jennifer rose
Jul 23, 2002, 3:29 PM
Post #9 of 13
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Siempre en Domingo en Santa Maria de los Altos (Morelia)
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Tony, are you sure you weren't in my colonia last Sunday?
Sunday morning means more than reading Provincia and LaVoz de Michoacan with its Dia Siete supplement. It’s the tianguis.<p>“My” tianguis is always a genuinely pleasant experience, a gathering of all kinds of people from the neighborhood. It’s a mix of everyone from the poor to the politicians, from those whose homes are covered in carton to those living behind the gates. Some folks are buying the week’s household necessities, and others are there simply for the fresh produce. A four-piece band – a bass, two guitars and an accordion – play amid bountiful displays of fruits and vegetables, rich red meats and golden poultry, fresh fish (mostly mojarra), frogs, and a live turtle. The turtle came from somewhere near Zitacuaro, so he's a land turtle. Watching him smile at visitors, I wondered who would have the nerve to convert him into a delicious caldo. Fresh baby borrego hangs, advertising “not frozen,” for $30 M.N. a kilo. There’s the nopal vendor, the potato vendor, and the old lady who only sells stuff like magnolia flowers, jamaica, huitlacoche, herbs, mushrooms, and freshly hulled beans. The ice cream vendors and the honey salesman compete for aisle space. Around the corner are the hardware dealers, snake oil salesmen (well, actually selling some kind of salamander oil), nylon stocking specialists, and the gazpacho dicers. <p>Puestos selling gorditas, tacos, enchiladas, and pozole along the cemetery lane lead to what I've started to term the "Therapy Zone" where the Plant Lady has set up shop. Sunday breakfast often means something from the market.<p>There’s always something very catholic – that’s with a small “c” – at the Sunday market, which makes it practically a religious ceremony. Regardless of what may be on the schedule for the rest of the day – the Canine Agility Club, a daytrip out of town, comida with friends, or even getting back into pajamas to hang out at home – the Sunday market’s an essential.<p>Sunday evening assumes a regularity that’s become as much a part of a traditional Sunday night at the Ed Sullivan Show, Don Ameche’s International Showtime, the Walt Disney Hour and Bonanza were to Sunday night television in the fifties. Or even Raul Velasco’s “Siempre en Domingo.” And that’s a Sunday evening repast at Dona Marina’s house, where she and her family serve up two kinds of pozole, pambazos, enchiladas, tamales and atole with doses of loving attention. Even during the coldest months, Dona Marina’s living room is the warmest hearth in town. If any of her regular crowd misses a week, then there had better be a very good reason – like being out of town. And just to make sure that we miss her good cooking, she and her husband spend three or four months of each year visiting their children in California! <p>
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