While at the beach: any ingredient goes

The food we typically eat (when we go out) while in Mexico is almost always fabulous. It's mostly americanized, so I don't have fears of finding terrible surprises in my food (like anise in my donuts), but what IS always a wild 'n crazy adventure is what we make in our little kitchen in the condo.

Since we don't have access to a full grocery store, or most of the ingredients that we're used to (or don't want to buy because we'll be there for only a week or two) we bring some of our own food and we buy some, but it gets good when we try to make breakfast or lunch sometimes. Here are my favorites from this trip:

The good:
Both of these were my ideas which is mostly why they fall under the good category.

Peanut Butter and Dried Blueberry sandwich (One thumb up)
To me, this makes perfect sense. We didn't have jelly, but we did have dried fruit. Who wouldn't put the fruit in the sandwich? Some in my family (my sister) was horrified with the prospect. It was delicious. If you put enough on it was like the jam made with whole fruit which is mostly chunky anyways.

Tuna fish and guacamole on french bread (Two thumbs up)
So we had canned tuna and we had mayo, but I typically don't find this enough to satisfy me in a tuna sandwich. So I raided the fridge...the only thing that was condiment-able was guac. So we threw some of that in there and it was perfect! It had everything we needed to complete the sandwich, a little more flavor plus tomotoes and onions, which is a definite must on a tuna sandwich.

Individual ingredient victories: Bimbo
I can't attest to this one, I never ended up trying it, but the vote in our villa was two enthusiastic thumbs up to Bimbo! What is Bimbo you ask? A brand of bread, of course! Like wonder, but bimbo! But the type of bread we got was this pre-toasted bread, like melba toast, but not so crunchy. Apparently Bimbo microwaved for a bit is delicious, I'm still not convinced that microwaved toast is good, but that's what they say.

The bad (one thumb down):
Egg sandwich with chorizo on regular bread (sorry mom! and I'm still very appreciative of your work and dad's delivery service to me on the beach)

The idea of this sandwich is actually not revolutionary. In fact, I'm sure you could find the exact same thing at hundreds of restaurants in the city. However, where this one went wrong, was the MASSIVE amount of chorizo in the sandwich. There was maybe a half an egg on the sandwich and a half a pound of meat. And I enjoy chorizo (especially the spanish kind, this was the mexican kind - difference (among others: spanish is smoked, mexican is raw), but at 9 in the morning, I'm not hoping for a half a pound of meat. But really where this one went wrong (and yes, this sounds terrible) was that the bread was termendously soggy. Why soggy? Because my dad delivered it to us on the beach, so it sat for a minutes we ate it. Half a pound of meat on soggy bread, does not a breakfast sandwich make. I do appreciate the effort, and I'd rather eat it than make it myself while at the beach, but the culinary experience is purely what I'm investigating here.

Individual ingredient disasters: Smoked almonds
Ever seen smoked almonds at the grocery store? If you do, don't buy them, they're terrible. End of story.

The ugly:
Margaritaville (three fingers):
Ok, so this wasn't really cooking or anything that we concocted, but man was it ugly. Happy hour, every day 3 PM, we did NOT miss it. It included pretty much any drink you want, but three fell victim to the power of the large margarita.

Here they are in decreasing order of magnitude -

Victim 1: The aunt
I wasn't there to witness this one, but my aunt was the first to fall to the large margarita. Even the waiters were coming up to her the next day asking if she wanted more margaritas. Word is on the street that she had about 2 large margaritas (maybe more but the records are fuzzy after the first one). Let's just say there was no dinner for her and she definitely caught the worst case of the margaritaville attack.

Victim 2: The pops
My dad tends to eat one meal a day. This has really been true for as long as I have known him. But this causes a bit of consternation being in Mexico and happy hour typically occurring before his one meal of the day. The count for him on the margaritas was two. No food. He was down and out for the night after that. Grammy luckily got him to eat some cheese before he headed off to bed.

Victim 3: The blogger
So I had many days of happy hours and two previous days in which I had large margaritas, but this particular one was especially strong. Like I said, 3 pm is when happy hour starts. So I sipped my way through the next hour or so (they are LARGE I say), and giggled my way through the next 5 hours. We went back to the room, got ready for dinner, went to dinner, came home, hung out for a bit .... I was still drunk. Perhaps it was all in my head, but man, was that strong!

Here's a shot (get it? shot? like a shot of alcohol, ha!) of me with my SMALL fruity girly drink after the margarita night:

The anti-victim:
Special Mention goes to my mom who defied all odds with the margaritas by bringing down her own EXTRA shot of tequila and adding it to her margarita at happy hour. Pretty impressive stuff.

And...The birthday (one finger right down the middle):

Aah, yes, Jeff's 30th birthday. Not really a culinary experience to discuss, but a picture is worth a thousand words, and I needed to share.

Actually the cake was great (traditional Mexican Dulce de Leche, which is a yellow layer cake with dulce de leche in between the layers), and the party was fun too. Jeff, maybe not so excited about the whole 30 thing.

Overall, great trip, great food (with a few exceptions) and drink (maybe too good) and great friends and family!