Mexico City Neighborhood Saturday Market

We were getting ready to cook for NY's Eve dinner when I realized we still needed yogurt and dill.

Beeing Saturday, in Lupita's block there was the weekly Saturday market.

We were looking for the herbs guy, wading through a moltitude of people and offerings till we found these really cool cheese stands; these are all artisan, small batch and unpasteurized cheeses

Artisan cheeses and homemade fruity cream liquors....

Food offerings were incredible as always .

This poultry stand , showing off some really nice free range turkeys was truly noteworthy

as well as the display of salsas and condiments at this quesadillas kitchen

Having found all I still needed I took a few moments to indulge in a little shopping for myself and picked up some top notch chapulines ( dried crickets, flavoured with lime and salt) to snack on during the mandatory poker game and an insanely good blue corn quesadilla filled with grilled nopal, chorizo, epazote and the smoothest Oaxaca cheese I ever tasted.

If I ever had any doubt about wanting to live in this City, these last few days of 2011 are most definitively clearing them out of my mind.

Another day, another market

So, here we are, looking for floral arrangements for NY's Eve party and what better place to go to than Mercado de Jamaica, MC's flower market?

I'll spare yo the details of row after row after raw of flower stands packed with an endless variety of flowers, floral arrangements for any occasion and botanical curiosities, like this truly weird flower called Naranja (Spanish for Orange)

Coolest thing about this market though is that the other half of their business is........SWEETS and candies!

An overwhelming vortex of colours and smells; I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:

and, yes, candies are cool but the the candied fruits are even better.. pumpkin,sweet potatoes, tejocotes(little tiny apple like fruits), figs and more all simmered in cane syrup until they absorb all the goodness of the syrup and the spices steeped in it

or crystallized fruit like in the following pic

The best part of all of this is that each and every vendor will try to earn your business  offering you a generous sample of their merchandise;  if you're as curious  and, well.. weak as I am, a day spent in one of these wonderful markets could put you in real trouble with your weight. In the 5 days I'm in this city I grew one full size!!!

Mexico City at last!

Got here yesterday at 13:00 hrs, finally.

I've bee wanting to come back since last year ; Mexico City, or DF as the chilangos call it, is truly an amazing locale.

If you like food, and you are not afraid to eat on the street, this is THE place for you. Markets are simply insane and the tianqguis , the red tarped street markets, are where the best food is found.

After snacking all afternoon on Christmas Eve dinner leftovers we got pulled into a neighbour's birthday party, with mariachi band and all the trimmings.

Señora Elvia, the birthday girl's mother and a friend of my girlfriend's family's, insisted we had just un poquito of chicken mole and pozole, followed by two rounds of birthday cake and plenty tequila and coconut cream... Over tequila and tostadas I got tipped on the best moronga in the area and decided I was going to try it the next morning for breakfast.

So here we are, in Nezahualcoyotl 's Monday market looking for the "Moronga Lady".

Moronga sauteed with jalapeño peppers, onion and epazote

Moronga: pig's blood sausage

It goes without saying that the taco I've been served was:

                                     Awesome;

                                     Supersized;

                                     Made with one of the best corn tortillas I've tasted.

After taking care of some "family business" we went to the neighborhood market looking for dinner supplies and stopped for a snack at this cool little pescaderia wich also serves fried fish, seafood cocktails and other seafood snacks and tapas

Fish and seafood tapas (botanas)

My fantastic shrimp empanada

The bill read like this:
2 shrimp cocktails, 2 shrimp empanadas, 1 crab tostada, 1 fish quesadilla, 4 Coronas for ...ready?...$200 pesos, less than 20 U$ !!!

Now, all hapy and fed we started wandering around and got into this amazing lamb barbacoa .
Barbacoa consists in a whole lamb steamed wrapped in maguei leaves, which adds a nice grassy and almost sweet note to the meat. The drippings and the juices make for a super tasty broth to be eaten with rice or chickpeas.

I don't have to add that the fruit and vegetable stands are on a monumental scale and full of , for us, exotic offerings

Huitlacoche, black corn  mushroom, fresh, cleaned and at a third of Los Cabos price!

Well. I think this is it for today.. I'll be hitting one of the oldest and more unbelievable markets in downtown Mexico City on Thursday.

I'll post plenty of interesting pics of hard to find and pretty much unknown traditional Mexican dishes.

Dinner's ready! Good night.