Because some days healthy eating just doesn't happen.

Eva on the playground with all the students during morning outside time

Evalynn turned 3 today.  She came in this morning wearing a very cute pink dress and even cuter pink headband with a big flower on it.  Her birthday was celebrated in typlcal 3-year-old-girl fashion, with pink everything—Amber even made strawberry cupcakes with bright pink frosting to serve at lunch.  The birthday girl also got a Pikachu shirt (she’s into Pikachu for whatever reason) and a Bitty Baby doll, so from what I could tell, she had a pretty good day.

I was planning to eat healthier today, but it didn’t really work out.  For one thing, I was expecting cereal because it was Monday morning, but Juanita made pancakes instead.  And far be it from me to pass up a pancake for generic-brand Cheerios with powdered milk . . . Then Janet, Peggy, and I planned to go to lunch at a place in Porvenir (the next town over, about a 5-minute drive beyond Guadalupe) called D’Marco.  Howard and Janet have kept telling me about it and saying I need to try it, but things have been busy and we haven’t had a chance to go.  Since I’m leaving this week though, Janet finally made an executive decision that we needed to go get lunch there today.  But we decided to go earlier, like 11:45, because Peggy had afternoon dorm duty and the new group from Porter Ranch was coming around RSM lunchtime. 

In the meantime, while we waited for 11:45 to roll around, Janet and I helped Juanita make sopes for the day’s lunch, which was exciting because it was a dish I learned about for the first time while I was down here and wanted to learn to make.  A sope is kind of like a thick corn-masa pancake, but with a little pinched raised edge (like the edge of a pie crust) so that you can put toppings on it without them falling off.  They vary slightly by region, but are popular all over Mexico.  The traditional first layer of toppings is pretty much always refried beans, usually followed by meat, shredded lettuce, and then maybe salsa, sour cream, or whatever else the cook wants to provide. They are delicious (after all, they’re made with corn masa—what’s not to like?) but take a while to make, because they have so many preparation steps.  Plus there’s all the time it takes to prep the beans, meat, and lettuce for the toppings.  So we spent probably an hour in the kitchen, working away, until it was time for me and Janet to leave.  I felt bad leaving, because this was one of those days when I think Juanita could have used the assistance a little longer . . . there were still so many masa balls to be flattened, cooked, and shaped.  Plus, all the sopes have to be cooked a second time (usually fried) once they are shaped.  So I hated to leave Juanita to finish it all herself.  But like I’ve said before, she’s a highly capable cook, and when we returned just after 1 pm, she had all the sopes done and ready to serve!  A true professional.

D’Marco was really good (and very affordable)!  The place is so small, with four or five tables and no written menu, that you’d never guess at its amazingness, but Peggy and Janet said there are actually a lot of little roadside eateries in Valle de Guadalupe that serve really good-quality food, because of the tourism from all the wineries along Ruta del Vino.  The cook at D’Marco will, apparently, cook essentially whatever you ask for (provided he has the ingredients for it), but I just went ahead and ordered the highly recommended dish Janet and Peggy told me about: the quesadilla especial, vegetarian version.  Janet ordered the same, but with beef, and Peggy the same but with shrimp.  It took about a half hour for the chef to make the quesadillas, but I could tell from my now-and-then glances towards the back of the restaurant that he was starting from scratch and prepping everything with the utmost TLC.  When the plates finally came out and I dug into mine, I knew it had been worth the wait!  The quesadillas are stuffed so full of veggies that they are about an inch thick— really more about the vegetables than about the cheese.  The cook also put in his specialty chipotle sauce, which made the quesadilla almost seem like a crêpe.  (I say a good sauce is the key to a good dish, and this food was proof.)  It was a rich and satisfying meal, and it cost me less than $5 US.  I was definitely impressed!

La quesadilla especial

Juanita wasn’t actually at the Ranch when we got back.  She had to go home because Griselda had another early (and I think false) alarm with the baby, so Janet and I served the sopes up.  I wasn’t intending to eat any sopes, at least not at first, but I ended up having a small one with some beans on it.  I had to try one—they just looked so yummy.  Juanita had embellished the masa dough with leftover enchilada sauce, so they were extra good.  Then Amber served the strawberry birthday cupcakes. I chose a small one (and for the record, I scraped off the neon pink frosting because I knew just by the color that it would taste like nothing but dye—ick). 

The Porter Ranch group arrived more than an hour late—they had been bringing a lot of stuff down and I think they got delayed at the border—so Trish and I served up the sopes we’d reserved for them, then did the dishes.  We also helped them put away the food donations they’d brought.  We didn’t get out of the kitchen until probably 3:15.  I was in there waiting around for so long in between tasks that I was able to bake that new batch of cranberry bars for school snacks.

This group is much smaller and mellower than the last one, by the way.  There are only nine or ten people, all adults, and their church, Shepherd of the Hills, actually has two campuses: one in Porter Ranch and the other one up in Agua Dulce.  I think they are the group that customarily brings the amenities for “Pizza Night.”  (Different groups do different things—for example, coming on Shoe Day, or in the case of our church, bringing ingredients to make at least one “American-style” meal like deli sandwiches or bringing equipment for Pinewood Derby in the spring.)

Spent the next hour and a half doing some random tasks in my room, and then went back up to the kitchen around 5 to help the group ladies and Trish prep the dinner.  The group had brought a bunch of oven-ready pepperoni pizzas from Sam’s Club, so dinner was fairly easy.  I added some more cabbage to the lettuce blend from lunch to make a salad, and the ladies put the pizzas on trays and baked them a few at a time.  The meal was a big hit.  Pizza is a rare treat on the RSM menu, so everyone came back for seconds and even thirds (which is normally not allowed, but we had to serve the pizzas little by little as they finished heating, so some people had to have their second round of slices one piece at a time).  I purposely selected two small slices because I was feeling like a very unhealthy eater by that point of the day.  Thankfully I don’t like pepperoni, so I wasn’t at all tempted to eat it.  I gave it away to all the pepperoni lovers in the kitchen.

Johnny and Amber hosted another game night tonight.  It was them, Trish, and me, like last time.  We played a bluffing game called Sheriff of Nottingham, in which one player is the Sheriff and the other players are merchants who have to try and persuade the Sheriff to let them pass customs.  It’s a challenging game because there are rules about what you can bring in, how much, etc., and of course there are also illegal contraband items to make it interesting.  I didn’t do so well since it was my first time, but it was still a lot of fun!

Final snack . . . I took a leftover peanut butter oatmeal bar out of the walk-in fridge for dessert.  (Hey, peanut butter and oats have nutritional value, don't they? . . .)  So yes, it was a blow-your-diet kind of day, but some days there is yummy stuff in front of you and you've just gotta go for it.

And I did do two walk loops in the morning after breakfast.  If it’s not too hot and I have time, I try to do two loops per day.

Slightly bummer news: I have to come home one day earlier than planned . . . boo!  Had been planning to go back across the border with the Porter Ranch group on Thursday, but it turns out they’re leaving on Friday, not Thursday, and my friend who was going to pick me up in San Diego couldn’t come down on Friday.  But my friend can come Wednesday, and Howard & Janet’s day off is Wednesday and they will be going Stateside anyway.  So the new plan is: I have to leave Wednesday morning, right around breakfast time, rather than mid-morning on Thursday.  I’m sad!  I was hoping for an extra day, not one day less . . . now that I’ve adjusted to the RSM routine, I’ve been enjoying myself a lot.  But life must go on, of course, so qué será, será, as the song goes.