Refugio Sur #24, Cafe San Antonio has opened for breakfast and lunch. It is in a lovely big garden and you sit under the trees and umbrellas while you enjoy your meal. The lunch menu includes a soup or two, burritos, quesadillas, enchiladas, milanesa and a hamburger. We had lunch there this week. We found out that they have only been open three weeks and are still working out the kinks. The owner's family has owned the property for 30 years and he was in the hotel industry in DF before opening Cafe San Antonio. The food was good and we will go back again but what they need to go with that gorgeous garden setting are a few outstanding items. Or as Emeril would say, they need to knock it up another notch. BAM!

Using the Type Tool in Photoshop

Actually I wasn't using the type tool in Photoshop, I was trying to use it. I was following directions from Scott Kelby's book The Adobe Photoshop CS3 book for digital photographers on how to make a fine art poster. Everything went fine until I tried to add the type...no type would show up on the document. I tried everything I knew of to get it to work. I pulled out all my photoshop books looking for the answer. I tried again and again on different layers and on flattened images. I looked in Adobe's self-help articles. I asked on the Adobe forum. I asked friends. But they didn't know what my problem was. I must have spent 5 or 6 hours.....maybe more trying to figure this out. This morning I emailed my friend Frank Armstrong again about the problem. He wrote me back.......

Well, I don't know what to tell you. The attached was just written on a new blank document using the text tool in CS2. Set foreground color to black and the background of the new document to white. It printed.

BINGO! It wasn't like a light bulb going off in my head, it was like lightening. I had not set the foreground color to black and I was writing white on white so I couldn't see the text. The text tool was working just fine but my brain wasn't. Checking the background and foreground color is just something that becomes automatic when using many of the tools in Photoshop and certainly you would think that setting the color of text would also be a given.

This is one of those things that you do that is so stupid that you aren't sure whether to sweep it under the rug and never mention it again or to have a great big belly laugh and tell your friends so they'll get a laugh out of it too.

The Ankle - Six Weeks Later

No, Dr. Elias isn't cutting my foot off......but the cast came off today. Hip, Hip Hurray!

He recommends that I use the crutches or a cane for another week for "security." The ankle is really stiff. I've never had a broken bone before and I was suprised at how strange my foot and ankle felt without the cast. I almost felt dizzy or off balance when I first stood up in shoes. That is passing and now I just have to get the ankle working again so I can take off on the cobblestones. I'll be taking a few sessions of physical therapy but I expect to be able to travel next month.

I'm glad that this is almost over.......so is Nurse Ned.

Walmart vs. Neighborhood Tiendas

According to an article at Forbes.com.......

Mexican leading retailer Wal-Mart de Mexico will aggressively compete with tiny family-run shops and convenience stores to boost its presence among low-income earners struggling with meager wages in a slow economy.

Wal-Mart de Mexico, or Walmex, plans to open 60 "Mi Bodega Express" stores in big cities across the country, snuggling the new store between the traditional mom-and-pop and the company's most successful, no-frills "Bodega Aurrera" format.

San Miguel de Allende is getting some kind of Walmart store just on the edge of town toward the old train station. Construction is underway. There are rumors that it is a full-size Walmart and there are rumors that it is the no-frills Bodega Aurrera. I give more credence to the Bodega Aurrera rumor because I doubt that at this point that the population in San Miguel can support a Walmart but you never know. San Miguel does have a growing middle-class and so far both Gigante and Mega grocery stores seem to be doing okay although the Gigante store has been sold to the Soriana chain but so far the name hasn't changed. The big covered mercados still seem crowded with people so I don't know if the new grocery stores have affected them.

Now this announcement that Walmex has decided to go up against the mom-and-pop stores....the neighborhood tiendas. This makes me sad. What will happen to some of our neighbors and their tiendas? I can quickly count five tiendas within a block or so of our house. The tienda is in the front room and the family lives behind the store.

