It's a Flanperfect day

buen dia!
Ah, it is so beautiful here this morning. Wish you could be here!
The temperature is already rising, but we still have very little humidity, so a ninety degree day like we had yesterday only seems like it is eighty. The sky is slightly overcast and it is just very pleasant.

I just came back from my trip to the track, where there were quite a few folks walking or jogging. I always enjoy my track conversations with the Mexican women and men and their dogs.

When I returned home, I found this little fellow, dead on the table top. Cookies spends most of the night out now, and I imagine he threw this up in the air, thought he could catch it, and it landed on the table top and Cookies lost interest.

So we asked Umberto about it. It is a little thing, only about eight inches long, and skinny. Umberto called it a name and pointed to his arm and pantomined that a bite from that means a trip to the hospital and a shot in the rear end. Umberto solves alot of problems, I think, with a trip to the hospital for a shot in the rear end.

Grippe? shot. Nail in foot? shot. Scorpion bite? shot. Fall off ladder? shot.

So I hope this guy's mother or father is not around nearby. I would imagine they would be a bit larger.

I rode to the Panteon the other day. Here is Jesus' grave and some plastic flowers I left for him. The marker says he died April 9, but the weekend I returned from Texas, the seventeenth, someone old with white hair was back in the casa watching a boxing match on tv. I even commented to Senor.........wow, Jesus really has the volume on his tv turned up.

Senor says he drove by the sister's house just yesterday and there was a new old man sitting out front in the chair that I had photographed. So we are confused, well I am confused. Senor says he is not the confusable type. But so far, the little casa remains empty and we do not even see any signs of Jesus' cat, the white one.

I went next door to learn to make flan. I have always had a recipe for it, but it's one of those things that is better done with a person who has done it before. So, I had the opportunity to do that.

I don't blog recipes or food too much, mainly because I have difficulty even following recipes.

But this one was worth it. i think you can make it easily.

You need:

8 eggs

2 cans sweetened condensed milk

2 cans water (use the milk cans for measurement)

1 1/2 cups sugar and 1/3 cup water

2 T kahlua

1 t vanilla

and you need a flan pan, a round baking dish with a hole in the middle

Over low heat, toss the sugar in a pan, add 1/3 cup water. Stir this Forever! It will get dry. It will get lumpy. It will get clumpy. You will think you need to add more water. Don't. You are just carmelizing the sugar and it will take forever. Eventually it will get dark dark brown and bubbly. When it does this, pour it into the flan pan and coat the pan and sides.Tony, our flan instructor, asks me if I washed my 8 eggs. Wash the eggs....... i said...........i never wash my eggs. He tells me I have to always wash my eggs, so I wash my 8 eggs. We crack them into a bowl and add the milk and the 2 cans of water. He says his favorite dessert is condensed milk on crackers. I tell him that when I worked at DIF some of the women there drank the condensed milk right from the can.........yum, he says.

We add kahlua and vanilla and beat all of this with the mixer. It gets too foamy so Tony holds the mixer just under the surface of the liquid and it gets creamy again. After a few minutes we pour the mixture into the coated flan pan.

The flan pan then is put into a larger pan, filled halfway with water and put into the oven for 1 1/2 hours at 350 degrees. More water is added during the cooking time to keep this water bath halfway up the flan pan.

The flan comes out of the oven and sits on the counter for several hours while Tony shops and my friends and I go off to buy art supplies at an art sale in someone's home.

At the art sale, I hear that La Victoria, which is Carroll O'Connor's Alamos home, has been sold, along with eight other proerties in town. Baby boomers are coming, says someone.

Indeed, on the way home, the front door of La Victoria is open and I snap a few photos. La Victoria needs a lot of love and care, so I am glad someone has bought it. I want to ask if I can go inside, but there are workers milling around and the flan is waiting on the countertop.

The flan is ready to come out of the pan. A knife is run around the edges and then, the pan sits in another water bath, this one warm with tap water. Tony jiggles the flan until it starts to move around in the pan.
Then in a very swift move, the pan is turned upside down.




And, we have flan. Isn't that pretty?

Gotta run, need to be over on Loma Gudalupe by ten o'clock. I am doing some custom glass tiles for someone there and we need to discuss the plan.

Que le vaya bien!......which when translated, means roughly, may you have an interesting life or may all things turn out well for you. Linda Lou

Let the Celebration Begin!

Hola! Here is this morning's sunrise. It has been overcast off and on throughout the day. It is just starting to rain and a gentle breeze has picked up. Oh, wait a minute. I will be back....... Okay, I am here. Someone was ringing the bell so I went to check it out. It was Yolanda, the fish lady, and her son. They borrow the golf cart of a Senora here in town, load it up with their ice chests and sell door to door. I always buy. She has the best grande camarones we have ever had. Senor throws them on the grill along with poblano peppers and onions.

I pay $120 pesos for 2 kilos ( about $8.25 for 2 pounds) and worth every peso. If you buy 4 kilos you get a discount, but you have seen our refrigerator......

I just put most of them in the refrigerator, but kept these seperate because I am going to brine and smoke them.The smoke the other day was very good. I used Baja mullet that I bought at Ley. Below it is in the brine......water, salt, sugar, tobasco, cayenne pepper, garlic, lime juice, worchestershire sauce and a little minced onion. I brined this mullet for about 12 hours.

Below, they are out of the brine and washed, and getting what I call, their patina. It is really called the pellicle, but I like the word patina better.....either way, their shine.

Below is our little smoker. We had a big smoker back in the states, but when we started thinking about loading the U-haul, adding a smoky smelling smoker just did not seem like the thing to do. So, I gave that one away and bought a new, smaller one. I miss the big one................

This one, being new, was somehow missing a drip pan, so I had to improvise with some aluminum foil. I have some hickory and used that to smoke.

Fourteen hours later and we had fresh smoked mullet.

It has just poured down rain. Hopefully that will be it for at least the next few days. I love the rain, but there are big happenings here tonight and tomorrow, in Alamos. The streets are decked out in red, white and green garlands.

Tonight there will be a huge ball at the Palacio.

The Palacio was buzzing when I went there today to mail some letters.

Little children were dressed in native costumes, impatiently waiting for their parents to take photographs. Mothers were chasing children, trying to get them to sit still for just one more minute.

The mail lady was concerned because there were no decorations yet for the ball. A few men were removing some boxes from some of the rooms inside the Palacio. Women were cleaning and waxing the floors.

Outside, men were on the roof, trying to organize the fireworks.

Down the street, the secondary school band was practicing their song and march. The policia were attempting, without success, to keep the cars and onlookers from traveling through the area.

Tonight, at midnight, the new mayor, will give the plea for Independence (the grito or cry). That will begin the anniversary of the day the War for Independence (from Spain) began. Then the fireworks will begin and pretty much continue on and off until the new year..............

Tomorrow, there will be the biggest parade of the year, horse dancing at the Plaza de Armas, Mariachi music, folkloric dancing and wonderful food.

In the arroyo, there will be more horse dancing competitions, games for the kids, trampolines to jump on, trinkets and souvenirs to buy and lots and lots of Tecate.

We hear there will be baseball games at the baseball stadium and soccer games at the soccer stadium and lots and lots of Tecate.

So, I am charging up the camera batteries and will try to get up at midnight for the fireworks. Senor and I will make it to the alameda in time for the parade.

Now that the rain has ended, the band is practicing again and several groups of horse riders have clomped down and up the street outside the casa.

I will share the celebration with you in a few days! adios for now, linda lou