Peter treated us to a big jar of Sauer's Mayonnaise last year. It is good, and we appreciated the gift. But we have become quite accustomed to McCormick's Mexican made mayo, and it's just fine with us. In fact, we've gotten to like it better than the extra rich, fatty Best or Kraft Mayo we used to buy in the States

Bisquick is unnecessary here in la Casa del Panadero Jubilado. Same with cornbread mix. The challenge is finding cornmeal. For today's lunch I made buttermilk cornbread, using SACO brand powdered cultured buttermilk, and Nora Mill Stone Ground Yellow Cornmeal. Both, of course, inported from NOB at considerable expense. Same with stone ground grits (I'm not as fond of quick grits and I don't want instant ones. The "Navy Beans" in the Ham and Beans that the cornbread accompanied were actually the easy to find alubias chicas. The results were more than satsfactory. The cornbread was like my Momma used to make...sure.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a blog post on http://mexkitchen.blogspot.com/ Called "When Mexico Hands You Limones— Make Limonada".
Further reading on the subject of adapting local ingredients may be read there: http://mexkitchen.blogspot.com/2009/12/when-mexico-hands-you-limones.html#more

I much prefer to make my own chili, which is an act of creation and a flight of imagination, but I have confess here that I was once a fan, no, an addict of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee canned Ravioli. After a turn on the graveyard shift at the bakery, I'd microwave a can of the Jumbo Beef Ravioli, dust it generously with Kraft Parmesan type Substance, and chow down.

Conclusion: we all have different preferences and links back to The Home Country. Some of us are willng to go to greater lengths and expenses to obtain the old, familiar comfort foods of home.

Some things are just a matter of convenience, the chili for example. As much as I love a pot of chili I am willing to settle for the convenience of opening a can of Dennison's for a quick treat.

The Bisquick is another labor-saver - or low-labor savor. I can make biscuits from scratch but my habit of throwing things together without measuring accurately can produce varying results when baking, even something as simple as biscuits. However, for my Mexicana wife, Tere, Bisquick was just the thing to ensure having biscuits for breakfast semi-regularly.

McCormick's mayo?? As an occasional substitute perhaps, better than nothing, but I doubt I will ever pick up a taste for it. For someone that preferred Miracle Whip I can see that filling the bill.

Grits - I was a Californian and never a southerner. I know nothing about grits other than I like them and Tere will cook those for breakfast for me regularly. I small amount will go a long way and they are about the only thing I can keep on-hand between visits to Superlake in Ajijic.

Having spent three of my early formative years living in Bombay, India (late 50's & early 60's), we were very accustomed to not finding a normal variety of packaged food products. Mayo was one of those things impossible to find. My mother would make blender mayo and once she had the recipe down pat, it was really quite good. Easy to make but even with using the freshest eggs one can find, one should use it within a week and toss any leftovers. I have made small batches a number of times primarily because I wanted a different flavor. The type of oil, type of vinegar or type of mustard that one uses can give you varying taste treats. If it wasn't for the fact that it is only good for a week, I would probably not even purchase a commercial version.

With mayo, chili, and biscuits what factors into the equation for me is convenience, consistency, and availability. I discuss these here rather than in La Comida because it was a matter of where to find them. And I did find them.

I may start a similar thread in La Comida so we could pass around some recipes and variations on these semi-essentials to a semi-gringo household.

Well, it is necessary for the Dawg, the single most dedicated consumer of mayonnaise on the planet, to weigh in here.

Now, Dawg married a Frog which makes this an unfair contest as the French people make homemade mayonnaise that is to die over and when they add copious amounts of garlic and make ailoli, they approach the sublime. Great mayonnaise and ailoli must, in dawg´s opinion be made at home . using fruity olive oil from Provence, Spain, Greece, Portugal or Morocco. Italian olive oil is disgracefully tasteless. A stain upon the olive oil fraternity.

If one must consume commercially provided mayonnaise, there is only one brand in Mexico worth purchasing and that is Best Foods made here in Mexico City. The international conglomerate UNILEVER makes both Best Foods and Hellmans but UNILEVER has adulterated Hellmans to please the Mexican palate which tends toward sweet, runny mayonnaise with hints of lime juice. A disgrace to the product in its pure form. Best Foods retains the mix favored by Americans and somewhat acceptable to the French in a bind.

As far as Mexican mayonnaise, a normally dreadful and disgusting product, is concerned, there is only one brand worth even thinking of consuming and that is La Costeña which is head and shoulders above the nearly indigestible products marketed by its competitors.

Merci, Dawg.

I still believe only Sauer's retains the flavor of Best Foods brand in the US.

Peter wrote:

Merci, Dawg.

I still believe only Sauer's retains the flavor of Best Foods brand in the US.

Well, I must admit, Peter, that Sauers is a very good mayonnaise and I regret leaving Sauers out of my list of favorites. Here in Chiapas, where the Dawg lives a few months out of the year, Sauer´s is the superior commercial mayo product made in Mexico and available hereabouts.

Now, the best commercially prepared mayonnaise on the planet is DUKES out of the Carolinas which I used to buy in the states but let´s not go there.