I can understand that Mexicans might want to shop where the prices are better and maybe they can get all they need to buy at one place but the hidden cost will be the jobs of some of their neighbors. We Americans have seen what happens when the large box stores or e-retailers come into a market segment. Deserted buildings in town squares. A loss of regional identity. So on one hand this announcement makes me sad. On the other hand, who am I to tell the Mexicans what they should have or not have. But the times, they are a'changing.

Valentine with Doc Severinsen

Actually last night wasn't officially Valentine's Day but we celebrated a day early at Bella Italia and listened to the most incredible music....not just for San Miguel but for ANYWHERE. But let me back up just a little to tell this story.

We have been listening to Gil and Cartas perform in San Miguel for several years and we have always thought that they were just amazing musicians. A friend of ours loved them too and decided that they needed recognition in the USA. All of us who live here know that Doc Severinsen has retired to San Miguel and he has played a benefit or two. We would see him sometimes with his wife at the fish taco place or on the street but Ned and I who had watched him every night on the Johnny Carson show never considered doing more than shaking his hand and telling him how much we liked his music. Not our friend. She decided that Doc would be the one who could help Gil and Cartas make connections in the USA. So she knocked on his door and told him about Gil and Cartas and urged him to go hear them. He did and now as they say the rest is history. Doc has formed a new group with Gil and Cartas called El Ritmo de la Vida and he plays with them almost every week at Bella Italia.

Doc may be 80 years old, but he still plays that horn like he was 40. Last night we heard an amazing evening of Jazz. I wish I could play a CD of the music for you but the best I can do is direct you to their contact in the USA and copy you on a some of their PR on Doc and the group.

Since moving to Mexico at the end of 2006, Doc has kept a busy performance schedule and made new discoveries in two very talent musicians from Mexico. Together with these gentlemen, Doc has crafted an innovative and exciting program. EL RITMO DE LA VIDA is, of course, ‘the rhythm of life', a very apt description of Gil Gutierrez and Pedro Cartas and their music. According to Doc, "I came to Mexico with retirement on my mind, but when I heard them play I knew that I would be playing with them for some time to come. Latino music, along with the blues, has always been among my favorites, and Gil and Pedro do it along with a European style that I love and so do our audiences."

Today, Doc has not lost his flair for outrageous fashions and witty banter. Yet, he is highly regarded as one of the most technically proficient trumpeters. Doc has the best stage presence of anyone out there. He can blow a horn like few others...he is a high note virtuoso, a genuinely funny man, and always a fashion fiend.

At any rate it was a wonderful evening with my Honey (AKA Ned) and Doc.

Valentine Roses

My Honey, also know as Ned, was going to buy roses for me for Valentine's Day. He picked out a bunch probably just like the ones I photographed last year since they are my favorites. He handed the rose seller 50 pesos which has been the going rate for roses lately outside Espinos. The rose seller told him it was 100 pesos because it was Valentines. Ned took his 50 pesos back and told him to keep the roses.

Valentine or no Valentines, I'm glad he didn't buy the roses. If it had been 60 pesos, maybe even 70 pesos....okay. But double the price, NO. This all ties back into what we have found as a general tendency in Mexican marketing thinking. Merchants in the USA will sell flowers for Valentines or Mother's Day on every corner and in every store and generally they are priced at the same level or LESS than the going rate. Here it is not at all unusual to see a shop or restaurant raise their prices when they haven't been seeing as many customers. Mexico--sell less for a higher price vs. USA--sell more for a lower price. I don't know who makes the most money but my USA mentality makes me think that there is more potential to make more money with volume. Just another one of those quirky cultural differences that most of the time we don't think about but they are here.

Juarez Murders - Bordertown

Last night we watched the movie Bordertown. The movie is about a reporter who is assigned to investigate and write about the on-going and mostly unsolved murders of young women in and around Juarez just across the border from El Paso. Most of the women work for very little money in the maquiladoras along the border and most of them have been abducted either on their way to or from work. It is one of those stories based on real events but it is a fictional story.

