Interview with Three Pets

Me: Well, well, my cute little fuzzy children, it is almost time for Christmas, and Esperando and I are going to abandon you again to go back to the U.S. for the holidays. Is there anything I should tell Santa Claus about what you might like before we leave?

Frida: I would jus’ like a Chreesmas tree of my own. I like dragging ze liddle bright lights acrost ze rhoom, and hiding under it to play wid ze branches, maybe chew a few off. Also maybe Santa could brang me a small flightless birdie or a liddle blind mouse, or maybe un grasshopper grandisimo —I tink a large cucaracha would do in a pinch. I know my waistline is muy grandismo now, but jus’ a liddle animal-jus’ to play with—why, we could be friends.

Winnie, alias Sour Pickle: I say, as a proper British Shorthair Cat, I need a new proper cat perch. Frida has pretty much mutilated mine rather into shreds. Whilst I certainly wish she would stay off of it permanently, she still doesn’t seem to know her place in this household (although I boff her regularly). Also I need a year’s supply of Whiskas Temptations in every flavour for my collection. And dates, I have discovered I really like dates, maybe you, er St. Nicholas, could bring me more dates.

Dash the Dog: All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth! Ha ha! No, seriously could you take me with you, puhleeze! I will be so sad when you are gone, I barely know you anymore since you are never here. I miss my walks with Pop, and I can’t lie down by your feet if you aren’t around.

Winnie: That’s right Dash just suck it up.

Me: You know its going to be hard for Santa to come down the chimney here, since we don’t have a fireplace, although I think he finds other ways to get in, like the front door for instance. Winnie you have to promise not to run outside and get lost if he accidentally leaves the front door open.

Dash: Don’t you worry, Mom, I will keep Mr. Winston Churchill from getting out—or maybe chase him a lot and bark at him so he gets confused and runs out into the street in front of oncoming traffic. Ha, ha!!

Me: I will really miss all of you, it won’t seem like Christmas without you guys.

Winnie: Harumph, balderdash!

Frida: Yes, how vill I keep varm at night vhen you aren’t aroun to sleep on, and nobody else wans to pet me. I might even forget how to purr.

Dash: Gad, I’m going to be by myself at night with only the cats for company! How gross. That is so unfair!!

Winnie: Now Dash, you know that you like me. Maybe not Frida because she’s a stupid fat gel, but the two of us get on fabulously. Who else would put up with you poking your stupid toy in their face and act as though it were a proper honor?

Me: When I come back in the New Year, I will never leave you guys again.

Frida and Dash (rolling their eyes): What a liar! Look how long her nose is.

Winnie: What red devil of mendacity
Grips your soul with such tenacity?
Will one you cruelly shower with lies
Put a pistol ball between your eyes?

More on cookies

This weekend I spent baking more cookies while Esperando spent the day climbing up and down a ladder to caulk up the slits in the wood planking on the walls and ceiling in Casa Abeja to prepare for our moving over there in January, both kinds of messy undertakings. Guess who lost more weight?

OR






On Friday I had asked Sr. Jueves to get me some walnuts, which are called nuez here and which is also the word for nuts in general in Mexico. I showed him some pecans and said the nuts I want look similar to this, but the nuez is bigger and paler. I also said to him, before we had pecanas you used to bring me nueces, which is true. When we first arrived a year and a half ago the store carried big bags of shelled walnuts. Nobody seemed to even know what a pecan was here 6 months ago. Then I kept asking for pecanas and finally pecanas arrived. The stores are now chock-a-block full of pecanas, but no nueces. I seem to have influenced the local nut economy in ways that are a mystery to me.

I went to a different store and found one small bag of walnuts still in their shells. I snatched them up, took them home and cracked them in my molquetera (what we gringos know as a mortar and pestle) that was given to me by my friend, Don Diego’s mother. It is the first time I had ever used it and Esperando chided me for chopping nuts in it, but I have to tell you it was the perfect tool. The curved bowl held the nut from rolling away and the pestle was heavy enough to easily crack the shell. I was in love with it before I used it, but now I am even more so. Look at its cute little piggie face.

By yesterday morning I had a vast domain of some really great cookies: frosted and unfrosted biscochitos, chewy walnut squares, the Neiman Marcus $250 cookie, and lemon squares, all baked over the weekend. I bundled them all up and gave them as gifts to the guesthouse staff and my husband’s co-workers in the office downtown. That left us with just a handful of cookies. Good, I thought, we can start getting skinnier before Christmas—no temptations.

Then, I got curious about the Mexican wedding cookies that we made the first day and which had evaporated into thin air. Why was it that none of the Mexicans here knew of this cookie? I looked it up on Wikipedia and didn’t get an answer to that, but I did find an interesting history. It seems that variations on a simple cookie made of nuts, flour, egg, sugar, vanilla and anise or caraway seed used for flavoring, and called a Jumble, has been around since the Middle Ages. It is the basis for our modern cookies known variously as Russian Teacakes, Sand Tarts, Polvorones Sevillanos and, yes, Mexican Wedding Cookies. Apparently this cookie originated in Arab cuisine, spread to Spain and from there to Europe. Yesterday afternoon, looking around at my empty larder and curious about the Polvorones Sevillanos, the little devil on my shoulder caused me to try that recipe. It was a little different as it included cinnamon in the dough. The recipe I made was far too dry to stick together and so I had to add a little brandy (which was a component of a different recipe for the same cookie). Well we’ve all read the joke about making the fruitcake and sampling the liquor, and how the recipe goes to hell. And no, that didn’t happen to me, but the result is sort of the same as we have a whole new batch of temptations to sample now. Esperando informed me he doesn’t like them so I will have stuff them down my gullet alone—such a loathsome task. Hiccup!

