It's not Walmart; it's El Super!

Do you get weary of doing the marketing at the same old American chain stores?  Yes, it is comforting to know where the french fried onion rings are located, but do you find yourself plodding down the same old aisles and making the same old food choices week after week?

A trip to an ethnic grocery store may be just the inspiration to spice life up a bit.  In El Paso, Texas, my home town, we have several Hispanic grocery stores.  "El Super" is my favorite.  On a recent Saturday morning, my husband, Wayne and I were craving a coffee and Mexican sweet bread. We headed to "El Super" to have breakfast and buy a few specialty items. 

"El Super" grocery store

Upon entering the store, the sights, sounds, colors and aromas are a vivid reminder that you are in a new environment.  Large colorful murals adorn the walls.  Don't the fruits and fresh juices make your mouth water?

Mural at "El Super"

Our first stop was the bakery for sweet bread and coffee.  My favorite bread is the "concha " which has the shape of a big, round shell.

Bakery at "El Super"

I resisted the urge to buy "francesitos,"  the iconic Mexican rolls, crusty on the outside and soft on the inside.

"Francesitos"

We sat at a long picnic table to enjoy our food and drink while examining the very alluring produce department.

Produce department of "El Super"

Fruits and vegetables are attractively displayed in large, overflowing bins that remind me of cornucopias of abundance and plenty.

Chiles poblanos

One of the items on our shopping list for "El Super" was jamaica, dried hibiscus flowers used to make a cooling summer drink.

Jamaica, packaged or loose

To make Jamaica Flower Water, I use a recipe in Diana Kennedy's  The Essential Cuisines of Mexico.

Put 2/3 cup of  jamaica flowers in 3 cups of water and bring to a boil.  Continue to boil for 5 minutes over brisk heat.  Remove from stove and add one more cup of water, 1/3 cup sugar (or other sweetener) and set aside for at least four hours or even overnight.  (Overnight produces a full rich flavor!)  Strain the liquid into a jug, check the sweetness, and serve well chilled. I serve the drink over ice.   

Some people prefer more sweetener, others like a little lime added for tartness, and still others prefer a lighter drink by combining it with club soda.  The deep red color of  jamaica flower water and the rich taste will help you dream of a tropical vacation.

Our last buy was an impulse purchase.

Water jug

Water jugs were on sale at "El Super" for under $10.00!  We bought two for gifts and one for the house.  Mexican clay water jugs have a reputation for keeping water cool. If this jug can perform that miracle in the triple digit El Paso summer heat, I will be pleasantly surprised.  If not, I will still enjoy looking at the jug  on an equipale table in our front hall.

A trip to "El Super" was a lot more fun than Walmart!

Five good reasons to live in El Paso, Texas

The recent howling spring winds blowing dust and debris everywhere in my home town of El Paso, Texas prompted me to write this post.  I must think positively, Pollyanna-like.  I've got to remember why I live in El Paso, Texas.  Here are five good reasons that come to mind, in no particular order.

No. 1.  El Paso is located on the border between Texas and Mexico.  Some may use the term 'border city' as a pejorative term, but I prefer to think of El Paso's location as a two-for-one deal. Citizens of El Paso have all of the advantages of  American-style living with the bonus of the opportunity to experience Mexican culture close up.

No. 2.  Great Mexican food.  I do believe that El Paso is the Mexican food capital of the world. Once a person becomes accustomed to the special flavor of our border Mexican food, no other Mexican food can match it. Enchiladas made with thick red sauce, sauces made for dipping with warm tortilla chips, fluffy handmade flour tortillas, need I go on?  And my husband and I find new small restaurants popping up constantly in El Paso where you can imagine that your aunt or grandmother is in the kitchen preparing a special spicy dish just for you.

No. 3.  We have mountains!  Beautiful mountains that change colors and create a backdrop for breathtaking sunsets.  "Sunset alert," we call out in our household to remind each other to take a few minutes from a busy day and walk outside for a view towards the west.

No. 4.  Two languages, English and Spanish, that swirl around, mix, compete, and find that one can't live without the other one.  Two vocabularies, two grammars, two accents.  What richness!

No. 5.  Western heritage and history.  We can sit in the Dome Bar of the historic Camino Real Hotel in downtown El Paso and imagine times long past when revolutionaries and cattlemen met in that very location, making important deals.

