Preparing for Patricia

Hurricane Patricia was on her way to us and murmurs of her arrival started about Tuesday last week.  Admittedly, were  nonchalant about her in the beginning.   This year marks our 7th Hurricane Season in the Bahia de Banderas.  Each season begins with a storm whose name starts with the letter A, and they work their way down the alphabet to the last storm of the season.  Not all named storms turn into hurricanes.  We are far from "seasoned" but "P" is the 16th letter of the alphabet, meaning that this year alone, 15 storms had already formed, with the potential to turn into a hurricane and 15 storms had passed us by.

By Thursday, however, the murmur had turned into enough talk to cause us to take precautionary measures around the house.  Basically, this meant stripping our walls, inside and out, of any and all decor and hauling all our outdoor furniture into indoor shelter and locking it up.  We also put a couple of days worth of food and water in the room with the smallest windows, thereby limiting our exposure to flying glass, should the storm be strong enough to break windows.

Kevin reads the news daily on his computer.  I am not a big watcher of news, preferring to worry about what is going on in my backyard "now" rather than being concerned about what is happening everywhere else in the world.  News of Patricias' impending arrival, however, was unavoidable!  She was everywhere and would soon be in my back yard.   Countless friends, in person, by phone, email and on Facebook brought reality crashing down upon me.   Something hugely frightening was headed our way.

So, I took a second look at what we had on hand.  Really, under normal circumstances, as with most Canadian households, we could easily survive for several days on just what was in our fridge.  But,  if the power went out, all that would quickly spoil and we would be forced to live for who knows how long on half a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread.

Which is why Friday morning found us scrambling to get more last minute stuff taken care of.  Kevin got into line at the gas station to top up the tank and then went to the water store for an additional 20 litres of water.  I went to Chedraui for extra candles and packages of ready to eat tuna and beans.  Ever the optimist, I also bought some deli meats because even if we did loose power, the food could be transferred to coolers.

The line at the gas station was bad enough, but much quicker than the line at the grocery store.  The clerks were doing their best but when everyone in the bay decides to stock up at the same time, things do slow down.  For the most part, in spite of the crush, people were considerate, polite and in good humour and the hour I stood in line waiting to pay passed without incident.

We came home and started the BBQ, because the chicken we had planned to have for dinner still needed to be cooked.    While that was happening, on the advice of friends, I did a few last minute things I never would've thought of:  pet food, briquets, matches and personal documents were all put into zip lock baggies and stowed for safe keeping.  In all, we felt we were as prepared as we could be so we waited.

As predicted, Patricia, a category 5 Hurricane hit land south of the Sierra Madre mountains and did a lot of damage.   Mexican authorities managed to ignore all the CNN hype and concentrated their evacuation efforts in the areas where National Hurricane Centre (NOA) was predicting landfall.  They nailed it, and it is my understanding that no lives were lost in spite of (for me) unimaginable damage.  

As the photos show, the devastation wrought by Patricia was nothing that I could have prepared for.  If asked to evacuate, we may have gone to the shelter set up at the university, or we may have driven to Guadalajara.  For the future, we will remember that evacuating to Guadalajara may be a poor choice.  There are videos on line showing floodwaters pushing loaded busses down the street.

All that water has to go somewhere and within 24 hours it had travelled down the Ameca River and arrived here.  When we cross the bridge, the Ameca normally takes an eye blink to pass.  A friend sent a video Saturday, and it took a  full 2 minutes to cross the flooded area.  Jarretaderas was evacuated on Saturday,  but people were back in their homes on Sunday.  Again, a masterful job by civil authorities doing what needed to be done when it needed doing.


The good people of Vallarta and area are very aware of just how lucky we were with this storm and have rallied like no one else can rally to provide food and water and volunteers to the centres who need help as they start cleanup from the storm.    Our local Starbucks is the drop point in Nuevo for donations of food and water and there are several on line sites where monetary donations have also been made.   The positive from this is that our community as a whole has rallied to help with the aftermath,  which can only be a good thing.

Many thanks to Mary Pitrowsky and Stephy Finch along with AF News? for photos used in this blog.