The Christmas Tree

Yesterday we put up the Christmas tree. Before it arrived the conversation went something like this and underscores the finer points of female logic:

Me: I want to put up a Christmas tree this year.
Esperando: But we won’t be there for Christmas.
Me: I don’t care, we are there for two more weeks and I want to have the feeling of Christmas before we leave.
Esperando (knowing after so many years it is hopeless to argue): Ok, so I will send Javier over to help find a Torote. You can go with him to pick out a Torote (a wild shrub which is used for a Christmas tree in much of Baja that has a resinous pine scent).
Me: No, this year I want a U.S. style pine tree. Moreno’s Market will have them.
Esperando (wishing to economize): Well just get a little one.
Me (making a non-binding commitment--i.e. Charlie Brown I promise to hold the football): Yes, I will get a really small one. The smallest one they have.

Sr. Jueves came by to get me and off we went to Moreno’s. Sr. Jueves told me yesterday that Sr. Moreno would have small, medium and large trees. We have a rather cavernous room with high ceilings and I began to think a very small tree was not so great an idea, maybe medium size is better. This morning he told me the large trees and the small trees were about the same, except one costs less. When I got there, they were all the exact same size, about 6 feet, and although they had been offloaded from the truck only several hours previously, half of them had names on them already and had been sold. I am sure in a couple of more hours they would all be gone.

I had been concerned that the tree could be rather dried out, after all it was cut in the U.S., where I don’t know, and came down on a truck via Tijuana. It was so fresh with so much sap that Sr. Jueves could barely saw 2 inches off without the saw blade sticking constantly. The fragrance filled the room.

Last year we had a Torote. Not knowing much about them, it was way underwatered and died 2 weeks into being a Christmas tree. (Iwas told not to water it at all.) At the time I wanted to buy white lights for it but none were available. We bought two strands of colored lights, and when I asked for another colored strand that afternoon they had sold out. This year I tried to buy more colored lights but all they had were strands of white and strands of red. So I bought a strand of white to mix in with what I already had and they still barely covered the tree. I sent Sr. Jueves back to buy more strands of any color but they had sold out again. New Cook went rushing off to the second hand store her sister-in-law runs and came back with two more strands of colored lights. She saved the day.

Then having made a batch of Mexican wedding cookies twice (the first batch lacked flour and became on giant very flat cookie), New Cook joined in and started making a wreath from the leftover greens and glittered shells that I used last year. Then she went home and brought over her Christmas ornaments to add more to our tree. Although I tried to insist we could buy them from her, she wouldn’t hear of it, it was her donation she said. She has a very generous spirit. Everyone commented on how wonderful the fragrance was from the tree.

Sr. Jueves told me he now understood about the kind of base you need for a fresh tree, that when I was trying to describe it before it made no sense but now it did, it was sort of like becoming a convert to a new religion the way he waxed on with light shining in his eyes. The tree is beautiful. We all ate Mexican wedding cookies and were happy . This morning only six cookies were left and we are starting on a batch of biscochitos.


Decorated sailboats in the harbor at Santa Rosalia.

49° 11' N 123° 10' W

We are in Vancouver now for the company Christmas party on Friday night. We are so lucky! It is not raining or snowing for a change; but still—it is really cold outside with a low of 32F this morning and not predicted to get much higher than 43F today; tomorrow the high is predicted to be 37F! Brrrrrrrrrrrr. It’s a good thing I bought a last-minute down coat before we got here. I seem to do a lot of rushed internet shopping with overnight shipping as we proceed on these little whirlwind tours. We had planned to be back in Santa Rosalia before coming here, so I didn’t have the warm rain/snow gear to bring along. I bought my coat at Lands End which I like for their reasonable prices and quality merchandise, but there were not many choices still left in my size so I had to settle for a white. Esperando tells me I look like the Pillsbury Dough Boy in my new coat—such kind words. Actually I had rather liked it but since he said Pillsbury Dough Boy I am now sure I must look like a blimp.

I had forgotten how expensive everything is in here in the frozen North, as my Mother refers to it! These people really get ripped off—at one time the Canadian dollar was about 75¢ to the US dollar, but now they are about even, which adds 25% to the price of everything (of course no one adjusts their prices downward) just for starters, and then that is also topped with a HST tax (sort of a VAT tax) which will be up to 12% by next July. This means real estate, restaurants, groceries and any shopping is just outrageous. I don’t know how these people afford to live here albeit it is a beautiful city.

This morning I went for a walk along Robson Street, the major trendy shopping district with stores like Gap, Banana Republic, Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein and so on. I could not resist wandering into Tiffany’s to admire the beautiful jewelry. Right before my very eyes two young blond things were buying a silver diamond-studded key with chain (apparently the new HOT jewelry item as seen in Vogue, etc.) They looked like teenagers to me, but I think they were probably in their early 20s. I am guessing they were buying this for their mother—in any event, with chain it came to a little over $1000, and they purchased it without blinking an eye. I was stunned. Maybe they were buying it for their dad to give her. Then, I looked at all the large carat diamond rings and drooled a little bit. The clerks assured that was fine as they had Windex to clean up the cases. They were all so kind and genuine, I really felt sorry not to increase their commissions by buying some nice bauble. Actually the store was quite busy. Guess its time to put some real effort into winning the lotto!