Dawg

Thank you Dawg! Seems to me that the last Duke's episode lasted three or four months in the planning. Life is just too short for that long of a story!

Hound Dog wrote:

Well, it is necessary for the Dawg, the single most dedicated consumer of mayonnaise on the planet, to weigh in here.

Now, Dawg married a Frog which makes this an unfair contest as the French people make homemade mayonnaise that is to die over and when they add copious amounts of garlic and make ailoi, they approach the sublime. Great mayonnaise and aoili must, in dawg´s opinion be made at home . using fruity olive oil from Provence, Spain, Greece, Portugal or Morocco. Italian olive oil is disgracefully tasteless. A stain upon the olive oil fraternity.

Is there any way we can sweet-talk Dawgitte to post in La Comida for us? Tips for making mayo would be a great start. If either of you has a digital camera on-hand I can offer space to host some photos to make it really special.

BTW, is your new avatar agreeable to you?

Peter wrote:

Is there any way we can sweet-talk Dawgitte to post in La Comida for us? Tips for making mayo would be a great start. If either of you has a digital camera on-hand I can offer space to host some photos to make it really special.

BTW, is your new avatar agreeable to you?

The avatar is quite agreeable and an amazing likeness right down to the purple nose.

Dawg has taken the liberty of requesting of my wife this recipe for French garlic mayonnaise which goes beautifully with lobster and several types of white fish including "monkfish" or other types of fish similar in texture to monkfish . By the way, the word "aioli" is from Provence and means "garlic and oil". Many restaurants in the U.S. mistakenly sell other emulsions as "aioli" when garlic is not included as an essential ingredient so watch out for so-called "aioli" in a U.S. restaurant

DAWGETTE'S FRENCH AIOLI (as interpreted by Dawg)
One Egg Yolk
One TSP. Dijon Mustard
Fruity Extra Virgin Olive Oil (Dawg recommends WalMart's "Great Value" Brand from Spain here in Mexico)
Crushed Garlic to Taste but Dawg sez a Lot!
Lemon Juice to Taste
S&P

All ingredients must be at room temperature

Whisk olive oil with egg yolk slowly at first to achieve proper emulsion and once the ingredients emulsify continue to pour olive oil in until you have the amount of mayonnaise you desire up to a point if you get my drift.

Add crushed garlic, lemon jiuce and S&P to taste.

If you just want mayonnaise, skip the garlic and there you have it.

To make Spanish style aioli similar to that served in the Spanish Mediterranean restaurant Tabarka in West Ajijic, skip the mustard and add a small amount of mashed potatoes but this is not highly recommended.

There is a venerable restaurant in San Francisco´s Financial District named Taditch Grill which is famous for its excellent tartar sauce and the secret ingredient that gives its tartar sauce its special texture is mashed potatoes.

Where does Dawg find lemon juice?

Phil Micheal wrote:

Where does Dawg find lemon juice?

Phil:

I find lemon juice quite regularly at Super Lake in San Antonio Tlayacapan and also must admit to having three lemon trees in my garden in Ajijic from which we get three crops a year from which some juice is frozen for future use. We cannot get lemons in San Cristóbal or anywhere in Chiapas in my experience but the small, sour seeded limes known around Jalisco and Michoacan as "Colima Limes"make an acceptable substitute for American style lemons - or maybe we have just lived here too long. By the way, limes in my wife´s home town of Paris, which are all the Persian style seedless fruity limes, cost about one Euro each the last time I was in that city or about $1.39US at today´s exchange rate.

Though I started this thread as a "Where to find...?" post it has been about comida all along. Now with recipes and all I am moving it there right away. This message is left in order to tag it so you will find it again.

Last month, yellow lemons were available in Wal-Mart and Superama in Morelia. They may still be, but I didn't look on our visit last Wednesday.

We have friends near Quiroga who have lemon trees. Very pretty, too.

Don Cuevas wrote:

We have friends near Quiroga who have lemon trees. Very pretty, too.

::: cues the band ::: Time for a sing-along?

Without any French blood (at least in recent history), I happen to prefer the "bite" provided by Colman's Powdered Mustard. It seems that I am constantly purchasing this product to use with ham, potato salad, tuna salad and a variety of other recipes.

Other friends are growng horseradish. We need to get to know them better.

My relatives that lived in upstate NY had wild horseradish growing along a creek bed near their home. When visiting, my cousins and I would go down and harvest and then my aunt would grind it up. Onions can be bad but that horseradish would drive everyone out of the house! Damned good though!

Don Cuevas wrote:

Other friends are growng horseradish. We need to get to know them better.

Dawg has only eaten freshly grated horseradish at fabulous steakhouses in Downtown Seattle after having spent long days on assignment from San Francisco harassing Seattle bankers for investing bank funds in fishing vessels in the forms of loans that would never be repaid. For those who have never tasted freshly grated horseradish with their finely marbled Northwestern beefsteaks charbroiled to blood rare over a wood fire, I can assure you that this is an unforgettable treat. Freshly grated horseradish is intensely sweet and spicy and one of the reasons, along with geoduck clams and planked salmon, I miss that city more than most cold, wet places I have visited with regularity.

