I never had been a fan of tequila until we moved to Mexico last year. I suspect it had something to do with the dreaded worm at the bottom of the bottle. Turns out that the worm has pretty much disappeared from tequila bottles, largely due to the fact that it dissuaded people like me from drinking tequila. I was also under the false impression that tequila was a grain alcohol, like Scotch. (I love single malts, but partake only occasionally, as in me they generally produce hangovers.) But no, tequila is distilled from the agave plant–not a cactus, folks, but a succulent, one that serves also as a decorative outdoor plant throughout much of Mexico. Most tequilas down here boast of being ¨reposado,” which means that they are aged, though how long is left off of the label most of the time. Some tequila, like Patron, is very expensive, and the prices get even steeper. One establishment in San Francisco offers $500.00 shots of tequila. The owner admits to selling only seven so far. Wonder if they were all sold to the same high roller.
More to the point, I was a big white wine aficionada in the States. I especially liked “two-buck Chuck” chardonnay as a staple. There are no Trader Joes in Mexico, hence no Charles Shaw. Here in Manzanillo there are plenty of white wines from California, Europe and Chile, but they are all horribly expensive, most ringing up for at least twice as much as they would be in the States. (“The States”? I only began referring to my former home as such when I became an expat…sigh.) The nearest to tequila I had been so far was pisco, a clear South American brandy that is very popular in Chile and Peru. One can find medium grade pisco in large metropolitan areas, such as Los Angeles. Peruvian pisco is pricey and comes most often in decorative brown bottles shaped like monuments of Inca gods and women. (Trader Joe’s recently began to stock a reasonably-priced Peruvian brand.) I have become fairly proficient in the craft of making pisco sours, a margarita-like blended drink that incorporates egg whites, lemon and sugar. My husband likes for us to drink the pisco we have on hand at any one time sparingly, as it cannot be had here in Mexico, and we are able to bring only two bottles per person (airline regulations) at a time from the States or from Chile, my husband Jaime’s birth country.
For different reasons, beer, as a regular beverage, was not an option for me; for one thing it is heavy with carbs, mostly from the hops I think; for another, beer, ale, suds, and whatever other moniker is on its label, contains carbonation, which property leaches calcium out of one´s system evidently. Beer also makes me incredibly thirsty; one beer leads to another so to speak. When we first moved down here I drank one or two beers a day to complement the carnitas and other lunchtime yummies we brought home from any number of local taco carts like Chuey´s. I was never sure what part of the pig I was eating, but it´s all good, right? Wrong; it was all good and fattening, and I gained ten pounds in no time; in addition, I was already a good twenty pounds overweight from sitting on my ass seven days a week at the bookstore I formerly owned and ran in Cambria, California. I cut out the beer and the other lunchtime trappings after an epicurean epiphany brought on by a one-day flu that completely incapacitated me. Besides cleaning out my digestive system, this unlikely and unprayed for angel of grace separated me from my addiction to carbohydrates long enough for me to realize that I didn´t want to die fat from a heart attack caused by high blood pressure, so I googled foods that were good for losing weight and lowering blood pressure. And here I am, back to my fighting weight of between 125 and 129 pounds, depending on the season.
So when we began to frequent weekly gatherings of expats, (mostly Canadians), at rotating local restaurants, I opted for margaritas in lieu of white wine or beer. These “Thirsty Thursday” dinners, as they have been dubbed by their organizers, always feature an hour of down time before the food is served, during which there is little else to do but drink and schmooze. Must be the equivalent of what LA calls Happy Hour; New York goes in for the more sophisticated cocktail party to host get-togethers, which involves fancier clothes and hors d’oeuvres instead of nachos. We call ourselves Manzamigos (to ourselves in emails, not in public), and upon remitting a yearly membership fee of about $25.00 are issued a laminated badge sporting our name and a number unique to us, which badge most Manzamigos wear on a cord around their necks. That practice brings to mind tacky, touristy plaid Bermuda shorts and black socks, so I just memorized the number, which the wait staff wants to know every time we order something so they can charge us accordingly, and let my husband wear the badge.