Within two hours, we can drive to the small western town of Van Horn,Texas and spend the night at the historic El Capitán Hotel,

or to Marfa, Texas and stay at the Hotel Paisano,

both decorated beautifully with heavy wooden furniture and courtyards and gardens.

 And one of my favorite places in El Paso is the Magoffin Home, a state historical site located near downtown.  It only takes a few minutes after stepping inside for me to be mentally back in the 19th century.  

So, I'm focusing on the positive and forgetting those gale force winds for the time being at least.  Surely they can't last much longer? Surely?

March Winds are Back with a Vengeance

Grumpy, grumpy, grumpy.  That's what I become as March winds make an appearance in my home town.  I wrote the following piece about the wind quite a few years ago, and, sadly, it is still relevant today. If the howling winds are driving you to distraction where you live, perhaps I can get a little sympathy from you!

The phrase ‘spring winds’ may conjure up feelings of a soft breeze against your face on a warm day-but not in El Paso, Texas.  For most of the year, our weather is enviable.  We laugh as we walk out the door in January, tennis rackets in hand, while the Weather Channel is announcing another cold front from Canada moving down into Michigan.  We speculate as to how our friends who recently moved to West Virginia are affording their heating bills this winter.  We plan intimate outdoor suppers in front of the kiva fireplace in the patio in mid-December.  But when March blows in like a lion, El Pasoans begin fearing the worst.

Maybe the winds won’t be as bad this year.  Or maybe they won’t last as long.  Or maybe we are just imagining how awful they were last year.  “My parents told me they remember the winds being around until June one year,” moans a pessimistic friend of mine.  The morning weather caster skips over the current prediction of a 75 degree day to warn us, almost gleefully, that 50 mile per hour winds are on the way, and will probably last a week.  The city hunkers down.

I decide I had better get my errands done quickly.  The receptionist at the veterinary office makes the usual small talk while ringing up the charge for the dogs’ medicine and then asks if I have heard today’s weather report.  I have, and we exchange ideas about how soon the winds will arrive.  The older lady at the feed store hands me my sack of dog food and asks if it is getting windy outside yet.  I tell her no, but that I am sure the wind is coming.  We both shake our heads at the futility of trying to control the weather, and, I suspect, our advancing ages as well.  The young, efficient cable TV installer gets his job done at our house without much chit-chat, but he can’t resist a parting comment.  “Guess those winds are going to kick up pretty soon, huh?”  Yes, I guess they are.

The spring winds in El Paso are inescapable.  They howl relentlessly for what seems to be an eternity.  Dust is everywhere-on the furniture, on the desks at school, on the dashboard, and in your eyes, nose, and ears.  Contact lens wearers switch over to coke bottle lens eye glasses.  

And El Pasoans get testy.  Grocery checkers hand over sacks without even bothering to wish you a good day.  School teachers contemplate early retirement as students stare out the window at the flailing branches.  And the winds are incredibly loud.  TV sets have to be turned up even louder, and cell phone users on the street search for a protected corner to answer their innumerable calls.

Life is put on hold.  Everything except the bare necessities of life must wait until the wind stops.  Vegetables for the garden have to be started inside in small containers and left there, getting leggy, until the winds stop.  My husband Wayne and I often remind each other of the spring we flaunted Mother Nature and planted the garden early.  The winds blew so hard the next day that they snapped the tiny seedlings off at ground level.  The garden just disappeared overnight.  No use cleaning the swimming pool either.  It’s full of black mud and debris. 

Ugly scene, huh?

See the bag on the fence?

Plastic bags fly around the city until they impale themselves on tall ocotillo plants or thorny mesquite trees.  Homeowners hope the trash will just keep blowing into someone else’s yard.

           

I asked one of my college students from New Jersey how he was enjoying life in the desert southwest.  He said he loves the weather.  “But how about our winds?” I inquired, expecting to draw out his true feelings.  He said they were no problem, because El Paso is the only city in which he has lived where he can wear sandals all year long.   “You could never do that in New Jersey,” he assured me, sticking out both feet to show off his comfortable footwear.

I’ll have to keep that in mind when the 50 mile per hour winds wake me before the alarm sounds in the morning.  Maybe I’ll put on a pair of sandals before I head out the door to face the elements.