Speaking of banks lending money to finance fishing boats, I got my start in commercial banking at the old First National Bank of Mobile in 1966 which had a branch in the coastal shrimping community of Bayou La Batre on the Gulf (of Forrest Gump fame) and, for reasons that defy rationality, the bank´s senior loan committee decided to take a position in loans to local shrimpers there and, as I later found to be the case in Seattle, it turned out that fishermen/shrimpers sometimes did not always service their shrimpboat mortgages with whatever funds they may have had left over after allocating net profits to whoring and whiskey so as it turned out these shrimpboat loans became somewhat burdensome for the bank so they sent this young assistant branch manager to Bayou La Batre with the charge that he put the arm on those shrimpers to bring their mortgages current. Well, after about a month or two of strongarming these salt-of-the-earth fisherman types, the local fishermen´s association met with this young firebrand and informed him that he had until sunset to leave Bayou La Batre in his wake and never show his ass in that town again upon penalty of tar and feather. That was circa 1967 and I don´t think that dude has ever returned to that town since and, not only that, bank management fired him forthwith for pissing off the shrimpers. No, that was not Dawg but I learned from that kid´s experience and never made his mistake when I was collecting fishing boat loans in San Francisco´s North Beach or along Puget Sound.

All that for an explanation on horseradish?

cheenagringo wrote:

All that for an explanation on horseradish?

Our vegetables are not all pre-washed.

Don Cuevas wrote:

Last month, yellow lemons were available in Wal-Mart and Superama in Morelia. They may still be, but I didn't look on our visit last Wednesday.

We have friends near Quiroga who have lemon trees. Very pretty, too.

Well, Don Cuevas, I must admit I have also seen yellow lemons occasionallly at Walmart in Ajijic but one cannot depend on finding them there. There is no Superama at Lakeside. I have never found yellow lemons at Soriana in Chapala or Bodega Aurerra in Jocotepec and that is it for box stores at the lake.

Now, I know this forum is not about Lakeside or Chiapas and I don´t mean to dwell on shopping in those places but this business of comparative shopping is fun so, since in a previous post on this thread I mentioned that limes in Paris, which are limited to the seedless Persian variety, cost, the last time I was in that city, the equivalent of $1.39US each, I thought it would be fun to compare that price with what I paid yesterday for my favored "Colima" sour seeded limes at the indigenous market in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas where I paid the typical price there of $10 Pesos for what turned out at that purchase to be 30 limes which means that at the dollar/peso exchange rate on that day, I paid about 2.6 US Cents per lime but I am well aware that comparing the price of limes in Paris with the price of limes in Chiapas is an exercise in incomparables so I thought it might be fun to recount the cost of making a guacamole side with ingredients purchased dirt cheap at the indigenous market in San Cristóbal to go with the arrachera I bought at Sam´s Club in that same city on the same day.

The Cost in equivalent USD of the components of a side of Guacamole to serve, shall we say, four people, at the San Cristóbal indigenous market on any given day strolling about that madhouse:

ITEM COST IN USD
3 Avocados $0.25
One Onion 0.05
Cilantro 0.01
2 Tomatoes 0.10
Fresh Serranos 0.05
Lime Juice 0.01

TOTAL $0.47

The salsa cruda and a few tortillas to go with the arrachera might bring your total cost to about a buck for the accompaniments so a couple of beers each and that pre-packaged and marinated arrachera and maybe you´ve spent the equivalent of $5.00USD at most. I´ll stay here in Mexico vs. France thank you.

Perhaps some of you would like to compare the costs of an equivalent meal with the ingredients purchased at a street market in Morelia or Chapala. This is for fun and not a competition.

Peter wrote:

cheenagringo wrote:

All that for an explanation on horseradish?

Our vegetables are not all pre-washed.

Dawg is reminded of a point in time when a certain Michoacan food expert (now living in Mexico City) was shopping with him in the wild-assed indigenous market in San Cristóbal de Las Casas when she exclaimed, upon observing the potatoes offered there for sale;

"But, but, these potatoes are encrusted with dirt!"

Ah yes, our indigenous friends cannot be depended upon to meticulously scrub all the soil from Mother Earth´s bounty but, nevertheless, the potatoes offered up that day in the market were still quite tasty.

Hound Dog wrote:

Now, I know this forum is not about Lakeside or Chiapas and I don´t mean to dwell on shopping in those places but this business of comparative shopping is fun so...

I happen to know very personally some residents of Michoacán that make periodic trips to Ajijic/Chapala specifically for food shopping and vacationing. Just because we are Michoacán-centric doesn't mean we pretend other parts of Mexico are irrelevant or do not exist. We even know others that travel beyond our fair state from time to time. Todo vale.

Still hoping you will pop the still virgin regional forum for other areas with some of your travel adventures around Chiapas, Vera Cruz, Yucatan, etc. We even relish the occasional forays into Alabama and California. I especially liked the detour you made into Seattle. Did I ever mention I used to date Kurt Cobain's cousin Colleen throughout the 90's?

You are free to take us anywhere you wish to go, Dawg.