Embracing change

Well, the Canadian election is over and a new leader has been chosen.   I loved the build up to the election, and I loved how, finally, most people finally agreed on one thing:  The need to exercise our rights as Canadians to VOTE!

Regardless of who won, I have never seen Canadians so stirred up over going to the polls.  Certainly a breath of fresh air, and for that reason alone, Canadians had already won something that seemed to have been lost over the past several years - passion.

My Mom, showing off her Canadian Flags

Even though Kevin and I (and countless others like us) were not allowed to vote in this election because we live on the other side of the Canadian Borders, we do care about what goes on in our country.  We are Canadians and always will be Canadians.  We love our country, and are very excited to see what the coming years will bring.

Principally, I am hoping that Mr Trudeau and the Liberals will also be able to give us back our ability to hold our heads up high when we tell the world that WE. ARE. CANADIAN!  And I am hoping we will soon earn back the respect we used to have as Canadians wherever in the world we happened to travel.   Once again, I want Canadians to be recognized not because of our standard of living, or our tax or education system, but simply because we are the faces of  a nation who can and does accept people because of their differences and not in spite of them.

Honestly, after listening to Justin Trudeaus' speech last night, I don't think I have ever been a prouder Canadian.

This started out as a blog about the upcoming Halloween season, but I guess that will have to wait for another day because I just can't think of a way to segue this into a blog about Trick or Treating and the Day of the Dead.  So, thanks for reading all the way to the end, and as your reward, I leave you with this photo of Kevin and Alexa and a Katerina.

How's your Spanish?

After living here for 8 years, one would think our command of Spanish should be pretty good.  And, for the most part, it is.  We can meet new people, discuss the weather, enquire as to the state of someones health all in Spanish.  We can order our food in Espanol, after having made full enquiries as to how it is prepared and how it will be served, in our second language.  We can also manage blood donations and our own doctor and dental appointments, all in Spanish.

Casa Madera, your home away from home

Why, then do we have such difficulty when it comes to dealing with contractors????  Perhaps it is their redneck mentality,  (I know!  Being a proud Alberta girl myself,  I was shocked to learn that we are not the only people on the planet to have perfected this attitude). but I prefer to believe that the twists and tricks of the Spanish language are more to blame.

We were having some work done  last week, and the contractor needed a couple of last minute things to finish the job.  Would Kevin be able to go get them?  Sure, no problem.   Our conversation was going very well, so well, that the contractor forgot who he was talking to and began using words we were not familiar with.  Language barrier, resurrected.    You know how English speaking people speak LOUDER when someone doesn't understand them...Spanish speaking people speak FASTER!!  Any hope of understanding what he needed had now been lost.

Wet cement.  A sure sign that a contractor is in the house.

Surgencia - means suggestion, but when the contractor is holding a roll of electrical wire in one hand  and gesturing wildly at the ceiling with the other, suggestion is the last word that comes to mind.

Finally, we realized he had come up with a different way to wire the outside lights than we had originally discussed.  That only took 10 minutes, and way more charades than most people are comfortable with.

Registra - From the verb Registrar, which means to inspect, to frisk, to register, or to record.

Registro - There is no verb, this is the word.  It means inspection, registration, recording or registry office.

Given that he was pointing to a light fixture, I am pretty sure that none of the above translations applied.

As Kevin and I were standing there with blank looks on our faces, trying hard to understand the impossible, the contractor sighed.

It finally occurred to me to have him write it down!!  Then we would only have to show the magic word to our friendly hardware store guy and the mystery would be solved.  Except that by the time I thought of this, the contractor had already decided that getting a "registro" was no longer worth the effort and he would figure things out himself.  So, off Kevin went to get the item we did understand and the contractor went back to work and finished the job, without our "help".

As it happens, our neighbour is looking for a contractor and stopped by last night to ask if we were happy with our guy.  Yes, despite the communication difficulty, we got on quite well, and we are happy with the finished project.

Our neighbour is an engineer.  It took him less than 5 seconds to notice that they had installed an indoor light switch on our outdoor post.    Kevin and I looked at each other "OH, REGISTRO!".  We may call the contractor to come back to fix it, but probably this afternoons project will be just doing it ourselves.

Yes, our rooms are nice.  

