We just returned from a quick bagel trip to Veracruz city, known as Veracruz Puerto to all you Mexicophiles.
A quick bagel trip is more complicated than it seems.
It requires scanning endless aisles of a supermarket for things we were not able to buy in the local Catemaco, Veracruz and Tuxtlas “hood”.
And among the canned foods we found such treasures as wasabi paste, more or less instant blue berry pudding, white spaghetti sauces and chunky canned tuna, among other jewels.
The bakery had just finished baking assorted small but not sweet breads, still on the cooling rack visible behind the counter.
After fighting with the counter agents, my apparent drool alerted a manager to permit me to enter into the hallowed halls of Walmart bakedom and remove a dozen hot breads to slide into my cooler for my 3 hour trip back to Catemaco to reside in my freezer to evoke future drools.
Those 3 hours were pure misery. To satisfy our curiosity we had stopped at the relatively new COSTCO store, for which we had no 35 dollar membership. And I saw things I had forgotten existed, like Ben & Jerry’s, pastrami, baby ribs, cheddar cheese and fresh milk.
We were not prepared to travel frozen and my Popoluca refused to let me buy another 40 gallon ice chest, the one we owned had been forgotten, so I had to settle for one of those 70 peso plastic bubbly ones and stuffed it with mostly Bagels.
Why Bagels? you may be asking.
Preferentially I would love a good black bread, or one of those steinofen gebackene brots.I grew up in northern Europe and eating white bread was next to being excommunicated.The Bagel habit I picked up by osmosis via an ex, Jewish wife, about whom my most fond memories are my kids and lox (smoked salmon +/-).
So now I am getting ready to munch on a genuine Mexican bagel and schmear it with genuine Mexican cream cheese flavored with Chipotle, accompanied by one of those funny shaped Mexican tomatoes and the usual round onions and smothered with something called smoked salmon “Irish style”.
And for this, I left beautiful uptown Miami, Florida?
