Salsa

Though we've eaten out only two or three times since we've been here, I am feeling very influenced by the food. It's not a difficult task to convince me to eat a lot of beans, tortillas, corn, avocados and spicy tomato-based products. Yum!

It's not the restaurants that are convincing me either (see earlier post about how we are living in a very strange part of Mexico where yummy taquerias are not bountiful, though French bistros are) - it's the Supermarket. Admittedly I shop at the HEB as often as the Super "G" (for Gigante) but no matter, they both have an entire aisle dedicated to salsa, hot sauce and similar condiments. Next aisle over is dedicated to beans and the like and there is more cheese than you can believe there are cows on this earth to produce it. There is *always* a sampler lady waiting to heat up a tortilla for you on her comal - and she'll put beans or chicharones on it for you. There are corn tortillas, flour tortillas, whole wheat tortillas, raw tortillas ready for you to heat up on your own comal (or sauce pan as the case may be), and those wonderful thick corn tortilla like things that have edges so your stuff doesn't fall off (sopes maybe?).

By far, my favorite part is the hot sauces. So far I have tried Cholula and La Costena’s salsa de chile chipotle. Love ‘em! The Cholulu is hotter. The Costena has that great chipotle flavor. I plan to try every single one. The salsas are good too but I don’t feel as justified about keeping several open jars in the fridge. So mostly I’ve been sticking with one good salsa casera (basic table salsa) and the occasional tomatillo salsa. Still trying to decide which brands I prefer. Herdez is fine but I feel I could do better. Getting ready to open a Del Fuerte box (yes, lots of products come in little hermetic boxes en vez de bottle) of salsa verde. I’ll let you know how it goes…