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These are one of my favourite “antojitos” (appetizers.)  The recipe below is for the style that we get here–but I haven’t actually tested it (I’m old school and believe that all garnachas should be made at Lupita’s–and not at home…)  There are other variations on garnachas including ones made with chorizo meat.

INGREDIENTS

The Meat
12 ounces boneless steak, trimmed of fat and cubed (some places use ground beef instead)
1/2 medium white onion, roughly sliced
2 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
salt to taste
heaped 1/4 cup finely chopped white onion

Garnachas
1 rounded cup masa fresh or prepared for tortillas
1/4 cup (or more) pork lard or oil for frying
1/2 cup (Or more) salsa
1/2 cup finely grated queso fresco (or Romano)
1 heaped cup chilito (see recipe below)

INSTRUCTIONS
In a saucepan, barely cover the meat with water, add the sliced onion, garlic and salt to taste, and cook gently until the meat is tender, about 50 minutes.  Set aside to cool off in the broth, then drain and chop.  Mix with the 1/4 cup of onion.
Divide the masa into 12 small balls and cover them with a cloth while you make the garnachas.  Press one of the balls into a thickish circle about 3 inches in diameter and cook as you would a tortilla on an ungreased comal or griddle.  Cover each cooked garnacha with a cloth while you cook the rest.
Melt half of the lard in a large skillet, place the garnachas in one layer in the pan, top each with a tablespoon of the meat mixture and a good teaspoon of the sauce, and cook gently flipping the lard over the surface of the garnachas from time to time for about 5 minutes.   They should be slightly crispy on the bottom.
Set aside, cover and keep warm while you cook the rest.  Sprinkle very lightly with the cheese and serve with the chilito on the side.

Chilito
Makes 4 cups
3 fresh jalapeno chiles
2 pasilla de Oaxaca or 6 chipotle mora chiles
1 large carrot
3 cups finely shredded cabbage
3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1/4 medium white onion, thinly sliced
2 teaspoons Mexican oregano
1/3 cup pineapple vinegar or mild vinegar
salt to taste

Slit the pasilla chiles open and remove the seeds and veins. Douse quickly in hot water, wipe dry and clean. Tear them into several pieces.  Slice the jalapenos crosswise without removing the seeds. Shave the carrot into think, broad ribbons with a potato peeler. Mix all of the ingredients together. The vinegar should just moisten, not drown, the ingredients. Set aside to season for about 1 hour.
Store leftovers in a sealed container in the refrigerator.

(Original recipe from Diane Kennedy’s “My Mexico” available at the Internet’s best Mexican food store http://www.mexgrocer.com/50018.html)

Today Danielle and I visited the “Migración” (immigration) office here in Salina Cruz.  This was to extend her work visa and to get me my “economic dependent” visa.  There were some very specific paperwork and photo requirements–but all-in-all it was a fairly smooth process that took less than three hours.  The slowest/most painful part of the process was waiting at the bank to pay the fees involved.  Assuming no surprises, our visas should be ready on Monday.

A summary of the three days in November that I spent rafting and rappelling with the folks from Esprit Rafting on the Rio Copalita near Huatulco.  (Sorry no rafting pictures–digital cameras and whitewater don’t mix that well.)

After a short bus trip (<3h) from Salina Cruz, I arrived in Huatulco without any problems.  I was heading to the Hotel Posada Eden Costa where I was to meet up with everyone.  The was a new hotel for both myself and the taxi driver–but after some confusion, I ended up at the right spot.  That night was a group dinner where I got to meet everyone that would be on the trip–as well as enjoy the tuna that they had caught that day.

Wednesday started with a 2h drive to the put-in location on the Alemania section of the Rio Copalita.  From there we rafted down the river to where we would be camping for the night.  We had no problems with our raft–but the other one flipped (losing everyone.)  This section of the river is constant whitewater–very technical–but nothing too big.  The scenery is beautiful and it’s nice clear, cool water over a 20 km / 4 hour course.

