January 22, 2006

January 22, 2006

La Feria, Texas

YEAR 2 DAY 219

 

Like yesterday, today was cooler, temperature in the mid 60's, cloudy, and intermittent light drizzle.

This morning we headed into Harlingen to replenish groceries and supplies at Wal-Mart and H-E-B. Harlingen is a medium sized city about 8 miles east of La Feria. Bo wanted to go "drivey", and since the temperature was cool, and he would be okay to stay in the truck while we shopped, we brought Bo along. We found the Wal-Mart, and did our shopping. I returned for refund, without a receipt, a battery cable that I bought about a year and a half ago, up in Indiana or Michigan. Pretty liberal refund policies at Wal-Mart ! From Wal-Mart we went over to the nearby large H-E-B. This will be our grocery store of choice while we're in this area. It has an in-store bakery, and deli. Throughout this area along the Mexican border, we keep seeing ads for the sale of "Barbacoa". At H-E-B they were advertising the sale of fresh Barbacoa on Saturdays and Sundays. There was a table set up, staffed by a woman, with a large crock pot of fresh, simmering Barbacoa, for sale either in a sandwich, or in a bulk container to take home. Looked interesting. Smelled interesting. We accepted her offer of a sample. Tasted interesting. I asked her what exactly was Barbacoa ? Oh ... barbecued, shredded, beef ... tongues and cheeks ! Oh ! Well ! Moving right along ... ! However, one must give credit to Mexicans for using more parts of animals, more efficiently, with less waste, than we gringos. They have some specialties, like Menudo, and Chorizo, and Barbacoa, that use the less appealing animal parts, to make things that are very popular in the Mexican culture. When we walked by the bakery, I became fascinated watching a woman make fresh tortillas. She loaded little balls of dough into a glass front oven with a spiral conveyor. A roller flattened the little balls of dough into flat circles, and deposited them on a spiral conveyor that slowly turned in the oven. Halfway down the spiral conveyor, the little circles flipped over. At the bottom of the spiral conveyor, the cooked tortillas came out of the oven, puffed up like balloons, and travelled up a cooling conveyor, where they deflated, and dropped into a basket, ready to be packaged. They were in the oven for maybe 2 minutes, cooking perhaps a minute on each side, then they cooled and deflated within a half minute or so. I guess I stood there watching, with my jaw hanging open, like a little kid, for so long, that the bemused woman offered me a fresh tortilla as a sample. She handed me a hot tortilla right off the cooling conveyor, as it was deflating and travelling to the basket of finished tortillas. It was great ! We bought a package of 10 freshly made tortillas for $1.49.

We returned to the trailer at La Feria RV Park, put away our grocery purchases, and had a very late lunch. Sandwich wraps made with fresh tortillas that had been baked within the last hour ! I read today's newspaper for awhile, then fell asleep for an afternoon nap with Bo. When I woke, I had Joanne help me dig out some old income tax returns, so that I could check on something. Then I dug out the printer, printed and reconciled the Canadian dollar MasterCard statement. I did today's accounting, then started work on today's journal entry while Joanne prepared supper.

One of the interesting, and amusing things about the United States, is what a litigious society it is. Joanne found a notice in the newspaper, of a class action lawsuit that affects us. We owned and used a Motorola StarTac 3000 cell phone for about 5 years, and in that time we had to replace the antenna twice. A class action suit was brought against Motorola, successfully alleging that the antennas on Motorola StarTac cell phones were a flawed design. In losing the suit, Motorola has been required to reimburse StarTac cell phone owners from $15 to $25 upon proof of antenna replacement. I wonder how many people actually will have proof that they changed the antenna on their cell phone ... 5 to 7 years ago ? Certainly not me !

We had supper, and for dessert, we had pecan pie, made with our freshly shelled pecans. One of the more interesting components of this travelling lifestyle, in my opinion, is eating strange, new foods, and eating fresh foods. The difference in taste between a lemon bought at Farm Boy in Orleans, Ontario, and a lemon picked off a tree while I’m walking the dog in Yuma, Arizona, is astounding !

DSK