...make limonada.
Our friends Dave & Marj on s/v Kievit returned to the States to visit their daughter last week. Before they left, they gave us any of their fresh produce that they were afraid would spoil while they were gone. One of the things we got were a whole bag full of limóns. These are the little limes (or are they lemons?) that are usually served with a bottle of Corona. We already had a bunch on board and, having recently started to prefer our cerveza au naturál, we sort of wondered what we were going to do with all these little guys. And then it came to me: limonada. All the restaurants around here serve it. You can get it made with either agua naturál or agua minerál (carbonated). Seemed like an obvious use of this bounty. So, armed with a knife and our trusty little squeezer, I got to work.
I got enough juice out of Kievit's limónes to make about 2 liters of limonada. Once it was cold, I sampled it and I'm sold. It is SO good and SO refreshing. We've decided that we're going to be sure to take plenty of limónes with us when we head back north again just so we can make limonada.
But how, you might ask, will limónes keep over the long haul? Well, we learned a little trick that works really well. I'm told it works for any citrus fruit and I believe it. Wrap the individual fruits in aluminum foil.
In this photo, the green limónes are ones we bought today. The yellow ones were wrapped in foil for the past 4 weeks. They were green when the were first wrapped. However, the color change didn't hurt their juice yield or quality at all. I used our foil-wrapped stash as well as some new ones we bought today to make another pint of concentrated jugo de limón which is just waiting to be diluted and sweetened (a little).
Speaking of jugo de limón, you've never seen so many flavored mayonnaises as they carry in the stores down here. We were getting some mayo yesterday and I noticed that most of them, including Best Foods and Hellman's had a version with "jugo de limón". You could find plain mayo but you had to look hard for it. On the other hand, if you wanted mayo flavored with chipotles, habaneros, etc, no hay problema. I also noticed that Act II microwave popcorn came in more flavors than I'd ever seen it in back in the USA. Flavors like habanero, limón, jamaica, tamarind, etc. Crazy, huh?
Since we've been back in La Paz we've only eaten out twice. We had burgers with Kievet at Bufalito Grill and then Lulu and I had fish tacos at our favorite place up by the Modatela store yesterday. We've mostly been eating onboard. Yesterday we managed to find some sausages that WEREN'T made of turkey. Have I mentioned that all the freakin' hot dogs in the stores here are made of pavo (turkey)? You can have your choice of about eleventeen different brands and every one is de pavo. Drives a fan of Nathan's hot dogs absolutely CRAZY! But yesterday we found some sausages at the store that were actually made of pork. Of course, they were from the USA. Go figure. Anyway, dinner that night consisted of grilled sausages, marinated cucumbers (pepinos) and chiles, and fire-roasted peppers, saurkraut and dippin' mustard. Lulu declared the meal a wee bit too sour overall for her but I loved it.
Tonight's dinner was more normal: BBQ'd chicken and potato salad. I'm happy to find out that I can still BBQ chicken even on my little bitty boat BBQ. BTW: Mexican charcoal is charcoal, not charcoal briquettes. Chunks of wood that've been burned to charcoal (however they do that - in an oxygen-depleted environment I think).
We're getting a few boat chores done and we're really anxious to get out of here and back up into the under-populated islands and villages further north. But don't feel too sorry for us. We're still managing to eat good.
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