Cuarto Dia: Cajun Meets Mexican

With the sad knowledge that this will be my last full day in Monterrey, I go downstairs and despite that knowledge, am very eager to start the day. Because today, I cook shrimp etouffee for the Casillas familia!

Turns out they LOVED it! And Gil even came up with something a bit new by putting his G sauce on top of the etouffee. Because of the sheer heat in the sauce and lack of the normal amount I put into the etouffee, it actually wasn't too bad and gave it a nice kick. I even was able to do proper Hansen bread which was a big hit as well. Man just writing this post is making me jones for the stuff now.

After lunch we had plans to go out to Emmas house who lives on the St Petersburg side of town on another mountain. We were told the general rule for the mountains is, the higher up you go the more expensive the houses. Well Emma's house turned out to be a bit up the mountain and very very cool once we stepped in. But check out this local Walmart we stopped at on the way to pick up a few items. Since I work there I figure it would worth mentioning and could be interesting to see how they set it up here.

Car park under the store

 

Paella Grills 

Criss Crossing escalators up to the store floor

 

Look familiar??

And now for the climb to Emma's house...

             

After checking out the house we walked up the street a bit to see if we could snag a view of the valley. Emma knew a vacant house so we checked it out. Absolutely PHENOMENAL views.

  

  

 

Some local cacti and its fruit. This is the same fruit that's sold in the market.

The minute we finished up at Emma's house we had to hurry down the mountain because we all had plans to eat out tonight at a certain time and needed to get ready still. But before we went to the house we at last got to stop at the infamous flag pole that is pretty central to the city on a massive hill. On top flies a gigantic Mexican flag with views that are indescribable and are just better left to pictures and the videos. I could have spent literally ALL day up there but we had maybe 15 minutes. Still that was better than never getting to see such an awesome site.

Absolute torture to pull myself away from such a sight but there was much more fun in store for tonight....and we were a bit behind because of the stop. Regardless, we got back to the house and Gil had some kind of new food they were talking about and wanted to cook up a quick bite before we took off. Naturally our curiosity was peaked so we conceded and he cooked up some funky colored stuff called huitlacoche. Go ahead and google it. No? Too lazy? Well here it is: it's corn that's been allowed to grow a fungus that enlarges the kernels and turns them black. It's then cooked and eaten on tamales or quesadillas as a filler usually. It's kind of expensive since it's a delicacy so there's no way we were turning this down. And after eating crickets why not.

Huitlacoche 

It had a very distinctive earthly flavor and very, very pungent. The cheese helped a lot but overall I did not think it was that bad. A tad acquired but with some meat I could easily see this as being an interesting addition.

Now time to go out and eat some non-fungi! We went to some place called front gate or something which is where a lot of nice restaurants are and a ton of people go. The restaurants are on the second level of this place and all are open to the outside, no indoors, which was a nice change of pace. Although at one point it started raining and we had to scoot in a bit. But not before Jeanie made some waiter drop an entire tray of food while I was in the bathroom! Ok the wind blew it but I blamed it on her since she was sitting in the chair just to the right in the picture.

 

Gave the Casillas gifts for being such amazing hosts

Tuna

Salmon

The food was really good and I remember getting a particularly hot piece of habanero in mine so that was fun. Also fun was giving Rodrigo's parents gifts for letting us stay at their place for a few days and feeding us and showing us such a fantastic time in Mexico. A nice bracelet for Tere and nice tequila for Gil. We brought tears to Tere's eyes so I think we did ok :) 

After dinner we split off with Rod and Nora and had a few drinks before returning to the house in what would be our last night in the Casilla house. The end of a trip is always bound to happen and when the trip is this good it hurts even more. But later you realize how good of a feeling that hurt really is because you know that you lived as much as you could and bonded even more with good friends.