here is

the ear that

no longer can

hear

You can't miss it-- it's the... um... the EAR-SHAPED piece you see on the left side of the bowl. Click on the picture for a nice close-up.

Tonight's posting will be brief, consisting of a few tips (ha!) I left out of my previous frijol con puerco posting:

• First of all, that's only about 1/5 of the whole ear. In recipe lingo, that would mean: Cut the ear into several smaller (but still recognizable) pieces. (Of course, the texture is a dead givaway, too.)


• Gloria (my teacher) tossed into the stew a plain old table spoon, which remained there througout cooking and beyond. My Spanish is improving, but alas, I wasn't able to understand the role of the spoon. I fished it out today, but decided that this batch was so good, it's got to remain in the list of ingredients. Therefore: 1 spoon... of nothing.


• While I started out drinking lots of horchata upon arrival in Merida, I've grown fond of jamaica, a drink made from boiled jamaica leaves (though they may be petals, for all I know). Anyway, we made our own batch on Saturday: Boil jamaica leaves for 10 minutes, strain, cool, and serve over ice.

On a related note

This evening, I enjoyed an amazing walk through Merida's cavernous, blocks-long, old-style central market, Lucas de Galvez.

Language teachers, I have found my i + 1: my goal is to apply the shopping skills I acquired at Santiago market to the much bigger and profoundly sense-ational Lucas de Galvez market.

Tonight I did what I've often told my ESL students to do: I went into the market and asked questions. What is this? Is it spicy? What do you use it for?, over and over. The answers were largely the same, but the phrases varied, and I've got to believe that this is good for my Spanish-- it certainly feels right. Plus, the folks I talked to were very kind and interested in helping me understand which spices go into which dishes.

More on Lucas de Galvez in another posting. What a place.