Thanksgiving Weekend in Paradise

Its Thanksgiving weekend in Canada, and honestly, I am finding myself at a bit of a loss this year.  In past years, we have searched for days to find a turkey, gone to a restaurant serving turkey dinner, or joined friends here to celebrate the big day.

Turkey is now much easier to find in October.   Our first couple of years here, finding a turkey so far in advance of American Thanksgiving, was  impossible.  One memorable year, the best we were able to do was a dismal smoked turkey, pulled from the depths of Wal-Marts walk in freezer, most likely left over from the previous Christmas, or maybe even the Christmas before that.  It truly was the turkey that should have stayed in the store.

As for dining out, our options are far from limited, but we know from experience that Blakes Restaurant  (https://www.facebook.com/Blakes-Restaurant )makes the best turkey dinner in the bay, hands down.    If we were inclined to go out this year, we would have gone to Blakes.

Friends invited us to spend the day with them, and honestly, we do love our friends here, but somehow, this year, Kevin and I just needed to be home, as a tiny little family of 2, wondering how we ever thought Thanksgiving in the Tropics could be better than spending the day with our kids and families up north.  Don't get me wrong, we love it here, but living in Paradise does come with a price.  

Anyway, this morning, as we do every Sunday, we were having coffee on our rooftop, enjoying the gentle morning sunshine while we read back issues of Bon Appetit and Gourmet magazines,  deciding how to appease our appetites this week.   It truly is our favourite time of the week.

Yesterdays trip to our favourite meat market (that's Carniceria, if you want to sound like a local) did not net us a turkey, but we did find some wonderful looking beef short ribs.  My project this morning was to figure out what I was going to do with them.

After checking a few magazines, I decided to streamline my search and just go to  epicurious.com a website, which has never let me down.

TA DA!   It jumped out at me almost immediately..."Simple Smoked Beef Short Ribs", by Ardie A Davis and Chef Paul Kirk.   It sounded kind of funky, with a "Mustard Slather" that included a whole cup of prepared mustard (which I have taken to mean French's), AND a rub which included 2 tablespoons of sea salt, but the cooking method was irresistible.  A total of 3 hours of cooking using indirect heat in a charcoal grill????  We were hooked.

This was our opportunity to see just what our new Weber BBQ can do, and the first thing we discovered is that what we had come to deem as a "normal amount" of charcoal is way too much.  So, the starting grill temp registered 350 instead of 250F.    We put them on anyway, hoping the grill temp would drop sooner instead of later.

I tweaked the recipe just a bit, having only 1 kilo of short ribs, I cut the recipe for the "slather" in half and put only two- thirds of that on the ribs to start and used the rest for basting during the cooking process.  I actually could have done with a full batch as it helps keep the meat moist.

I also cut the recipe for the rub in half and increased the sugar by 2 teaspoons.   Based on others reviews, that said this was way too salty, I cut the salt back by half and "sprinkled" only about 1/4 of the rub over the already slathered ribs.   Honestly, at this point, I was not sure about our little experiment but there was, literally nothing to do but sit back and wait.  For 3 hours.

Our cats have no difficulty whatsoever playing the waiting game, as Dulce was keen to demonstrate this afternoon.

 I, however am wired differently.   Relaxing is fine, but what do I have to show for the time?????
My addiction to Pinterest and all its charming ideas is well known in this household so fortunately, I was able to fill the time "constructively" while Kevin wasted his time doing odd jobs around the house and watching the bbq temp.

Eventually, the short ribs finally reached their properly cooked internal temperature of 185F.  We let them rest while we grilled some bread and heated the corn on the cob we so happily brought home from Sams the other day.   I was so busy on Pinterest, I didn't have time to make the salad that should have gone with our lovely repast, which I regretted, because some lettuce and tomatoes would have really balanced this meal.

Because of the learning curve with the grill, this was the most difficult meal we have put together in a very long time.  Was it worth it?  Oh, yes!  You all should put this recipe on your list of things you MUST make.   Heed my warning about the salt in the rub, but that mustard "slather"?  Use it ALL, it is pure genius.
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/simple-smoked-beef-short-ribs-395251

Whatever you are eating this weekend, and whoever you are spending it with, we wish you a Happy Thanksgiving from Casa Madera!