I quickly discovered how to order—una margarita sin sal, por favor, blended. Haven’t learned the Spanish for ¨blended¨ yet because the servers seem to know that English word, and I’m lazy besides. This is the drink for me in semi-tropical Manzanillo. It´s light, refreshing and, guess what, no hangover! (I sound like some kind of soap or soda commercial, don’t I?) And although I found a relatively cheap white wine that I could tolerate, which still costs three times as much here as in the States, I began to incorporate Happy Hour into our evening routine. My ancient Osterizer, which I had hardly used in the past thirty years, now gets a daily workout. I even had to replace my glass blender jar, because it had developed several chips at the bottom from so much use and leaked profusely if the blade housing was not carefully screwed on to the jar. The glass jars down here are costly, prohibitively so, which fact convinced me to opt for a much cheaper plastic version. It works fine: I just don’t like to use plastic when I can avoid it, as a matter of ecosensitive practicality.
The three major grocery stores in our part of Manzanillo–Soriana, Comercial, and Walmart– all stock dozens of brands of tequila. Almost all of them boast of being “reposado.” Some are light, some dark, much like rum comes in clear and shades of brown. I am not a connoisseur of either spirit. I did just learn that rum, like tequila, is not a grain alcohol, but is, in fact, a distillation of the sugarcane. Who knew? No wonder it is so often married to Coke. Fortunately, I can take rum & Coke or leave it, but never actively pursue it; It doesn´t fit in with my current lifestyle, which includes the avoidance of medical personnel at almost all costs, so far saving me a ton of money, not to mention apprehension if not trepidation at the prospect of having to visit a Mexican dentist and/or doctor who may or may not (or may choose not to) speak English. I rely on Jaime to translate for me, but he is sometimes cowed by medical professionals, as are most of us, and I’m not convinced that if the dentist recommended an invasive procedure, like pulling a tooth, that he wouldn´t tell the guy to go ahead, numb her up and go for it; telling her beforehand will just produce panic.
I no longer see a dentist on a regular basis, relying on flossing, rinsing with Listerine twice daily after I brush, and maintaining a sugar-free diet, the one constant exception being margaritas. I have heard tell that all carbonated liquids, including mineral water, erode tooth enamel besides leaching calcium. So I have given up all diet sodas and mineral water with the beer, and since I have never developed a taste for straight water, I rely on the ice in my blended margarita to hydrate me. Don´t tell me that the alcohol in the margarita dehydrates me, thereby nullifying the benefits of the ice; I don´t want to hear it. Besides, I do drink bottled water down here, though rather sparingly, during the day, and I always keep a water glass at my bedside.
To make margaritas I measure three ounces of whatever´s-on-sale, light or dark, reposado tequila, the juice of one limon´ and sugar syrup (It comes in a plastic bottle labeled ”Jarabe Natural” here in Mexico; I’m thinking of switching to a sugar substitute to save on the calories and tooth decay.), one and a half ounces of Controy (a Mexican version of Cointreau in the exact same green glass bottle), about twelve ice cubes, (cracked or crushed ice blends up better, but our fridge lacks that capability), and into the Osterizer it all goes. The yield for this recipe is about two Mexican margarita glasses, (the thick glass Mexican barware with cobalt blue rims and bases), in technical terms, about three cups, or twelve ounces of margarita. I split this daily dosage with my husband, somewhat equally.
My margaritas never used to measure up to the quality of the restaurant margaritas, even though the recipe we used came from a place that served one of our favorite versions. I think the problem lay with our choice of citrus. Limes, the traditional fruit used to flavor margaritas, are known as limons´ (pronounced “leemones´”) here in Mexico and are muy precioso, relatively speaking; so for a time we opted for lemons, which grow profusely from one tree on our property for six months out of the year. The lemon tree stops producing sometime in November, so we freeze as much juice as possible in plastic ice trays. This December our cache of frozen lemon juice was all but depleted, when Jaime made a fortuitous discovery down the street of a well-laden tangerine tree, whose owner had previously invited us to have at it; we’d just never thought to even look at the tree until desperation set in. The fruit from this tree is small, thin-skinned and sour, but very juicy, just perfect for margaritas. We liked the tangerine taste for a time, but gradually gravitated back to the limons´; happily, we found an inexpensive source. Margarita aficionados round the world would probably have turned up their noses at the notion of substituting the tangerines for limes, but we’re just admirers of tasty cocktails, however and with whatever they’re concocted, not connoisseurs of margaritas, or much of anything else for that matter.
Rosann Rants 