Thursday was cascading and rappelling day.  We started with cascading in the morning–which is essentially a a walk/wander down a mountain fed river with regular opportunities to jump off ledges/over waterfalls into pools of water below.  The water was clear and cool (tropical cool = comfortable in a bathing suit) and there are lots of fun things to do (tarzan swing off a waterfall, swim in behind one, a cave, etc.)  The afternoon’s cascading didn’t involve much jumping over waterfalls–but did end at one (the Cascadas Magicas) where we would be rappelling.  For those of you who don’t know what rappelling is, this was a 110′ (35m) descent from the top of the waterfall to the bottom via ropes and harness.  The first two thirds of the descent is pretty easy (a 75deg face) but with water splashing all around you.  The last third is an overhang which is a little trickier.  I hit the overhang a little sooner than I expected–which resulted in some good scrapes and bruises on my legs (ouch!)  At the base of the waterfall a few of us climbed up to a ”sketchy” cave (climbing up both rocks and a log while being hit by fast flowing water) and then through the cave to behind the waterfall (where we jumped back into the water again.) 

Friday was another day of rafting–this time 30km down the Rio Copalita to the mouth of the river at the Pacific coast.  Much calmer water (no flips or anyone falling out) but lots of scenery–especially birds (a island of vultures on the middle of the river and piles of other birds.)

It was a fun trip–and the folks from Esprit did their usual great job (food, guiding, etc.)  Unfortunately, the Rio Copalita is no longer one of their standard trips–but you can check out their other Mexico trips here (Danielle and I did the Eco-Adventure trip seven years ago and had a great time.)

Some photos (from others) of the waterfalls/river where we rappelled and cascaded:

Susana Trilling and a team from the Discovery – Travel Channel will be here in the Istmo in March filming segments for the “Bizarre Foods” show. 

Susana is known for her appreciation/understanding of Oaxacan/Mexican cooking (and there are definitely some “bizarre” foods here in the Istmo) so it should be interesting.

Details on the visit (in Spanish)

Having worked in the IT field for over 15 years, I’ve always known that it was it was important to have a dust-free, air conditioned data centre.  Now, after this week-end I know the exact reasons why…..

On Saturday, my computer my computer finally succumbed to the heat and dust of the Istmo and crashed.  It would start the boot sequence–but never completely startup.  It would get part way through and then power-off/restart the boot sequence.  After going through this for a while, I was able to figure catch the error message that was being generated (“Unable to Mount System Volume”)–which pointed to a very serious hard disk problem

Fortunately, I’m a computer nerd and was eventually able to get the computer working semi-normally again (notes below.)  I don’t appear to have lost any data–which is really good as I have been taking the “mañana” approach to backups for the past month or two.  However, I can no longer use any secure websites (online banking, etc.) and there are noises coming from the hard disk that I know are not good.

So it looks like I’ll be brushing up on my Spanish computer vocabulary and buying myself a new computer this week. 

Nerd Notes:  Always have a copy of the “Magic Boot CD” handy–it and that old friend “CHKDSK C: /F” allowed me to get things working again.  Now if I could only figure what is causing the problems with schannel.dll…

A few readers have complained that I mention food in my blog on a regular basis–but never provide recipes.  As a result, I will now start posting recipes on a semi-regular basis.  This first one is a fairly simple one.  It’s incredibly refreshing and the limes provide vitamins and minerals–making this a perfect drink for those 35C days.  Most restaurants offer this by the glass or the pitcher (jarra) with a pitcher costing anywhere from 35-60pesos (depending on the restaurant and whether you want regular or carbonated water.) 

Limonada (Limeade)

• 2l water/ice (regular or carbonated water)
• juice of approx. 20 small limes (aka. Mexican or key limes)
• 7 tablespoons sugar

Mix the above contents together–adjusting the amount of lime juice and sugar to suit your tastes.  

We’re blogging again.  The period before and after Christmas up until now has been really busy for us (travel and family visiting.)  At the same time our webserver software was upgraded by the hosting company which made uploading our blog postings a challenge.   However things are now back to normal and we’ve got lots of stuff to post.

We felt another earthquake today–this one was strong enough to wake Danielle up from her siesta in the hammock.  It measured 4.5 on the Richter scale and was centred 44km southwest of Salina Cruz.  We also had a few smaller ones nearby in the past week–but they were in the middle of the night and too small to wake us.