Yesterday afternoon we had our chile class at the palapa beside the swimming pool. The class was huge - close to thirty people, in the same space where we had a class of seventeen last year. When the time came to tell Maria what kinds of salsas we would be making today, I said I wanted to do a fruit salsa. I finally settled on jicama/orange, though I was tempted to try one with nopales - http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/nopalitos.htm. I was the only one who decided on a fruit salsa. Everybody else was going to do some form of pico de gallo or a dried chile salsa.

This morning at 9:30 we met again and caught a bus (basically, the whole bus) to Guaymas, and Maria led us around the market. It was fun to do it all again. As I had already had the tour, I was able to sneak away, buy some nopales from a vendor across the street, stop for a cup of coffee, go to the hardware store to buy a comal - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comal_(cookware) (Mine is a little square one that just covers one burner. Because of space constraints, I have to cook my corn tortillas one at a time) - and still get back to the group in time to go to the tortilleria with them and buy a kilo of fresh masa, also for making tortillas.

Clarence will be pleased to know that his cazuela is now on board. (If you don't know what a cazuela is, you can look at last year's postings. There are pictures, even!)

In the afternoon, I made my salsa, using jicama, cucumber, orange, lime juice, red onion, what Maria calls "blond" chiles - (I have no idea what their real name is), cilantro, salt and pepper. Apart from the cucumber, which really wasn't a good idea, the salsa was pretty good, and it was very popular at the salsa tasting party at 3:30. By the time we finished tasting all the fresh and dried salsas, we were all pretty numb in the tongue.

Ginger has still been following me around, but I understand that there is a family at the opposite corner of the park also feeding him, so I'm trying to break our bond. I'm hoping that the family will adopt him. They have two kids, and I gather that when Ginger isn't following me, he's following them.