What interested me as much as the storyline was the cinematography. The director Gregory Nava used the garish colors of light to bring an edge to the story. In the factory it was green. In the street at night it was yellow and magenta. In daylight it was brilliant, blasting, over saturated light. In the night it was black with few details emerging. I also like the way he flattened the space in the city so that things looked even more crowded. It made you feel that you were in the midst of the traffic and pedestrians, being carried along with the flow. And all of this emphasized the filth and living conditions of the peasants along the border. If you are a photographer rent this movie and see if you don't learn something that you might want to use sometime in your photography.

If you want to learn more about the murders in Juarez you might want to click here and here.

More 16th Century Mexican Churches

Most of the Catholic Churches built on Mayan religious sites that I have photographed have been in the Yucatan but these two are in the State of Quintana Roo. I've always like this church in Xocchel with its graceful palms.
The churches in the Yucatan and Quintana Roo were built as community centers to teach the Maya the way of the Church. They are different yet similar in simplicity. This church is in Yaxcaba and I had been inside photographing and now was exploring the wonderful afternoon shadows on the exterior. These two curious little boys were following me and watching me set up my camera and tripod. I have several shots of the exterior without them in it but I think I like this one best.

Blog Roll

I wanted to highlight a couple of blogs I'm adding to the blog roll for South of the Border.

First is one I've been following for a couple of weeks, Big Sweet Tooth written by Misty Tosh. Misty has a very interesting background. So click on her profile to see what she had done. This January she started her drive pulling her camper into Mexico from Illinois. A few days later she was in San Miguel de Allende and now she is headed to the Yucatan. She is a fearless eater of street food. Her writing style is breezy and descriptive. And she is obviously embracing Mexico, the food and the people.

American's are plain old scaredy cats! Every single one who sees my tags from IL looks at me with a real puzzled face and is totally incredulous that I hauled all the way into the outlaw land that is Mexico all alone. I have to say I've felt much safer here than I ever did wandering through my own 'hood in the PM. For real.

Also she is putting up some great photos that are tilted and tumbled but they reflect Misty's way of seeing the world. I don't know what the rest of her journey will be through the country but I know that she has to come back to San Miguel to pick up her trailer so I'm hoping that I get to meet her, but I'll definitely be traveling with her via her blog.

The other blog that I'm adding to the blog roll is Zocalo de Mexican Folk Art. This is a brand new blog as of yesterday by my friend Deb Hall. Deb and Rick own Zocalo Folk Art-Mexico stores in San Miguel de Allende and Patzcuaro. Deb has been writing a column for the store's website for several years called Postcards from Mexico so I know that this blog is going to be well written and very interesting whether you are a folk art collector or not. Besides the folk art, she will make your mouth water as she describes the food they eat in the villages. Deb is also a photographer and you will be seeing some very unique photographs of the folk artists, their environment and their fiestas.

Happy Birthday, Gary

I won't say how old Gary is but this was made in 1964. I looked back through old slides and found this image and it brought a smile to my face because now he is on the phone most of the time taking care of his business.
This slide was made on his birthday. He always loved music and in fact, he went to Manhattan School of Music to study piano. Funny how kids tell you about themselves very early. But my, my how time flies.

Happy Birthday, Gary.

Feeding Frenzy - Economic Stimulus Bill

The Senate is set to begin voting on dueling economic aid proposals, as senators rush to add jobless benefits and tax rebates for high earners, the elderly, and disabled veterans to a House-passed package.

This is a little quote from some news source yesterday. I think I read that the cost of this economic stimulus bill is now about $150 BILLION. I'm not an economist so maybe I'll never understand how this is suppose to FIX the "potential" recession. The USA is already spending more than they are getting in taxes and the nation is in debt in the trillions. Isn't the $150 billion just going to add to the debt that the taxpayers will have to pay back at some point?

I just don't understand how a check from the government for $300-$600 or whatever amount is going to do more than make a short term blip on the chart. What will they do in the third quarter? the fourth quarter? So many people who are interviewed on TV about what they will do with this subsidy have said that they will pay it on credit cards. Will paying for goods and services already received stimulate the economy?

If we get one of these checks, I guess we'll just put it in the bank. Have you thought about it? Do you have plans for your government subsidy check?