Thursday 2/23 Tepic arrives!

Work, work, WORK!  Someone was down there with what appeared to be a surveyor's level, we wondered if the exact height of the tee across the water was a critical factor in the development of the hole?

Our day, of course, was focused on the impending arrival of our amigas from Tepic.  Martha, Silvia, and Alicia have joined us before; this trip we will meet Esperanza as well.  Most dishes are made or heavily prepped, but I have enough work to keep me busy while Linda and Claudette grab some pool time on a warm day.  They're back mid-afternoon, and move into chopping up tossed salad & jicama-radish appetizer ingredients, setting the table, and assisting in figuring out what containers and utensils we'll need to get everything out as planned.  There's last-minute griddle work for the sopas as a starter and the Oaxacan Seared Cheese with a tomato/poblano sauce as a side dish.

We FINALLY got confirmation that the ladies had arrived at a nearby facility, much later than we had expected.  But all was well, they had simply included some stops enroute.  As we were putting the finishing touches on our preparations, they arrived!

We planned to serve the appetizers out on the deck and then move inside for a dinner buffet using the kitchen island to hold the array of dishes.  It was a lovely evening, with Mexican music floating over the air.  We offered the Pasilla-Mushroom tacos, guacamole, a jicama-and-orange salad we've enjoyed often, and --

fried up at the last possible minute -- the sopes that we had enjoyed so much earlier in the week.







For photos of the remainder of dinner, we'll have to refer you to prior posts -- we were BUSY!  But we can attest to offering pulled pork, turkey meatballs, seared cheese with poblanos & tomato sauce, tossed salad, poblano rice, refried beans, pickled red onions, and both corn & flour tortillas.  Plenty to choose from, and certainly no one went hungry.

Given our constrained resources, we were washing up as we went (we'd had to borrow three forks from the table to make the appetizer presentation work well), and our guests would not be denied the pleasure of helping out.  Very nice.

These meet-ups are always amusing as Martha is totally bi-lingual and every additional participant is hopelessly mono-lingual  So from time to time the conversation splits into language groups, but most of the time Martha listens and moderates, switching instantaneously between English and Spanish, and getting the inflection right so we all understood each others references and jokes.  The ladies are intelligent and engaged, but not extensively traveled.  It's fun to see what they notice and remark upon.

After dinner I invited everyone to wash their hands so I could circulate my counted-cross-stitch piece which I've been working on for longer than I want to count.  Alicia for sure has seen it from its very early days when my goal was to finish the compass rose.  Now the alphabet, the sea, the ship, and several other major components are done and I've moved out to the mermaids and (eventually) the   dolphins that form the perimeter.  I'll post a progress photo at the end of our trip.

That got us all sitting in the living room, and at a point the conversation turned a bit dark as current events in the US (enough said) and in Tepic (big drug raids last week, some right in Martha's neighborhood) came up.  After a bit, I decided to change the topic by offering up the pots de creme.

Well, no one NEEDED another thing to eat, but I think it's safe to say that everyone was glad they DID dip into that chocolate bliss.  Apparently this is nothing like any Mexican dessert at all, and even us three or four gringas had to admit that the special cream added a wonderful upgrade.

And so, eventually, Martha and amigas set out for their lodging.  Not much left to wash ... we got to it and filled a large bath towel with inverted items that would be dry by morning.  Buenos noches!