Closest thing to family

Twelve days have passed since the last update. Most of them have been pretty similar in terms of our daily life, despite restrictions finally starting to be imposed.

Food supplies in this town are pretty limited and spread out, so we're heaving to be creative with the set of ingredients that are easy enough to source- tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, cucumber, cilantro, onion, chillies (obviously), avocado (particularly good here).

There's a bread guy who comes by twice a week in his truck, and a couple of ladies selling tamales (chicken, beans, or cheese). One of them is really adorable. She takes our waste from eating fruit for feeding to her pig, and she likes to stop by for a chat and a little nap in the shade before she plods along to the next group.

The bread is surprisingly (for Mexico) pretty decent, so we've been enjoying using that a fair bit.

The main highlights,

- More jackfruit- tacos at night (Dave), followed by burritos served up with scrambled eggs and avocado (Lucas)

- Lucas' Cauliflower and Broccoli battered tacos- Baja fish tacos style. Interesting that rum is an ingredient in the batter. Seriously tasty.

- Vegan Ceviche using dried soy, pineapple, onions, lime cilantro etc. Served on tostadas. Outstanding from Lucas

- Jen's epic Spanish tortilla. As good, if not better than the last, and enough to make our Spanish buddy, Sebastian, extremely happy.

- Jen's pizza breads. Fantastic use of that good bread. Covered in bravas sauce, asadero cheese and fresh pineapple.

- Stuffed poblanos, as usual. Reliable dish for keeping folks happy from me.

- Patatas bravas with home made garlic mayo and tomato paprika sauce. Designed to build on Jen's tortilla to give Sebastian and Melanie a taste of their home in Spain. I enjoyed seeing Melanie, who is a French native, get excited at having home made mayo. I could hardly do otherwise with a French lady in company!

- Lentil, potato and carrot curry, with lime cilantro yoghurt, pickled onions, lime pickle, onion bahjis, and all done in DIY wraps. This was my contribution to last night. A lot of effort in 34°c with all the it's going, deep fat frying and the oven on. Worth it though.

- Roasted aubergine, pepper and tomato pasta, and a treat of mushroom pasta for Jen. The roasted veggie pasta is becoming something that I think I can build on.

Honestly, there hasn't been a single shoddy meal. Lucas is a great cook, everything he's done has been super tasty and he manages it without the effort I end up having to put into some of my food. Anything Jen knocks out is always on the money, and I'm happy with my contribution to things.

We've been eating in the restaurant in the campsite a couple of times. Seafood is obviously their thing here, but we've not been feeling it too much, so we've had their chicken Milanese burger, or their beef burger. Both super fresh and tasty.

We'll be eating at one of the other restaurants which is meant to do an epic prawn burger, freshly made to order, as well as some top drawer fish tacos.

Central to garnishing many of our dishes has been chipotle mayo and my green sauce which seems to find it's way onto everything. It is damn good.

But the most important thing has been how mealtimes have brought people together, including our friends Melanie and Sebastian, a Spanish/French couple from along the camp; our other neighbours Mitchell and Linda (Mexican/Swedish), and Eddie, a friend of Mel and Sebas, who is from the US.

Last night we all sat down for the first time together and chowed down on my Indian feast. Suffice to say it went down well. Eddie remarked that it was the best food he's eaten on his trip so far, so that was lovely to hear. It was some new flavours for Lucas who also seemed to enjoy it, but really, the best thing was just sitting down together, talking, laughing and forgetting about the subject which has dominated points of our time here. Mealtimes are feeling like family occasions. When the people are this nice, the setting this beautiful, and the food this good, it serves to remind us how very lucky we are to be here in this situation.

Sebas and Melanie will unfortunately be leaving for home shortly, so we'll lose a key part of the group. Be for they go, I think we'll all go out for dinner together and enjoy some local food and company.

It looks like we may be here for some time yet. I look forward to seeing what we get around to cooking. I've got a stack of ideas bubbling away and precious little else to be doing with my time, so I'll plan to get back to being regular with updating this with the highlights.

Maybe I'll get around to that interview with Lucas, and maybe the others, too. Why not?Read more